Agentic subjectivities and key competencies
Jennifer Charteris
Abstract
Curriculum commentators have identified well-documented participatory pathways for key competency development. However, there is a paucity of New Zealand research that takes a poststructural view of how competencies play out in classroom discourses. It is the contention of this article that, rather than learners ‘having’ agency to transfer competencies from one situation to the next, competencies can be produced and enacted as learners shift subjectivities across discourses. The findings are particularly relevant to New Zealand schooling contexts that seek to embed key competencies into day-to-day classroom practices. Located in a Year 9 English classroom of a regional high school, this analysis furnishes an example of learner agency in action when a student navigates classroom discourses to take up a position as both a novice writer and a leader.
Introduction
Human agency may be frail, especially among those with little power, but it happens daily and mundanely, and it deserves our attention.
(Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998, p. 5)
In keeping with the sociocultural approach that is outlined in The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Hipkins, 2006; Hipkins, 2010; Ministry of Education, 2007), schools are charged with the task of strengthening students’ key competencies in order to lay a foundation for lifelong learning. As a feature of lifelong learning and an important concept embedded in NZC, learner agency is under-theorised. Learner agency is rooted in a dispositional interpretation of competencies (Hipkins, 2006; Carr, 2008). It is embedded in NZC’s aspiration for “young people ... who will be confident, connected, actively involved, and life-long learners” (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 8). This neoliberal view of citizenship, linked with economic rationalism, underpins the “knowledge economy” (Peters, 2001, p. 3).
This article reports a small part of a wider discourse analysis research project (Charteris, 2014) that draws from poststructural theory and methodology to support a conception that agency is discursively produced. From a poststructural perspective agentic learners mobilise discursive resources to act upon discourses (Butler, 1997; Davies, 2004; Keddie, 2011; Youdell, 2006). In this article I illuminate how a poststructural interpretation of learner agency is pertinent to the discourses in New Zealand schools and how curriculum policies are operationalised at this time. A view of agency is adopted that highlights how students can take up agentic positions and subjectivities in classrooms as learners.
Learner agency relates to the students’ capacity to mobilise personal, social and discursive resources to learn (Davies 1990). Lewis and Moje (2003) describe agency as the power to control how one’s self, identity, relationships, and activities are made and remade on a daily basis. According to Lewis, Enciso and Moje (2007) learning is a social process and learner agency is determined by the nature of social participation in classrooms. The poststructural approach taken in this study builds on this notion that selves are constituted in discourse. Through a process of subjectivation (Davies, 1993) individuals are simultaneously rendered a subject and subjected to relations of power through discourse (Youdell, 2006). This is a useful theoretical framework with which to consider learner subjectivities in relation to the New Zealand curriculum discourses that have currency at this time.
The article commences with an outline of the policy context of NZC and a description of methodology. I then share a classroom episode to illustrate how discourses are deployed and subjectivities enacted through the words and actions of the teacher and student concerned.
NZC key competencies
The New Zealand Ministry of Education has taken a stance on which competencies are valued in the New Zealand context by outlining them explicity in NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). NZC key competencies are described as “the capabilities that young people need for growing, working, and participating in their communities ... The School Curriculum should challenge students to use and develop the competencies across the range of learning areas and in increasingly complex and unfamiliar situations” (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 38). In online material published to supplement NZC, the New Zealand Ministry of Education (2010) states that:
key competencies are about developing the dispositions and sense of agency that not only empower the individual but help them better understand and negotiate the perspectives and values of others, contributing towards more productive and inclusive workplaces and societies. (paragraph 3)
Learner agency is congruent with the development of the key competencies in classrooms, as students who are agentic are likely to be effective and on-going learners. As such, key competencies are one of the most significant changes introduced by NZC. Secondary education is charged with the task of equipping students with the capacity and resilience required to be ongoing learners (21st Century Learning Reference Group, 2014). However, initial schooling can only form a launchpad for learners and competencies, as universal attributes desirable in all learners, are deemed by The Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo) Project (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2005) to contribute to a democratic, equitable and well functioning society. A competency comprises “the ability to meet complex demands, by drawing on and mobilising psychosocial resources (including skills and attitudes) in a particular context” (OECD, 2005, p. 4). There is currently significant policy and practice interest in continuity and transfer of learning dispositions and key competencies over time and place. Carr (2008) describes four dimensions which she calls the “ABCD of strength”: agency, breadth, continuity, and distribution. Carr’s interpretation of agency stems from the concept of “mindfulness” where learners develop practices as part of their own identity and expertise. This emphasises the need to promote the types of learning experiences that support students to develop their capacity to risk take and act agentically with their learning as they move from familiar to unfamiliar contexts.
