This paper presents research from a Danish large-scale and collaborative initiative (2019-2023) for systematically developing teacher education entitled: ‘Teacher education as a laboratory for developing excellent teaching and education’(we will use the acronym LULAB, which is short for the title in Danish). The context is a large integrated 4-year professional bachelor program with teacher education at four addresses in Denmark. Framed by the educational development initiative LULAB teacher educators and student teachers are, in collaboration with teachers and students from partner-schools, experimenting with developing, analysing, and sharing teaching approaches in teacher education. Hence, LULAB is an organisational and professional-pedagogical initiative supporting teacher educators and other actors in teacher education in professional inquiry. Boyd and White (2017) elaborate on professional inquiry as a middle position between the `normal´ reflected development of teaching based on evaluation and genuine practitioner research. The initiative is furthermore inspired by scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) approaches in higher education (Kreber & Cranton, 2000).

Referring to agency as an emergent phenomenon situated in a specific context (Priestley, Biesta, Robinson, 2015) the research addresses the question about how participation in LULAB support agency among the stakeholders. The findings presented here focus in particular on the teacher educators. Hökkä, Rasku-Puttonen, and Eteläpelto (2008) and Hökkä and Eteläpelto (2014) emphasise teacher educators’ professional agency in bottom-up initiatives in the collegial community, but there is a need for more knowledge how this is experienced and unfolded in an organisational initiative with collaborative professional inquiry projects.

Theoretical background

In LULAB, the term 'laboratory' is used in a Dewey inspired understanding (Staunæs et al. 2014), where the inquiry-based approach emphasizes the organisational initiative’s vision of developing teacher education through collaborative experiments. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) refer to what they call ‘inquiry as a stance.' They see inquiry as more than the sum of its parts: developing questions, collecting and analysing data, sharing results, and taking actions for change based on what was learned through the process. Professional inquiry is elaborated as a habit of mind - the perspective through which questions and observations are interpreted (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2009). They refer to in-service teachers and inquiries at schools. However, this thinking about professional inquiry in ongoing iterative processes, working together to bring about educational change grounded in the problems and the contexts of practice, is likewise relevant in teacher education (Boyd & White, 2017; Tack & Vanderlinde, 2014). Referring to Hökka et al (2008) and Hökkä and Eteläpelto (2014) we see teacher educators’ agency in a workplace perspective. The 3-dimensional model of professional agency in working life contexts (Vähäsantanen et al., 2019) point to three main dimensions, 1) Influencing at Work, 2) Developing Work Practices (Participation in Shared Work Practices and Transforming Work Practices) and 3) Negotiating Professional Identity. Vähäsantanen et al. (2019) suggest a survey methodology. It is, however, as emphasized above referring to Priestley et al. (2015) crucial to interpretate agency as unfolded in a concrete dynamic context implying a research approach with also qualitative and nested data. Edwards (2005; 2015) for example elaborate on relational agency as an emergent capacity to work with other practitioners and draw on resources distributed across the system. This leads to the two research questions:

• In what ways and to what extent do the teacher educators’ self-reports indicate professional agency as conceptualized in the 3-dimensional model of professional agency in work contexts?
• In what ways do the teacher educators unfold and develop professional agency in the dynamic context of LULAB as an educational development initiative and in the professional inquiry projects in LULAB? 

The research design is a sequential mixed method design (Creswell & Clark, 2018) with a repeated survey, where the data reported here is from the first round October 2020, supplemented with qualitative interviews and observations. Survey items referring to the 3-dimensional model of agency in working life contexts (Vähäsantanen et al., 2019) were translated and slightly adapted to the Danish context. The respondents answered in a five-point likert-scale format on items like these examples:” My views are taken into consideration in the work community” (dimension 1), “I actively collaborate with others in my unit” (dimension 2) and “In my work I can focus on things that interest me” (dimension 3). Referring to e.g. Hökka et al. (2008), emphasising a tendency for teacher educators preferring the subject related communities, the respondents were in some items, like “I can participate in the decision making..”. asked to rate the question both in the context of the subject related teams and in relation to the teacher education organisation in general. The likert-scale items were followed by open reflections, which were subsequently coded. The survey furthermore included items about experiences with collegial collaboration, peer-feedback, experimenting with and in the teaching, collaboration with student teachers and being a part of developing teacher education, referring to respectively 1) the daily practice in teacher education and 2) the LULAB initiative as a whole. The survey was distributed to all teacher educators from the university college (N= 212), with answers from 97 teacher educators (46%). A non-response analysis has been performed indicating that the answers are relatively representatively distributed across the four addresses of teacher education, the various subjects in teacher education and teacher educators’ level of experiences. 51% of the respondents have themselves been active in LULAB projects, 49% have not. The survey included also items about experiences from the concrete LULAB projects. This part was only launched to the first group. Referring to the second research question and the conceptualisation of professional agency as situated and emergent in a specific context multiple qualitative data has been collected in the situated context of the practice in LULAB projects (case-studies). Furthermore, observations from an organisational event with presentation, discussion and feedback across projects (November 2020) are included. Biesta, Priestley and Robinson (2017) refer to the significance of teacher dialogues for professional agency and the latter event provided a rich opportunity to follow such dialogues.

Referring to research question 1 the teacher educators (TE) experience to a relatively high degree being included in decisions about their work: 69% to a very high + a high degree. 71% experience to a high or very high degree to try out new ideas. Answers about cooperation are more divided, 51% experience this to a very high or high degree and 14% to a lesser degree or not, in relation to the possibility to pursue professional goals 40% answer to a very high or high degree and 18% to a lesser degree or not. Some items were rated both in relation to subject teams and the overall organization documenting that TE rate their experience of being heard and contribute higher in the context of the collaboration around subjects than in the organisation as a whole. In the questions about collegial collaboration in general there are no significant differences between those having a LULAB project and those not, so no bias in the sense of TE applying for LULAB being more collaboratively minded, but the participants having a LULAB project emphasize the outcomes from collaboration in this context in particular. It is evident, that the TE being in “the machine room” in the professional inquiry projects experience new possibilities for collaboration and influence indicating an effect on their professional agency. This is confirmed when looking into the qualitative data from dialogues across projects. TE emphasize the small professional inquiry project as very fruitful because they are active in development close to their teaching (the middle position: Boyd & White, 2017). The results however indicate challenges in relation to the vision of LULAB being a general organizational initiative, not only affecting those having concrete projects at a given time. Implications in relation to educational development processes and institutionalisation, will be discussed.

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