Teacher Agency Through Collaborative Expertise-building

Abstract

Drawing on teacher agentive acts in the process of collaborative expertise-building in selects tertiary institutions in Southeast Asia, this paper maps out the conceptual configurations of teacher agency. In doing so, it avoids both the overly deterministic and individualistic views of agency by locating it within structuring conditions where individual acts are also mobilized. However, while most socially constructive views of agency focus on situated and institutional constraints of agency, this paper conceptualizes teacher agency in its broadest possible sense as historical, cultural and ideological phenomenon, arguing that agentive acts cannot merely be seen as either working for or against educational reform and transformation; rather teachers must take control of the process of knowledge production because it is by doing so that teachers can take ownership over their everyday classroom tactics and practices. Teacher agency in this sense is not simply a capacity to act but, in fact, an accomplishment of acts of producing knowledge for one’s professional practice.