Learning dispositions and key competencies are major contributors to lifelong learning and the development of wise, resourceful, creative, and considerate citizens (Carr, 2008). Dispositions are relational terms that dispose learners to interpret, edit, and respond to learning opportunities in characteristic ways (Carr, 2002). A focus on dispositions connects competencies with the concept of lifelong learning and draws attention to certain aspects of students’ learning. These aspects comprise: the capacity to recognise and draw on particular skills, knowledge, and values on different occasions; the responsibility to reflect on their value and intent; the motivation to exercise them; and the know-how to marshal and orchestrate the relevant resources (Carr, 2004).
Competencies and dispositions have the potential to promote a view of learning that steps beyond a simplified technical rational interpretation. Concepts of thinking, social, and emotional behaviours take on more complex and interesting meanings when they are considered as dispositions (Gadsden, 2008). An emphasis on dispositionality underscores a big-picture perspective of learning that potentially promotes attributes which are deemed essential for lifelong learning. Dispositionality relates to ideas about inquiry, reflective practice, and critical thinking (Gadsden, 2008). This is a complex and contextualised perspective of learning.
On the surface, key competencies can be read simplistically, and Hipkins (2012) warns that a plain-language approach to competencies may contribute to superfical readings of their nature and intent. For example, she points out that a superficial reading may lead schools to view the managing self competency as encompassing traditional and generic behavioural concerns (discipline, attendance organisation, work readiness, homework completion etc.) (Hipkins, 2012). If more than a surface reading is to be made, curricula development may be a larger undertaking than it first appeared for schools. This is particularly true if teachers thoroughly explore what the competencies look like within and across the different learning areas. In her article on the nature of key competencies Hipkins (2006) highlights that the curriculum challenge is for every learning area to demonstrate how the key competencies are specifically manifested in that area. Likewise, McChesney and Cowie (2008) ask “if and how a focus on key competencies might offer something new to the debate over the relative merits and value of content over learning processes” (p. 104). They note that the descriptions of the different learning areas highlight that intellectual curiosity can be exercised in diverse ways, with different kinds of focus and distinct purposes within the different learning areas. They raise questions about the similarities and differences between general and subject-specific thinking strategies:“What might it involve to think mathematically or statistically, or to think scientifically, or to think technologically?” (McChesney & Cowie, 2008, p. 105).
The rules of the game are aspects of disciplinary knowledge, often not explicitly set out for learners in schools but rather embedded within valued classroom practices and ways of working. The issue for teachers, students, and researchers is how to make these disciplinary rules of the game explicit in meaningful ways. (McChesney & Cowie, 2008, p. 107)
Practices, ways of thinking, and identity affordances, unique to the different disciplines, may be embedded within learning contexts and available only to those students with the wherewithal to access them. Kelly, Luke, and Green (2008), taking up a notion explored by The New London Group (1996), note that over time disciplines have created specialised discourses, signs, and symbols, ways of representing knowledge, and ways of thinking and inquiring that come to count as knowledge. Understanding disciplinary discourses and taking up commensurate identities is a key aspect of agency. Therefore, how students understand the processes and procedures that are embedded in different learning areas is important. This emphasis on disciplinary discourses has implications for this particular article as it examines how a student engages actively with English classroom discourse.
Student as subject
In the classroom, students are positioned in accordance with the subject positions afforded by academic and social discourses. The poststructural concept of subjectivity is conceptualised as an effect of discourse. This article describes and explains how schools and teachers might grapple with what agency means in the light of the complex, often competing, discourses that influence learner subjectivities in classrooms. Identities can be read as categories that are relationally constituted subjectivities (Drewery, 2005). Althusser (1971) argues that these subjectivities are created by ideological state apparatuses (e.g. schools, churches and armies). These organisations create subjects by producing identity categories. Subjects are recognised and brought into being through acts of interpellation or hailing. In schools, practices of interpellation construct subject positions or identity categories where individuals, through their acceptance, become “students” or “learners” with associated expectations of performance.
