Search results for "Agency"

Emerging conceptualisations on professional agency and learning

2017

This chapter provides an evaluative summary of the major contributions from the first section of this book, comprising conceptualisations on professional agency and work-related learning. The evaluation focuses on the differences, similarities, and strengths of the approaches and conceptualisations touched on. The focus is, first of all, on how the core meanings of agency and the agentic perspective are understood. Secondly, the approaches are addressed according to their view of how the contextual aspects of working life relate to agency. Thirdly, attention is given to the practical conclusions deriving from different understandings of agency. The present chapter thus elaborates how these …

The professional agency of teacher educators amid academic discourses

2012

Agency has been seen as fundamental in the renegotiation of professional identities. However, it is unclear how teacher educators exercise their professional agency in their work, and how multiple discourses frame and restrict the practice of their professional agency. This study examines how teacher educators practise agency in negotiating their professional identities amid the multiple discourses emerging from the academic context of their work. The aim was to investigate educators’ locally expressed professional agency in the context of the more global discourses that may construct teacher educator identities. The analysis made use of applied thematic discursive analysis to address patte…

Silence and Resistance as Experiences and Presentations of Pupil Agency in Finnish Elementary School English Lessons

2014

This paper explores the multitude of ways in which Finnish fifth and sixth grade elementary school pupils experience and present their agency in English lessons, with a special focus on pupils' silence and resistance. Pupil agency is often seen as observable action that is oriented towards institutionally accepted goals and norms. In communicative and constructivist understandings of foreign language learning, learner agency is related to the idea of learning by participating. Participation in the classroom is not only individually but also socially constrained. This article is based on a larger, ecologically oriented ethnographic study on fifth and sixth graders' language learner identitie…

Agency relationship in Global Venture Lab

2014

This Master's thesis analyzes the Agency relationships in university environment by applying a Global Venture Lab model of organization. The Global Venture Lab described in this study is a growth venture incubator that has been developed in the private organizational model to supplement the general faculty governance and the development of the University in the field of commercialization of inventions. In the study, the agent theory dimensions of moral hazard and adverse selection are applied. The research is conducted by action research methods and it is partly written in real time and partly with a retrospective approach. The data of the research is gathered during the development project…

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

2013

This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess …

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

2018

This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess …

EFL Teacher Education in Finland : Manifestations of Professional Agency in Teacher Educators’ Work

2020

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher educators play a key role in the development of university-based teacher education and the preparation of preservice EFL teachers. However, the professional agency of EFL teacher educators in developing their work remains understudied. Employing a Vygotskian sociocultural theoretical perspective, this research considers the individual and collective professional agency of eight EFL teacher educators at two Finnish universities. Findings demonstrate that individual professional agency is enacted in the expression of professional identity and the development of professional relationships, and in offering and receiving professional assistance. Findin…

Special issue on Insights into Applied Linguistics: Languaging, agency and ecologies : Editorial

2014

Studying the Cognitive Map of the US States: Ideology and Prosperity Stereotypes Predict Interstate Prejudice

2018

What are the spontaneous stereotypes that U.S. citizens hold about the U.S. states? We complemented insights from theory-driven approaches to this question with insights from a novel data-driven approach. Based on pile sorting and spatial arrangement similarity ratings for the states, we computed two cognitive maps of the states. Based on ratings for the states on ∼20 candidate dimensions, we interpreted the dimensions that spanned the two maps (Studies 1 and 2). Consistent with the agency/socioeconomic success, conservative-progressive beliefs, and communion (ABC) model of spontaneous stereotypes, these dimensions that participants spontaneously used to rate the states’ similarity included…

"You've got the color, but you dont't have the shades" : primary education CLIL teachers' identity negotiation within the Finnish context

2018

This dissertation explores how professional identity is experienced by teachers in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) instruction. In particular, it addresses professional identity in relation to two immediate contexts of teacher activity, i.e. that of the classroom and that of the collegial community. In addition to exploring how these two sides of the professional self give rise to a broader understanding of professional identity, this dissertation also explores aspects of professional agency and the negotiation of emotions in their work. The dissertation is founded on fourteen interviews with Finnish kindergarten and primary education teachers doing CLIL. The data were thema…