Listening to the Pre-Service Teachers: Agency and Structure Within the Practicum

Author(s):

Margarida Alves(presenting / submitting)Paula Queirós Paula Batista

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 03 D, Learning to Teach: Identity, Inquiry, Agency

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

17:15-18:45

Room:

B228 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Rasa Nedzinskaitė

Contribution

The reality in Portugal concerning teacher initial training has been changing, especially with the implementation of the Bologna process. Also within the schools the reality has been changing and teachers have been confronted with new challenges, such as increasing roles and responsibilities; changes occurring in social agencies; greater influence of the media on the exposure of education; the fragmentation of teachers’ work; increasing contractual accountability, bureaucracy and public scrutiny, (Day, Flores, & Viana, 2007). Since the construction of the professional identity can be understood as a complex and dynamic concept, continuous, not static and constructed in the relationship with the self in a community during one’s professional path (Dotger and Smith, 2009; Chong ,2011; Cattley, 2007; Smit, Fritz, and Mabalane, 2010) and because school life is changing and it’s lived experience to, we suspect the emergence of a distinctive professional identity (Luehmann, 2007). Regarding the initial training, the practicum is assumed as a space where the (re)construction of the professional identity seems to occur through agency and structure processes. Dotger and Smith (2009) state that the construction of the professional identity takes place when the pre-service teachers are learning to become experts and are learning about rules and boundaries of the teacher’s profession (structure).

So, we can say that the construction of the professional identity is inextricably related to the concepts of agency and structure. The process of agency and structure appear within a culture and, in this case, we can understand culture as the school culture.

Regarding the definition of these concepts, we can state that defining agency appears to be much more difficult for the authors. Although, agency can be understood as ““external” and “objective” features of social order that are thought to have controlling power over culture and action.” (Rubinstein, 2001, p. 3)

According to Campbell (2009), creativity and autonomy are intrinsic characteristics of agency. Taking into account this framework, as Giddens (1984) notice, agency is related to the ability of making choices and not only with the intention of making it.

In the other hand, structure can be defined as a ‘standard’ among social relationships constituted by rules, principles and resources (Giddens, A., 2000 and Leibowitz, van Schalkwyk, Ruiters, Farmer, and Adendorff, 2012).

Concerning the school culture, we can understand structure as the internal regulation of the school and also as their rules and values that every teacher, student or even staff should fulfil but also, and because we are talking about the practicum, as the rules and guidelines defined by the cooperating teacher and by the supervisor from the university.

Nevertheless, it is really important to understand that even though agency and structure tend to resemble to opposite forces, in the reality they are indivisible and they complement each other. According to Leibowitz et al. (2012) and to Giddens (2000) structure constrains but also empower in the sense that it is only possible to have manifestations of agency because we have structure and, in the other hand, structure guides us because it sets the gage that we all should follow. Consequently, it is really important to engage not only in structure but also in agency and try to balance the two concepts critically in order to be able to manifest agency through creativity and to attribute meaning to the experiences during the practicum and to flourish as a good teacher (Leibowitz et al., 2012).

The main propose of this study is to understand how the processes of agency and structure manifest themselves during the practicum, how they are interrelated and finally their influence in the construction of the physical education teacher professional identity.

Method

This study is part of a wider ethnographic study concerning professional identity construction within physical education pre-service teachers. Yet, in this case the focus is in the agency and structure processes and also in their influence to the professional identity construction. Ethnography is actually seen as a coherent methodology, capable of providing valuable knowledge and interpretations about certain subjects within the research in social sciences. Therefore, we have witnessed the exponential growth of ethnography applied to sport in themes as diverse as the different roles played by the investigator (Purdy & Jones, 2011), the coaching (Cushion and Jones, 2006; Jones, 2009; Armstrong and Hognestad, 2003) and in the processes of professional identity construction (Smit et al., 2010). In fact, the use of ethnography allows comprehending a particular fact or context in detail, so it seems to be a powerful methodology to study how the pre-service teachers (re)construct their professionals’ identities. Participants 4 pre-service teachers, 3 girls and one boy, from the Faculty of Sport, University of Porto, participated in this study. The pre-service teachers made their practicum in a public school of Porto in the academic year of 2012/13. All the procedures related to confidentiality and with the anonymity were guaranteed; namely by assigning a pseudonymous to the participants in order to protect their identity. Data collection The data collection resulted from a participant observation (Burgess, 1997) in a school context, focusing particularly on the processes of agency and structure, relationships, interactions and behavior of 4 pre-service teacher; from the field notes made by the researcher (the fieldworker – participant observer) to describe situations, conversations and events of interest in detail; and finally, from the informal and formal interviews (semi-structured) (Richardson, 2001) conducted with all the members of the practicum group. The data was collected from September of 2012 to June of 2013. Data analysis The data was analysed through a content analysis regarding too major categories defined a priori: agency and structure. Along with the analysis it was also used an inductive approach supported by a situational analysis (Clarke, 2003). Excerpts of the field notes and interviews were used to illustrate the main findings. Quivy and Campenhoudt (2008) stated that content analysis is very appropriated and important in order to understand things that were left unsaid, things that are implicit.

