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The dialectics of (children’s) agency in educational
ethnographyPhD Anna Pauliina Rainio,
The Research Group of Educational [email protected]
Jaakko Hilppö
SEDUCE Doctoral School, University of Helsinki
ISCAR, Sydney 2014Symposium: Emergence of students' agency in educational interactions
Our argument• The existing theories regarding agency do not capture the
internally complex and contradictory elements of empirical phenomena.– This contradictory nature produces tensions in research
activities focusing on agency and in educational settings• Therefore, we need conceptualizations that capture the
conflictual nature of the concept and thus help decision making in empirical studies about agency as well as in educational practice.
• In order to grasp this complexity, we need a multidisciplinary reading of the concept
Rainio: Lionhearts of the Playworld: An Ethnographic Case Study of the Development of Agency in Play Pedagogy (2010)
Rainio & Hilppö: The dialectics of agency in educational ethnography (work in progress, 2014)
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Brothers Lionheart Playworld
• A teacher-lead educational intervention– focus on motivating restless pupils (boys) and to
enhance the ‘togetherness’ and collaboration of the group
• Based on the work of Gunilla Lindqvist and Pentti Hakkarainen
• Inspired by the original story of Astrid Lindgren • 4 teachers and 30 children made a dramatized
journey acting as villagers from ‘Cherry Valley’ on its way to rescue the neighbouring ‘Wild Rose Valley’ from the hands of evil ruler Tengil
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The case of Helen & Sara
– Took up the original horse characters from the story and furher developed them during the playworld (horse soldier, Happi, Volur, Tomppa, Zadi and Foal and a dog)
– the playworld did provide for a sense of agency and meaningful engagement for them both
See Rainio, 2009 for connecting publication
• Two, seven year old girls who broke away from the confining gender categorizations of the playworld during the process
Agency
the possibility and willingness of an individual or collective subject to impact (and eventually transform) an activity in whose realization it is engaged
(Hofmann & Rainio 2007, 309)• Note! We focus on children’s agency in educational
settings via ethnographical investigations
Four empirically informed theoretical readings on
agency
• Social theory (i.e., Barnes, 2000)• Post-structuralist theories (i.e. St. Davies,
2004; Pierre, 2000)• Cultural psychological view (i.e. Vygotsky,
1978; Edwards, 2009) • Childhood Studies (i.e. Lee, 2005; Prout 2005)
• Different paradigms• Antinomy / paradox
Two valid arguments cannot both be true if they lead to contradictory conclusions
• Dialectical interpretation
“Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction
within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.” (Hegel, 1969, p. 439, in Tolman, 1981)
• Contradictions manifest as challenges or tensions in practical educational activities
Contradiction
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Contradictions of agency
1. Control - agency2. Enacted - imagined agency3. Endurance - contingency4. Dependence - separateness5. Mastery - submission
How shall I cultivate freedom under conditions
of compulsion?• One of the greatest problems in education is
how subjection to lawful constraint can be combined with the ability to make use of one’s freedom. For constraint is necessary. How shall I cultivate freedom under conditions of compulsion? I ought to accustom my pupil to tolerate constraint upon his freedom, and at the same time lead him to make good use of his freedom.
Kant, On Education, 1803
• a contestation between child-centered or progressive methods and more traditional authoritative views on learning and schooling
• a simultaneous need for control and order, and the promotion of individual students’ involvement and personal desires
• “paradox of pedagogy” (Kant 1803)
(1) Control and Agency
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In the case of Helen & Sara:
• One of the main pedagocial aims of creating the Brothers Lionheart playworld was to develop the children’s collaboration skills and agency
• However, the efforts Helen and Sara to take part in the construction of the playworld were not easy to incorporate for the teachers– their play was not seen as being ”in line”, or in need of help regarding
the joint activity– their horse characters were invisible, and hard to see for the tachers
and other children
• In sum, the way in which they could articulate and realize their interests and goals “legitimately” and “as expected” did not count as interesting or proper in the playworld pedagogy” (Rainio, 2009, p.36)
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(1) Control and Agency
• Definition– To support child’s agency requires both embracing her
personal freedom and control and protection• Tension in research work– The requirement for systematicity makes it hard to
unconditionally take into account children’s agency as part of the research
• Tension in educational work– The simultaneous need for control and order and
promotion of individual students’ involvement and personal desires
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Contradictions of agency1. Control - agency2. Enacted - imagined agency• Agency is both taking visible action and seemingly
passive imagining and dreaming3. Endurance - contingency• Agency is both situative and gradually developmental
4. Dependence - separateness• Agency is both belonging to a community and
separating from it
5. Mastery - submission• Agency is both the mastery of cultural discourses &
tools and submission to them
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Emerging questions• We have initially interpreted particularly the first contradiction (between
control and agency) as an initial abstraction, or a germ cell (Ilyenkov, 1982) of an educational relationship - a germ cell that defines all pedagogical relationships. What do you think?
