Article

Talking about education: exploring the significance of teachers’ talk for teacher agency

Details

Citation

Biesta G, Priestley M & Robinson S (2017) Talking about education: exploring the significance of teachers’ talk for teacher agency. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49 (1), pp. 38-54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2016.1205143

Abstract
The interest in teachers’ discourses and vocabularies has for a long time been studied under the rubric of knowledge, most notably teachers’ professional knowledge. This interest can be traced back to Shulman’s distinction between different kinds of teacher knowledge and Schwab’s interest in the role of practical reasoning and judgement in teaching. Within the research a distinction can be found between a more narrow approach that focuses on teachers’ propositional or theoretical knowledge and a more encompassing approach in which teachers’ knowledge is not only the knowledge for teachers generated elsewhere, but also the knowledge of teachers. This is the ‘stock of knowledge’ gained from a range of sources and experiences, including teachers’ ongoing engagement with the practice of teaching itself. In this paper we focus on the role of teachers’ talk in their achievement of agency. We explore how, in what way and to what extent such talk helps or hinders teachers in exerting control over and giving direction to their everyday practices, bearing in mind that such practices are not just the outcome of teachers’ judgements and actions, but are also shaped by the structures and cultures within which teachers work.

Keywords
teacher knowledge; teachers’ vocabularies; teachers’ talk; teacher professionalism; teacher agency

Journal
Journal of Curriculum Studies: Volume 49, Issue 1

StatusPublished
FundersEconomic and Social Research Council
Publication date31/12/2017
Publication date online05/01/2017
Date accepted by journal30/05/2016
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/23234
PublisherTaylor and Francis
ISSN0022-0272

People (1)

People

Professor Mark Priestley

Professor Mark Priestley

Professor, Education

Projects (1)

Teacher agency and curriculum change
PI:

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