Conceptualizing teacher agency: A posthumanist approach

• In Event: Teachers, the Curriculum and Literacy

Proposal

Teacher agency has become a popular discussion topic, with most of the literature fostering a humanist, sociocultural notion of teacher agency, where teachers’ decision-making capabilities are impacted by their relationships with humans from multilevel structures (Ashton, 2021; Priestley et al., 2015). In the past few years, there has been posthumanist discussions on considering how nonhuman matter is also significant in the teaching profession, urging to “(re)conceptualise teaching as a complex phenomenon, which is jointly produced in a constellation of human, nonhuman, discursive, and material elements” (Heikkilä & Mankki, 2021, p. 4).

This discussion on developing new ways of thinking became salient when COVID-19 disrupted primary teaching status quos (Berry, 2020). In relation to the core tenets of the Post-Foundational Approaches to CIE SIG, this paper leveraged the temporal distinctiveness of COVID-19 and embarked on a posthumanist exploration of how primary teacher agency is rhizomatic and constantly evolving. This paper is also relevant to Sub-Theme 3: Theories, Methodologies and Protest, because it explores the complexity of ‘agency’ through a non-dominant methodological approach.

This paper adopts agential realism, which is an ontoepistemological framework that dispels the material-discourse duality and dualities in general, and asserts that language, discourse, and human/nonhumans are not separate entities but are identified within its relations and enactment of agency to one another. Within this framework, agency is not something one can have but is about doing or enacting (Barad, 2007; Ringrose & Rowlings, 2015). In particular, this paper explores teacher agency through spacetimemattering and becoming which are key concepts within agential realism. Spacetimemattering is a concept that emphasizes that the entanglement of space, time and matter produce, reproduce, and reconfigure each other (Barad, 2007; Scantlebury, 2019). This principle implies that time is not linear nor is space fixed or confined, because “phenomena are material entanglements that ‘extend’ across different spaces and times” Barad, 2007, p. 383). And rather than being, which is static and constant, becoming denotes how entities, relations, and concepts are always changing and evolving (Barad, 2007). Hence, the key research questions for this paper are: (1) How is primary teacher agency becoming through human-nonhuman interactions?; (2) How is spacetimemattering significant to teacher agency?

This paper draws from semi-structured interviews that were conducted with ten primary teachers in Canada and the United States. The interviews were conducted during the COVID-19 lockdowns from March to July, 2021. Each teacher is bounded as a case because a micro-dynamic gaze can elicit rich insights on the complex interactions where teacher agency is becoming. The data was analyzed through Nikula and colleagues’ (2023) approach to rhizoanalysis; the data was iteratively analyzed to identify rhizomatic, multidirectional, complex entanglements through detailed notetaking and analytical memo-ing. This paper shares three key findings. First, teacher agency was becoming when human-nonhuman entities were entangled in close social and physical proximity. Second, the reconfiguration of teaching spaces impacted the significance of classroom materials. Lastly, temporal and spatial reconfigurations rhizomatically provided and limited teachers’ pedagogical and professional development opportunities.

This paper is significant in three key ways. First, it contributes to the scant literature on posthumanist conceptualizations of teacher agency, Second, it illuminates how teacher agency continues to evolve, emphasizing that agency is not a static capacity within an individual, but is relational and becoming through complex human-nonhuman entanglements, Lastly, it emphasizes the significance of the interactions between space, time, and human-nonhuman matter when teacher agency is becoming.

Author

• Tanjin Ashraf, Australian Catholic University