Facilitating Teachers' Transformative Agency for Educational Change With the Change Laboratory

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Sesion 4
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Change in Schools and Teacher Education

Abstract

Our study contributes to the research on teachers’ transformative agency in and for educational change by presenting and empirically illustrating a research-assisted intervention method named the Change Laboratory (CL). Our interactional video data consists of six CL meetings with teachers, a principal, and researchers in a Finnish elementary school, facing transformational needs. Drawing from cultural-historical activity theory, we set out to explore the emergence of transformative agency in the group over the course of the CL, as they first articulated contradictions in their work activity, and then jointly created novel practices and structures to resolve and overcome them. Our results illustrate how the emergence and development of collective transformative agency contributed to the development of new teamwork and leadership practices.

Authors

• Sakari Hyrkkö, University of Helsinki

• Anu Kajamaa, University of Helsinki