English teachers' perspectives on their agency for change: Striving to care in a neoliberal, ‘post'-colonial climate

Steenkamp, Mikhaila

English teachers' perspectives on their agency for change: Striving to care in a neoliberal, ‘post'-colonial climate

Thesis / Dissertation

2024

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

South African and international reform agendas are guided by the goal of quality, equitable schooling for all. The achievement thereof, however, remains elusive. Included in discourses surrounding this goal is a focus on teachers, in recognition of the crucial roles they play in student learning. Teacher-focused research on education reform tends to foreground teachers as professionals or agents of change tasked with implementing top-down education reforms. Yet apart from a small body of literature focusing on teachers' professional motivations towards change agency, little attention is paid in the literature to educational change as teachers define it, and to contextual constraints and enablers of agency – particularly in Global South contexts. Guided primarily by Priestley, Biesta and Robinson's (2015) ecological approach to teacher agency, this dissertation aims to contribute to the literature on bottom-up perspectives on change. It does so by examining how four high school English teachers of historically disadvantaged learners in Cape Town, South Africa, articulate the sense of purpose which drives their change agency, in a context characterised by the inequality and narrow understandings of education associated with neoliberalism. Taking an interpretive, exploratory approach to research design, the study uses a thematic analysis methodology to explore the types of pedagogic practices that participants declare are influenced by their sense of purpose. The study then explores the extent to which these teachers feel they can act agentically to fulfil their purposes in practice. What emerges from the data is an emphasis on an expansive and holistic moral professional agenda, which I argue is largely consistent with ethics of care, particularly as conceptualised by scholars like Noddings (1992) and Grant, Jasson and Lawrence (2010). This expansive agenda has the potential to inform agentic practices which are responsive to students' needs and contextual realities, while countering narrow approaches to education. However, the agenda can negatively impact agency if teachers do not receive the requisite structural and relational support. These findings may advance understandings of ground-up perspectives of quality education and how these intersect with social justice and the realities facing disadvantaged school contexts. The findings also suggest avenues to better support teachers in the development and enactment of their agency.

Keywords

Education

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