Teacher belief and agency development in bringing change to scale

English Language Teacher Agency in Response to Curriculum Reform in China: An Ecological Approach

“…The results above suggest that Xu had focused on developing learners' cultural awareness and had reflected considerably on this term's connotation beforehand. Teachers are most likely to act as reform agents when their prior beliefs are in congruence with reform principles (Bonner et al, 2019 ). Xu acknowledged that it was impossible to reflect all the core competencies advocated by xin kebiao in assessment, while teachers should adhere to holistic educational goals in the long term and take into account students' academic excellence simultaneously, which inspired him to integrate valuable ideas of xin kebiao and high-stakes testing goals into his class.…”

“…This is incongruous with the proposed pattern, which includes beliefs in the practical-evaluative dimension (Priestley et al, 2015 ) (see Figure 1 ), as the study found that teachers' reform-oriented beliefs that directed their actions were rooted largely in prior experiences and were more difficult to change than knowledge or practice during reform enactment. Although teacher beliefs always act in the present, belief change in teacher practice is difficult, slow, and often transient (Bonner et al, 2019 ). These findings also confirm that the agency to change is not activated by beliefs alone; a partial adoption of reform beliefs can also coexist with the agency of resistance toward the reform, but teaching and learning achievement gains for implementing reforms appear to be precursors of deep change in beliefs (Biesta et al, 2015 ; Naraian and Schlessinger, 2018 ; Bonner et al, 2019 ; Bao et al, 2020 ).…”

“…A number of studies reveal that teachers are more likely to resist imposed policy mandates and embrace conventional teaching techniques to avoid taking risks in educational reform if the mandates are incongruous with their personal factors, such as their beliefs, intentions, and prior experiences (Biesta et al, 2015 ; Bonner et al, 2019 ). Le et al ( 2020 ), for instance, emphasize that English teachers are more likely to exercise their agency to struggle and resist educational language policy when there is a conflict between policy mandates and their beliefs, prior knowledge, and expectations.…”

Professional Development, Shifting Perspectives, and Instructional Change among Community College Anatomy and Physiology Instructors

“…Professor Dugan’s case is interesting, in that he describes learning about and implementing active learning in his classroom during and after the CAPER program, while simultaneously maintaining a resistance toward the concept of active learning based on conflicts with his identity as an educator. This phenomenon may be related to the iterative nature of experience and belief change, in which experiences with active learning in the classroom contribute to changes in beliefs, which in turn encourage pedagogical change ( Oleson and Hora, 2014 ; Andrews and Lemons, 2015 ; Bonner et al. , 2020 ).…”

Educational leaders’ problem-solving for educational improvement: Belief validity testing in conversations

“…Thus, our overarching research question was: to what extent do leaders test the validity of their beliefs in conversations with those directly involved in the analysis and resolution of the problem? Our argument is that while new experiences might motivate change in beliefs (Bonner et al, 2020), new insights gained through testing the validity of beliefs is also imperative to change. The sub-questions were:…”