Bringing together both Althusser (1971) and Foucault (1991), Butler (1997) conceptualises subjectivity as “ the making of a subject … Such subjection is a kind of power that not only unilaterally acts on a given individual as a form of domination, but also activates or forms the subject” (p. 84, italics in original). Subjects are therefore relationally positioned (Drewery, 2005) through interpellation by others, and they exercise agency by taking up particular discourse positions, although they may not be able to articulate the workings of these (Youdell, 2006). Davies (2004) points out that:
[p]eople exist at the points of intersection of multiple discursive practices, those points being conceptualized as subject positions. The individual is not fixed at any one of these points or locations. Not only does the individual shift locations or positions, but what each location or position might mean shifts over space and time and contexts. The individual might be said to exist as much at the intersecting point as it does on the curved line of movement between them. (This idea is in distinct contrast with the humanist self, which has an inner essence that remains—or should remain—stable through different situations.) (p. 7)
Liberal humanism or the concept of the “humanist self” that Davies refers to is deeply embedded in New Zealand schools despite the popularity of communitarian approaches to learning (Peters & Marshall, 2003). It influences the way that students, teachers, and school leaders theorise agency, identity, and positionality and how key compentencies are enacted in classrooms. As an alternative to a humanist conception of learner agency, Butler’s theory of performativity, where learners take up positions in discourse, provides an alternative perspective on how learners can exercise agency and by extension key competencies in classrooms. Instead of position students as static and essentialised, performativity provides a more nuanced agentic perspective of learners and learning.
The study
This article explores not only the micro-dimensions of classroom talk but also the ways in which social structures are reproduced at macro levels (Rogers (2011). Poststructural discourse analysis sheds light on both micro- and macro-level discourses (Anderson, 2009; Gee, 2011), and a poststructural discourse analsyis is used in this article to show how micro and macro discourses operate within a New Zealand Year 9 classroom. Through analysis of the language of the classroom, illustrated by the analysis of a particular episode, I explore how learners are constituted and positioned within the wider social and academic discourses (the macro-level discourse) and how they take up agentic learner identities in discourse. The research focuses in particular on the micro interactions between a teacher and a student. The discussion section of the article illustrates how the micro discourses construct the macro discourses (italicised in the text) that are in play throughout the classroom interchange.
The wider discourse analysis research project from which this episode is taken aimed to map how learners can take up agentic subjectivities in classroom settings. The participants comprised four teachers and three classes of students in a decile 21 provincial New Zealand secondary school. Informed consent was sought and gained from the students and their parents or caregivers. Pseudonyms are used for the teacher (Grace) and student (Matai) samples of data reported in this article. Participant observations were video recorded, and follow-up student and teacher interviews were recorded. During these interviews the participants viewed and commented on footage that I selected on the basis that they revealed aspects of classroom interaction where learners were taking action to learn. As a Päkehä or white New Zealand researcher there were cultural and social considerations in a school research context that had a large number of Mäori students. I strived to be culturally responsive, taking my cues from the students and strove to ensure that I worked with an ethic of manaakitanga or ethic of care (Macfarlane, Glynn, Cavanagh and Bateman, 2007). I consulted with a colleague in her role as kaitakawaenga Mäori (cultural advisor) to ensure that my interactions with students were culturally appropriate.
The data episode is from a Year 9 English classroom. It provides an account of a writing conference that took place between an English and social studies teacher, Grace, and a student, Matai, at a computer bench along the side of the room. Grace assists her Year 9 students to write and practice their speeches and prepare them for delivery the next day. Matai takes the initiative to write a persuasive speech to lobby his teachers and peers for their support to lay a hängi.2 He enacts agency through identity moves which he executes throughout his interchange with Grace. Grace’s focus is on speech writing, yet for Matai his speech enables aims to petition his peers, teachers, and the school board of trustees to lay a hängi. Matai has lifeworld experience preparing hängi. He has also seen Mäori orators giving whaikörero. (Whaikörero is a traditional form of Maori oratory usually made during special gatherings.) Through their interaction, we can glimpse how Matai’s subjectivities are co-constituted.