Expected Outcomes

Regarding the results, we found that it tend to be a decrease of the agency manifestations when the pre-service teachers have a weak relationship with the school, when there is a lack of union and cohesion among the practicum group and when the pre-service teachers attribute low significance to innovating activities. Despite the pre-service teachers constitute a practicum group they are not always a community of practice. Because they were not a really community of practice, the pre-service teachers stated that sometimes they wanted to try to do something different in their classes or to organise an extra school activity but they felt alone and unsupported by their colleagues. Nonetheless, in the beginning of the practicum some pre-service teachers have tried to introduce some new equipment’s in their classes but because they do not have a clearly intention when doing so, their enterprise tend to fail. On the other hand and concerning the professional identity construction, we noticed that professional identity construction is intimately associated with the personal investment during the practicum, with the relation established with the school and with the experiences relating school and finally with future perspectives. In fact, as Chaix (2002) state, the process of professional identity construction is a personal journey. On the other hand, it appears that when the pre-service teachers identify themselves with the profession of being a teacher, they tend to be more creative and autonomous (agency). Supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/DES/115922/2009)

References

Armstrong, G., & Hognestad, H. (2003). "We're Not From Norway": Football and Civic Pride in Bergen, Norway. Identities, 10(4), 451-475. Burgess, R. (1997). A pesquisa no terreno: uma introdução. Oeiras: Celta Editora. Campbell, C. (2009). Distinguishing the Power of Agency from Agentic Power: A Note on Weber and the “Black Box” of Personal Agency. [Article]. Sociological Theory, 27(4), 407-418. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01355.x Cattley, G. (2007). Emergence of Professional Identity for the Pre-Service Teacher. International Education Journal, 8(2), 337-347. Chong, S. (2011). Development of teachers' professional identities: From pre-service to their first year as novice teachers. [Article]. KEDI Journal of Educational Policy, 8(2), 219-233. Clarke, A. (2003). Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory Mapping After the Postmodern Turn. Symbolic Interaction, 26(4), 553-576. Cushion, C., & Jones, R. L. (2006). Power, Discourse, and Symbolic Violence in Professional Youth Soccer: The Case of Albion Football Club. [Article]. Sociology of Sport Journal, 23(2), 142-161. Day, C., Flores, M., & Viana, I. (2007). Effects of national policies on teachers' sense of professionalism: findings from an empirical study in Portugal and in England. European Journal of Teacher Education, 30(3), 249-265. Dotger, B. H., & Smith, M. J. (2009). "Where's the Line?"--Negotiating Simulated Experiences to Defi ne Teacher Identity. [Article]. New Educator, 5(2), 161-180. Giddens. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Stanford CA: Polity. Giddens, A. (2000). Dualidade da Estrutura. Agência e Estrutura. Oeiras, Portugal: Celta Editora. Jones, R. L. (2009). Coaching as caring (the smiling gallery): accessing hidden knowledge. [Article]. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 14(4), 377-390. doi: 10.1080/17408980801976551 Leibowitz, B., van Schalkwyk, S., Ruiters, J., Farmer, J., & Adendorff, H. (2012). "It's Been a Wonderful Life": Accounts of the Interplay between Structure and Agency by "Good" University Teachers. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, 63(3), 353-365. Luehmann, A. (2007). Identity Development as a Lens to Science Teacher Preparation. Science Education, 91(5), 822-839. Purdy, L. G., & Jones, R. L. (2011). Choppy Waters: Elite Rowers' Perceptions of Coaching. [Article]. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28(3), 329-346. Quivy, R., & Campenhoudt, L. (2008). Manual de Investigação em Ciências Sociais. Lisboa: Gradiva. Richardson, L. (2001). Getting personal: writing-stories. Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(1), 33-38. Rubinstein, D. (2001). Culture, structure, and agency: Toward a truly multidimensional sociology. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. Smit, B., Fritz, E., & Mabalane, V. (2010). A Conversation of Teachers: In Search of Professional Identity. Australian Educational Researcher, 37(2), 93-106.

Author Information

Margarida Alves (presenting / submitting)

Faculty of Sport, University of Porto

Vila Nova de Gaia

Paula Queirós

Faculty of Sport, University of Porto, Portugal; CIFI2D - Center of Research, Education, Innovation and Intervention in Sport, Faculty of Sport, University of Porto – Portugal

Paula Batista

faculty of Sport, University of Porto

Porto

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