Control and agency in student–teacher relations: a cross–cultural perspective on Finnish and Korean comprehensive schools

Abstract

Drawing on a cross-cultural, qualitative study in Finnish and Korean comprehensive schools, we explore how teacher control and student agency are manifested and exercised in the teaching and learning practices of the "official school" and in the studentteacher interactions of the "informal school". We also elaborate on how students reflect on control and agency. Bernstein's concepts of framing and classification are employed as a theoretical lens with which to examine control, agency and hierarchy. Data consists of school observations and interviews with students aged 12 to 14 and their teachers, conducted in six schools. The findings indicate that student agency is intensively constrained in their participation in teaching-learning practices. The analysis also reveals a paradox where students do not welcome increasing their agency through student-oriented lessons. Moreover, the controlling and caring roles of teachers and the exertion and limitation of student agency appear differently in the Finnish and Korean schools studied. Students seem to desire a refined balance between control and agency while revealing conforming and selfcritical attitudes towards the school system and teacher control. Finally, our analyses of control, agency and hierarchy among school members leads this article into a discussion of democratic school culture from a cross-cultural perspective.

The propagation path of Chinese traditional culture in Korea based on artificial intelligence technology

“…(2) Media level content creation: inheritance through intelligent innovation The application of artificial intelligence in the media field will bring diverse media representations, such as text, pictures, audio, short video, live streaming, virtual reality, and so on. With the help of diversified expression methods, cultural variety shows will undertake the important mission of inheriting and innovating the excellent traditional Chinese culture in the era of artificial intelligence [18] .…”