Teacher agency: a Critical Realist perspective

Abstract

The concepts of teacher identity and teacher agency both link the level of the individual with the social but they do so in decidedly different ways. Whereas research on the former revolves largely around the discourses teachers employ and the narratives they construct, the latter draws our attention to the capacity of teachers (agents) to exercise influence in their respective professional contexts (structures). The present chapter argues that we, as researchers and teacher educators, need to engage more deeply with the interplay between teachers and the social reality that surround their work in order to understand not only who they present themselves to be but, more importantly, what they do and why they do what they do. In order to account for the causal relationships between agents' reasons for action, their practices and the structures in which they operate I adopt a Critical Realist perspective (Bhaskar, 1998, 1986; Archer, 1996, 1995, Fleetwood 2008, 2005) that focuses on ontological issues with the aim of identifying and understanding what has and what has not been causally effective in specific situations. The chapter uses data from two different research projects with language teachers in Mexico. The qualitative data provide insights into the different contexts in which these participants operate in and the way they interact with and respond to the respective affordances and constraints of these structures. In addition to this, the data shows that apart from just constructing their identity through narratives teachers themselves operate with causal explanations in order to be, or to become, skillful practitioners.

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