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Robertson, Scott D.

University of British Columbia

A professional teacher is an autonomous agent, as (i) an autonomous practitioner and (ii) a multi-representative agent with numerous, sometimes conflicting, responsibilities. Arguably, a teacher’s primary responsibility is relational curriculum, an in-between dynamic enacted in the classroom by the student-teacher relationship (STR). But as one teacher may follow mandated Curriculum to the letter, feeling autonomous because no one questions the fidelity of their practice, another teacher may feel autonomous because, once they shut the door and teach, who can question the flexibility of their Curricular engagement? As each teacher’s approach is individuated, a blanketing Curricular design bears uncertain relevance across the profession. At the intersection of fidelity and flexibility, teachers navigate what it means to be agents, simultaneously defining and negotiating what it means to be autonomous professionals. Based on data (coded interview transcripts, classroom observations and related documents, and field notes) and framed by a perspective of Symbolic Interactionism, this case study investigates how Canadian Secondary ELA teachers negotiate their agential representations – with particular emphasis upon curricular agencies – while simultaneously navigating their teacher autonomy in the context of British Columbia’s revised K-12 Curriculum. Study Responses suggest that (i) teachers are simultaneously something more than uncritical implementers of Curriculum designed by others yet something other than fully autonomous professional educators, and (ii) relational curriculum is a kind of collective autonomous agency shared within the STR in between teachers and students.

Text

2024-11-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89732

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/