The following classroom transcript provides an abridged account of the situated dialogue and action that take place when Grace and Matai negotiate what Matai needed to do to prepare his speech, ensuring he was conveying a clear message to his audience. Matai sits at a computer, while Grace helps him add detail to his writing. Matai brings knowledge of Mäori cultural practices from his lifeworld to the classroom. Grace asks him to talk about it with her so that she can help him build on his experiences and add this detail into his written speech. The subheadings highlight the specific macro discourses in play within the interchange.
‘The hängi’ classroom episode
English classroom discourse
Grace moves to stand beside Matai and leans over to turn pages in his book. She locates and reads his written plan aloud.
Grace:So here is your plan here. You started off telling us what a hängi is: “Hängi is a traditional Mäori food cooked …” Radaradaradara.
Matai:In the ground …
Grace:“To cater for many people.” Yup cool. So you put that up there?
Matai:No.
Grace:So you’ve got here—for those people who don’t know what hängi is—(Reading) “It’s meat with stuffing”. That’s not what a hängi is—is it? A hängi is the way you cook it.
Lifeworld discourse
Matai:But it’s still nice. (He chuckles)
Grace:It’s delicious—isn’t it?
English classroom discourse
Grace:So you need to go back up there and put in exactly what a hängi is.
Matai:It’s traditional.
Grace:So what’s the way you do it? So put in there, “It’s a traditional Mäori way of cooking food.” And then go and describe for us how it is. You know do we chuck it in the oven? I like meat with stuffing in the oven?
Matai:Oh too hard …
Grace:Yeah. So you need to explain to us what a hängi is. Your speech is about a hängi. You go down here and you talk about digging the pit and stuff. Tell us exactly what it is. And that’s good.
Lifeworld discourse
Grace:So give us an example of when you would have a hängi?
Matai:A lot of times it is tangihangas.
Grace:Tangi? Yeah.
Matai:Cry. Sniff.
Grace:When else do you have a hängi. You said to cater for many. So is it just at tangi that you have a hängi?
Matai:That’s most of the ones I remember having hängi.
Grace:What do you do at Christmas and 21sts and hui and things like that?
Matai:Munch out. (Chuckles.)
Grace:Do you have a hängi there?
Matai:Sometimes. You can have it ... (inaudible)
Grace:So you can put that there too.
Grace:So tell us about how it’s in a pit and what have you. Do you have to dig a hole? Do you put the stones in and then light the fire or do you light a fire and then put your stones in? Or?
Matai:You dig the pit and over the top you stack the wood on top—over it. So it’s not in the pit—it is over top.
Grace:Yeah.
Matai:You stack the stones on top and you burn the wood. Load it all and what it actually does is it heats the stones up.
Grace:Yeah
Matai:And when it burns down some of the stones will fall into the pit.
Grace:Yeah. OK. Is that good?
Matai:Wood falls in.
Grace:So you have to get the wood out?
Matai:When it’s burnt for long enough and the stones are hot you tip water all over it and with shovels and rakes and stuff you flick out all the wood. Then you stick the baskets in and then cover them up with wet sacks. The sacks help to keep the...
Grace:Wet sacks you said eh?
Matai:Wet sacks help to keep the dirt from going all over the food and it traps all the steam.
Grace:OK. You seal it with dirt over the top do you? OK.
Matai:Sometimes you can chuck…over (inaudible)
Grace:Seal it.
English classroom and lifeworld discourse
Grace:You have just described how to do your speech then. You described how to make the hängi pit. You talk about how to prepare the food. Because you said something about baskets. Some people cook it in little tinfoil parcels don’t they? But when you are feeding heaps you put it into muslin bags and stuff eh and cook it like that. And then how you put it into the pit and how you stack it up and arrange it.
Matai:And actually chuck all the um …
Grace:(Pointing to Matai’s page) Yeah—so do that bit first. And then bring that bit down and put that bit down there near the bottom.
Matai:Soooo… what?
Grace:What is a hängi—how to make a hängi pit. Describe just what you said to me about how you build the fire and the stones. OK?
