Search results for "Professional agency"
showing 10 items of 23 documents
Professional agency in the stream of change: Understanding educational change and teachers' professional identities
2015
The qualitative meta-study reported here investigated Finnish vocational teachers' professional agency amid an educational reform. Differences were found in teachers' agency regarding their work, their involvement with the reform, and their professional identity. The manifestations of agency could remain stable or could change over time, and agency drew on various resources (e.g. teacher identity and the organizational management culture). The theoretical conclusions encompass professional agency as multidimensional, largely individually varied, temporally imbued, and both socially and individually resourced. Based on the findings, an agency-centered approach is proposed as a means of under…
Professional identity in changing workplaces : Why it matters, when it becomes emotionally imbued, and how to support its agentic negotiations
2022
This chapter addresses professional identity in the workplace. The relevance of the topic derives from current trends in working life, in which constant changes require continuous professional identity negotiations. In addition, employees are increasingly obliged to recognise and make visible their professional identity in order to navigate and survive in the complexities of working life. This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual frameworks, topics, and empirical evidence pertaining to professional identity, as presented in workplace learning literature. From this, it provides suggestions for researching and elaborating professional identity, with particular attention to relationa…
Agency and Learning in the Work of Software Professionals
2017
This chapter addresses software professionals’ agency and learning in work characterized by a need for innovative learning and fluency in renewing work practices. The study presented was conducted with software professionals in a medium-sized Finnish company producing digital business applications. We applied a mixed-method approach to data collection and analysis. Regarding professional agency, we found a range of opportunities to influence work-related matters. The professionals were primarily able to influence their working hours and the order of their work tasks, but had fewer opportunities to influence customer projects, or their salary. To some extent they were able to develop themsel…
An agency-promoting learning arena for developing shared work practices
2017
Despite the emerging recognition of the pivotal role played by professional agency within work contexts, little is known about how agency is promoted and enacted in organised work-related learning settings. This chapter focuses on the work conference as an orchestrated agency-promoting learning arena. We understand professional agency as a necessary precondition of work-related learning, and we emphasise the potential of work conferences to activate and promote such agency. Our empirical study investigated three work conferences in education and healthcare organisations in Finland. Utilising assessments, the investigation addressed how the participants perceived the conditions for learning …
Multiple Forms of Professional Agency for (non)crafting of Work Practices in a Hospital Organization
2015
In recent working life studies, professional agency is seen as pivotal to the development of work communities and work organizations. This paper addresses professional agency during a practicebased intervention (work conference) in a Finnish hospital setting. To develop work practices, the intervention sought to create a dialogical space for the promotion of collective professional agency. Here, we present an investigation of the manifestations of professional agency and how they emerged within and between professional groups. We also elaborate how professional positions frame the emergence of different manifestations of professional agency. The audio and video materials from the interventi…
Teacher Agency and Futures Thinking
2022
Problems encountered in top-down school reforms have repeatedly highlighted the significance of teachers’ agency in educational change. At the same time, temporality has been identified as a key element in teachers’ agency, with teachers’ beliefs about the future and experiences of the past shaping their agentic orientations. However, research on teachers’ future orientations is typically limited to short-term trajectories, as opposed to long-term visions of education. To address this, we draw on a futures studies perspective to give more explicit attention to teachers’ long-term visions of their work. We argue that the method of future narratives, already well…
Integrated initial and continuing training as a way of developing the professional agency of teachers and student teachers
2020
In this paper, we discuss training aimed at supporting the professional agency of teachers and student teachers. Drawing on socio-cultural and post-structural theories, we conceptualize professional agency as achieved by participation in professional practices. We employ our conceptualization in an analysis of a Finnish pilot training that combined initial and continuous training for preschool and primary school teachers. We argue that the practices of reflection and collective enquiry inherent in the model offer a fruitful starting point for further efforts to understand how to support the development of the professional agency of teachers and student teachers simultaneously. peerReviewed
Professional Agency, Identity, and Emotions While Leaving One’s Work Organization
2015
This study investigated the enactment of professional agency in an emotionally troubled work context emerging from a conflicted relationship between the professional and the work organization. Narrative interviews with Finnish educators were utilized. The findings indicate that the enactment of agency was in part framed by the educators’ rational interpretations of the relationship between themselves and their employer, plus their work history and future prospects. However, it was simultaneously embedded with contradictory emotions, such as a sense of being undervalued, fear, and a sense of empowerment. Within this framework, multifaceted professional agency was enacted particularly via lea…
A Novel Instrument to Measure the Multidimensional Structure of Professional Agency
2018
This study aimed to construct and validate a quantitative measurement instrument to determine the structure of professional agency in working life. Empirical data (N = 589) were collected via a web-based, theoretically informed questionnaire, within the professional domains of education, healthcare, rescue services, and information technology. The questionnaire items incorporated theoretically based dimensions of professional agency. The structure of professional agency was initially analysed via exploratory factor analysis. Thereafter, using exploratory structural equation modelling, the structure of professional agency was investigated with a view to confirmation and validation. The resul…
Staff Members’ Professional Agency within the Staff Community and the Education Policies: Supporting Integration in Multicultural and Multiling…
2022
In recent decades, increased diversity and migration have challenged school staff members’ ways of working. This study aimed to identify the challenges faced by Finnish school staff in supporting students with migrant backgrounds, and to elaborate on how they enact professional agency toward these challenges. The data consist of 15 thematic interviews with staff members across various work positions in two Finnish lower secondary schools. Based on thematic analysis, the challenges within the staff community and the education policies were found to include the following: (1) the diversification of students makes tensions more visible in the staff community, and (2) inflexible education polic…