• How, and in what ways do the dialectics of agency manifest in different pedagogical and educational situations - and how do people face with and solve these tensions in their daily life and work?
• Are there some other possible dialectical dimensions (contradictions) within the phenomenon of agency (in educational settings) that could be conceptualized likewise?
• What are these contradictions actually? Are they all contradictions in a dialectical sense? How are they related to each other? Can they even be separated in this way?
• What kind of conceptual and methodological tools do we need to grasp this dialectics of agency in empirical studies?
Playworld as ”the engine of dialectical development”
(2) Enacted - Imagined• On one hand, we are dependent upon and bound to material
and social reality, on the other hand, we constantly widen our possibilities through imagination and fiction, i.e., through play and art– This means that agency cannot be reduced only to visible,
active and productive action in the material world• Disposition to dream, to improvise and to imagine alternative
ways and worlds, “to formulate other social scenes in imagination” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 236), is crucial for the sense of agency– That this element of agency does not lie in practical and
productive action makes it harder to grasp in an empirical study, particularly when related to children (Rainio, 2009)
In the case of Helen & Sara:
• Imagined worlds that took place on the sidelines of the collective playworld activity but were related to it and inspired by it
• Imagined agency: Sara tells me of her various roles in the playworld: “Happi, Volur, Tomppa, Zadi ja Varsa” and how she grew stronger with these roles
• Enacted agency: The two girls developed their private horse play in the classroom
• This micro-world however also isolated the girls due to the fact that they were not acknowledged and supported by others, sometimes even not accessible to others
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(2) Enacted - Imagined
• Definition– Agency is both taking visible action and seemingly passive
imagining and dreaming • Tension in research work– Observing and analysing visible action leads away from
other forms of agentic actions • Tension in educational work– Attempts at fostering agency produce also marginalization
(3) Endurance - Contingency
• Traditionally distinguishes sociological vs psychological orientation
• “Being vs becoming” (compare: Being and becoming)• Agency must be seen both as an emergent capacity of
the developing person as well as a characteristic of interpersonal interaction (Martin, 2004)
• Respectively, activity and interaction need to be analyzed on these two levels? – (a) on the level of micro-interaction where the social reality is
situationally constructed and – (b) on the developmental level to grasp the continuity and
development of these situational manifestations of agency
In the case of Helen & Sara:
• The agency of these children’s became visible only through narrative analysis of events over 5 months– An analysis of only single, certain events would
have given a very restricted view of the girls’ agency
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(3) Endurance - Contingency
• Definition– Agency is both situative and gradually developmental
• Tension in research work– Agency is an interactionally emergent phenomenon and
also the result of longer qualitative development visible only in a longer timescale
• Tension in educational work– Focusing on learning and development leads ways from
appreciating childrens’ actions here and now
(4) Dependence and Separateness
• a person’s sense and experience of individuality and discrete ‘agenthood’ are actualities in Western society, but at the same time these are collectively and ideologically created illusions (Barnes, 2000; Lee, 2005).
• Independence as an outcome of education and development (children as beings vs becomings)
• The child as “competent” or as “vulnerable”
(4) Dependence and Separateness
• “One of the main things that sociable human beings do through the voluntaristic discourse with which they bind themselves together is to assign rights and responsibilities to each other as separate, independent units. […] But these are functions that require sociable interdependent human beings to treat each other as discrete points on their social maps, independent statuses toward which to direct the processes whereby responsibilities and rights are allocated.”