Findings
In the episode above Matai is constituted agentically as a speaker and speechwriter through his efforts to engage with English classroom discourse. He takes initiative to write a speech aimed to elicit support to lay a hängi from his peers, teachers and community. During the writing process Grace bridges English and lifeworld discourses by encouraging Matai to build on his prior knowledge to add detail to his writing so that an audience can follow it. Grace positions herself as a learner when Matai talks about his lifeworld, and Matai is positioned as knowledgeable about hängi processes and protocols while being a ‘novice’ in English classroom discourse. Thus, there is space for Matai to simultaneously take up both subject positions as an agentic learner. These two subjectivities are explored in the ensuing sections.
Matai as ‘novice writer’ in English classroom discourse
In this episode, Matai and Grace take different subject positions as they negotiate the task of speech making. In New Zealand English classrooms oral, written, and visual forms of language are studied and communicated by the students. The students develop their understanding through listening, reading, and viewing. They also create meaning for themselves and others through speaking, writing, and presenting their ideas (Ministry of Education, 2007). Grace blends English classroom discourse with Matai’s lifeworld to make explicit what he takes for granted. She asks him to think about how he can write clearly to explain what a hängi is to an audience who may not have had this experience and to ensure that he has defined what hängi is accurately (from her viewpoint).
Grace: So you’ve got here—for those people who don’t know what hängi is—it’s meat with stuffing. That’s not what a hängi is—is it? A hängi is the way you cook it.
Pointing to the screen, she challenges how Matai has defined hängi; that his hängi definition “meat with stuffing” is ambiguous and can imply a generic way of cooking meat.
Grace: You know do we chuck it in the oven? I like meat with stuffing in the oven?
When Matai says that the task is “too hard” he signals that, as a novice writer, he is struggling to craft his ideas. Grace responds by further assisting him to master English classroom discourse.
Grace: Yeah. So you need to explain to us what a hängi is. Your speech is about a hängi. You go down here and you talk about digging the pit and stuff. Tell us exactly what it is. And that’s good.
In doing so Grace affirms his novice writer identity as someone who can develop his skills in structuring his content. Grace continues to pursue a line of questioning that supports Matai to add details to his speech and impose a useful sequence on his ideas.
Grace: So tell us about how it’s in a pit and what have you. Do you have to dig a hole? Do you put the stones in and then light the fire or do you light a fire and then put your stones in? Or?
Taking an uninformed position to encourage him to speak, she asks him to detail the hängi process. Again, Matai expresses his confusion about his next steps.
Matai: Soooo … what?
This position is quickly dismissed by Grace as she recaps the process of writing that she expects him to undertake.
Grace: So yeah! One, two, three ... And then that one comes at the end. That bit there. “I think we should try a hängi in our class.” OK? So do what is a hängi…
By supporting Matai as a novice, and refusing to allow him to give up when the writing becomes challenging, Grace reframes Matai’s position as a struggling writer to an agentic position where he is a “knower”. This is evident in the authoritative way he speaks about laying a hängi.
Matai: When it’s burnt for long enough and the stones are hot you tip water all over it and with shovels and rakes and stuff you flick out all the wood. Then you stick the baskets in and then cover them up with wet sacks. The sacks help to keep the ... Wet sacks help to keep the dirt from going all over the food and it traps all the steam.
Matai as an “authoritative leader” in lifeworld discourse
Lifeworld is a primary discourse that encompasses Matai’s everyday life experiences. Lifeworlds are the domains in which people speak, value, and act, claiming to know and understand things as “everyday” people (Gee, 2011). The purpose for Matai’s speech is located in his lifeworld and he uses relevant language and understandings in his writing. Matai and Grace live in a predominantly Mäori community and both have their view of te ao Mäori (the Mäori world). This is a world in which hängi are integral to the community. Matai draws on personal, social, and discursive resources (Davies, 1990) in the classroom to write his speech. Mobilising personal resources, he takes up English classroom discourse to write his speech, sharing aspects of his lifeworld in the process. For instance, when Grace asks him about “tangihangas” (funerals) and uses the abbreviated term “tangi”, Matai points out another meaning for the word tangi: “Cry. Sniff.” He highlights that it is also associated with lamentation and the act of crying.
Although there are both English classroom and lifeworld discourses in play as Matai writes, from the outset his lifeworld is Matai’s main focus. Realising this, Grace acknowledges Matai’s lifeworld expertise and elicits aspects of his lifeworld from him to assist him to furnish more background information for his audience. As illustrated in the data samples above, Grace uses rhetorical questions to enable Matai to refocus on his written text and illustrate how ambiguous his written statements are:
Grace: So what’s the way you do it?... You know do we chuck it in the oven?
Matai has to make the familiar strange in order to write for an audience who have not experienced hängi. Grace deploys humour to illustrate to Matai what the audience could be thinking when they read his text. She contrasts traditional European cooking methods with the cultural practices of Matai’s lifeworld to show Matai how his writing could be interpreted by others. Grace strives to position Matai as an authority and expert in lifeworld discourse by asking about his experiences. She draws examples of Mäori cultural practices from him which are part of his lifeworld knowledge:
Matai:A lot of times it is tangihangas.
Grace:Tangi? Yeah.
Matai:Cry. Sniff.
As Matai explains the process of creating a hängi pit oven, he is positioned in their conversation as an expert with relevant lifeworld experiences. Grace prompts Matai to embellish his writing with clarification questions.
Grace:Do you have to dig a hole? Do you put the stones in and then light the fire or do you light a fire and then put your stones in?
She uses the colloquialism “Yeah” to support his positioning and enable Matai to further explain the hängi preparation process to her. While Grace has English disciplinary knowledge, Matai is authoritative in his understanding of Mäori cultural practices. This relational positioning (Drewery, 2005) cues him to provide a detailed account of the process. With Grace’s assistance, Matai articulates his position within his lifeworld and Grace uses her knowledge of this discourse to build their relationship. Thus, toward the end of their conversation, they weave together lifeworld and English classroom discourses. Although Matai is a “novice writer”, during the interchange Grace deliberately shifts from English discourse so that he can speak authoritatively as an expert with knowledge of his lifeworld. She supports him to scaffold lifeworld into English classroom discourse.
Grace:You have just described how to do your speech then. You described how to make the hängi pit.
In his interview Matai describes himself as a self-elected spokesperson for the student body when he explores the channels open to him to participate in the decision making.
Matai:My speech was to ask the teachers if we could have a hängi.
Matai exploits English classroom and lifeworld discourses to prepare his speech to elicit his peers’ support for a hängi at school. During the interchange he takes up positions as both “novice writer” and “leader”.
Discussion
Underpinning the NZC notion of lifelong learning is the view that learners need to be flexible and adaptable if they are to address the challenges of our fast-paced constantly changing society. Carr (2008) writes how dispositions and key competencies are “the major contributors to lifelong learning and to wise, resourceful, creative, and considerate citizens” (p. 6). Key competencies are a lynchpin for lifelong learning. This research has implications for the ways in which key competencies can be interpreted and strengthened in classrooms. It provides a fresh look at learners and learning in relation to competencies as the performative capabilities that learners exercise when they take up subjectivities.
Matai enacted the key competencies of managing self, relating to others, thinking, participating and contributing, and using language, symbols and texts when he initiated learning. He mobilised key competencies across the classroom discourses when he thought through his persuasive points, drawing from both English and lifeworld discourses. By employing the key competency using language, symbols and texts, Matai constructed his speech and deepened his capacity to use English classroom discourse. Exercising agency, he volunteered to organise a hängi and persisted in completing his speech to deliver it to his peers (managing self). He authored and directed his pathway with Grace when he initiated the conversation about his lifeworld. He demonstrated how he could relate with others by thinking about how his peers and teachers could participate in the hängi and how he could persuade them to contribute. He brought Grace onside by using humour when he found the writing process challenging. Thus, he sustained his positive relationship with his teacher.
Drawing from a poststructural perspective, the research highlights how learners can mobilise relevant discourses to learn and negotiate multiple discourse positions on offer in classrooms at any one time. When Matai accepted the challenge to add detail to his writing, he shifted between discourses to take up specific embedded subject positions. This suggests that rather than having agency to transfer competencies from one situation to the next, competencies can be produced and enacted as learners shift subjectivities across discourses. Furthermore, Matai attempted to bring two subjectivities together; to simultaneously position himself as both a “novice writer” and a “leader” among his peers and wider school community. The latter subjectivity as a relational position afforded by Grace provided a scaffold and impetus for Matai to develop his competence as a writer.