(Barnes, 2000, preface, xi)
In the case of Helen & Sara:
• Helen’s and Sara’s creation of their own characters and adjacent storylines, was as a separation from the dominant storyline
• At the same time, it needed the recognition of the larger community (and each other) to be seen as an agentive act towards the playworld, and needed the playworld to be achievable in the first place
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(4) Dependence - Separateness
• Definition– Agency is both belonging to a community and separating
from it• Tension in research work– Children in research are considered experts of their own
lives and members of their communities, on the other hand, children cannot be taken as responsible to decide on participation on themselves
• Tension in educational work– Children are capable of independent action, but also
vulnerable and in need of protection
(5) Mastery and Submission• The practices and discourses that constitute us as social beings
also condition, shape and dominate us• This contradiction characterizes post-structuralism’s subject: it is “a subject that exhibits agency as it constructs itself by taking up available discourses and cultural practices and a subject that, at the same time, is subjected, forced into subjectivity by those same discourses and practices” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 502)
• Also in Vygotsky’s theory of cultural
development and formation of personality: human beings are constrained by the same material and social conditions which they have collectively created to overcome the limits of material surroundings
In the case of Helen & Sara:
• Tässä voisi ottaa esimerkiksi sen horse girl categoryn, että miten se samalla alistaa ja vapauttaa toimimaan?
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(5) Mastery - Submission
• Definition– Agency is both the mastery of cultural discourses & tools
and submission to them • Tension in research work– Institutional practices (as well as research practices) both
limit and enable childrens’ agency • Tension in educational work– The teacher (and children) have to submit to the
institutional practices of schooling to master their competencies within them
Agency
the possibility and willingness of an individual or collective subject to impact (and eventually transform) an activity in whose realization it is engaged
(Hofmann & Rainio 2007, 309)• Here we perhaps should point out that we focus on children’s
ageny in educational settings and this of course creates its own challenges to the concept?
Ethnograpy
• Etnographic research aims at a holistic understanding of the phenomena under study, in all its complexity and multitudeness. (O'Reilly, 2012; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007).
• O’Reilly (2012) for example emphaizes that ethnographic research tries to understand the human social world as a ractice forming in between structure and agency.
• However, the way in which this can be done without reverting to a singular reading of the concept of agency is not clear.
• Endurance vs/and contingency• Enacted vs/and imagined agency• Dependence vs/and separateness• Mastery vs/and submission• Control vs/and freedom
(Rainio & Hilppö 2014; developed from Rainio 2010)
And then we must say that although these are general we will, in this paper, only discuss them in relation to children’s agency in educational settings as this is our topic
Contradictions / Dialectics in the concept of agency?
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Contradiction Definition Tension in research work Tension in educational work
Overcoming the tension
(1) Control - Agency
To support child’s agency requires both embracing her personal freedom and control and protection
The requirement for systematicity makes it hard to unconditionally take into account children’s agency as part of the research
The dual task of education to both sustain and transmit cultural tradition and support children’s own independent decision making
● A dialectical interpretation of the paradox of pedagogy
● The dialectical investigation and development of pedagogical practices together with the practitioners and children (i.e. playworld, see Rainio, 2010)
(2) Enacted - Imagined
Agency is both taking visible action and seemingly passive imagining and dreaming
Observing and analysing visible action leads away from other forms of agentic actions
Attempts at fostering agency produce also marginalization
● The dialectical development of the unit of analysis and the concept of agency (Rainio, 2009)
● The reflexivity of educational practice
(3) Endurance - Contingency
Agency is both situative and gradually developmental
Agency is an interactionally emergent phenomenon and also the result of longer qualitative development visible only in a longer timescale
Focusing on learning and development leads ways from appreciating childrens’ actions here and now
● The dialectical development of the unit of analysis and the ethnographic method (Rainio, 2010)
(4) Dependence - Separateness
Agency is both belonging to a community and separating from it
Children in research are considered experts of their own lives and members of their communities, on the other hand, children cannot be taken as responsible to decide on participation on themselves
Children are capable of independent action, but also vulnerable and in need of protection
● Conceptual differentiation between “separability” and separateness (Lee, 2005)
● The dialectical development of pedagogical practices (Kumpulainen, ym. 2013; Hofmann 2008)
(5) Mastery - Submission
Agency is both the mastery of cultural discourses & tools and submission to them
Institutional practices (as well as research practices) both limit and enable childrens’ agency
The teacher (and children) have to submit to the institutional practices of schooling to master their competencies within them
● Developing the ethnographic method towards co-researchership and the dialectical development of the concept of agency (e.g., Lipponen et al., 2013)