It must also be noted that in this episode there were missed opportunities for Grace to further engage with Matai’s te ao Mäori lifeworld. Grace could have inquired into the oratorical practices and devices that he knew about in order to explore where English discipline discourses and te ao Mäori practices intersect and connect. There were opportunities missed for Matai to explicitly recognise and juxtapose the cultural signs, symbols and ways of representing knowledge and thinking (Kelly, Luke & Green, 2008) inherent in both te ao Mäori lifeworld and English discipline discourses.
Consciously or not, teachers act upon classroom discourses so that their learners can develop competencies. For example, by working creatively with curriculum, Grace assisted Matai to blend lifeworld and English classroom discourses. In turn, Matai responded to Grace’s position call (Drewery, 2005) of “novice writer”—a writer who had the wherewithal to author a speech. In response to this relational positioning, Matai agentically navigated English classroom discourse. Although Grace intended for Matai to become an effective speech writer, this is not necessarily a skill that Matai would have developed without the affordance of “the hängi” context as a connection with his lifeworld. These findings have implications for how educators can recognise moments in micro discourses when students can mobilise the macro discursive resources (e.g. lifeworlds) to agentically exercise competencies.
Although agency is inherent as a dispositional attribute of the key competencies (Carr, 2004; 2008; Ministry of Education, 2010), there are different views on what agency means. Liberal humanist discourse dictates that students are obliged to take themselves up as knowable, recognisable identities who speak for themselves and accept responsibility for their actions (Davies, 2000). By conceptualising agency as performative (Butler, 1993; Davies, 2004), I challenge this sovereign (Linnell, 2008) view of key competencies that suggests that learners can own and possess them, pulling them from a virtual sack as required. In taking this stance that learner identities are discursively constituted, the research presents an alternative view to the totalising humanist conception of “self” embedded in terms such as “self-management”, “self-monitoring”, and “self-regulation”. This article resists reductive interpretations of the key competencies, refuting humanist notions that learner agency is “something” possessed by individuals. Rather, competencies are dispositional in that learners mobilise personal, social and discursive resources (Davies, 1990) when they exercise their knowledge, skills, and values judiciously in learning contexts.
Further research possibilities
Hipkins (2006) and Carr (2008) allude to the dispositional nature of competency based learning, however there are few New Zealand studies that explore how a poststructural view of learner agency can relate to NZC. I argue for pedagogy that acknowledges the subtlety or ‘frailty’ of agency (Holland et al., 1998) and is informed by an awareness of how discourses can shape student (and teacher) identities. In particular, I advocate for further consideration of how competency discourses influence learner subjectivities. Discourses are subtle and nuanced. It can be difficult, if not impossible, for students (and teachers) to recognise and agentically navigate the multiple discourses in play within classrooms. The current focus on key competency discourse in New Zealand suggests that there is scope for further research into how teachers can recognise agency and strengthen learner participation. Through being aware of how students can mobilise discourses in the interests of discipline-related subjectivities, teachers may be able to respond to learner initiatives and assist them to develop their capacity to be agentic learners.
The following questions are prompts for further research into agency as an underpinning feature of the key competencies:
•How can teachers actively build learners opportunities to develop agentic learner subjectivities?
•How can students agentically engage with classroom discipline discourses?
Conclusion
A Butlerian view of agency has implications for the ways learners exercise key competencies in the service of academic identities. Key competencies are dynamic, dispositional elements of the enacted curriculum that are embodied and articulated through students’ actions in the situated contexts of classrooms and beyond. As such, they can be described as performative and context dependent. Therefore, learner agency is fundamental if students are to initiate their own and others’ learning in partnership with their teachers. By making sense of shifting subjectivities in the classroom, educators can enhance learner agency. If teachers are to strengthen key competencies, it is important to notice, recognise, and respond to learner agency in action.
References
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Acknowledgements
I express my gratitude to Bronwen Cowie and Margaret Carr for their input into the development of this article. My thanks also are extended to the reviewers, for their thoughtful reflections on the issues raised.
Notes
The author
Jennifer Charteris is a lecturer in school pedagogy with the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. Formerly a teacher and teacher educator with the University of Waikato, Jennifer’s research and writing interests relate to learner agency, learner identities, and teacher education.
1.The New Zealand Ministry of Education decile rating (1–10) indicates the extent to which it draws its students from low socio-economic communities.
2.Ahängi is a social gathering where food is prepared and cooked in an earth oven.