Agency in Constrained Academic Contexts

Agency in Constrained Academic Contexts
Author: Aprille J. Phillips
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1793646732

Agency in Constrained Academic Contexts: Explorations of Space in Educational Anthropology examines how social agents construct autonomous spaces in the context of neoliberal education. The contributors to this edited collection consider the ways that educators, students, and families assert agency, claim space, and thereby reshape the constraints imposed by the durability of the academic institutions of which they are a part.

Exercising Agency

Exercising Agency
Author: Mark Mullaly
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317138090

Exercising Agency is a book about decision making. In particular, it looks in detail at how a very important type of organizational decision gets made: whether or not to initiate a project. Making strategic decisions of this kind can never be a wholly rational and scientific process. And Exercising Agency lifts the lid on many of the important behavioural factors that inform project decisions: power and politics, personality, the ’rules’ of an organization. Mark Mullaly draws on his research to provide practical guidance for decision makers; project shapers, approving executives and those responsible for how initiation decisions are made. By explaining the influence, value and risks associated with the elements that inform the way we make strategic decisions he will help you identify how individuals and organizations can best support the process to ensure project initiation decisions are effective and most closely underpin the priorities of the organization. If you are involved in framing or making decisions about the future of your organization; the projects that you do or don’t decide to initiate, then read this book. It won’t make the decisions any easier but it will help you improve the quality of the decisions you make and over time, the effectiveness of your organizational decision making.

Constraints of Agency

Constraints of Agency
Author: Craig W. Gruber
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2014-11-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3319101307

This book explores the basic concept of agency and develops it further in psychology using it to better understand and explain psychological processes and behavior. More importantly, this book seeks to put an emphasis on the role of agency in four distinct settings: history of psychology, neuroscience, psychology of religion, and sociocultural theories of co-agency. In Volume 12 of the Annals of Theoretical Psychology the contributors explore a number of new ways to look at agency in psychology. This volume seeks to develop a systematic theory of axioms for agency. It describes implications for research and practice that are founded on an understanding of the person as an actor in the world. This book also has implications for research and practice across psychology's sub-fields uniting the discipline through an agentic view of the person

Teacher Agency

Teacher Agency
Author: Mark Priestley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2015-10-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1472525876

Recent worldwide education policy has reinvented teachers as agents of change and professional developers of the school curriculum. Academic literature has analyzed changes in how teacher professionalism is conceived in policy and in practice but Teacher Agency provides a fresh perspective on this issue, drawing upon an ecological theory of agency. Using this model for understanding agency, Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson explore empirical findings from the 'Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change' project, funded by the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Drawing together this research with the authors' international experiences and perspectives, Teacher Agency addresses theoretical and practical issues of international significance. The authors illustrate how teacher agency should be understood not only in terms of individual capacity of teachers, but also in respect of the cultures and structures of schooling.

Toward a Theory for Understanding Teacher Agency

Toward a Theory for Understanding Teacher Agency
Author: Tina Y. Gourd
Publisher:
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

The study seeks to contribute to a conversation on the nature of teaching and the work of teacher education by developing a theoretical model for understanding teacher agency. Grounded theory methodology was used to study teacher agency within a collaborative action research project conducted with 17 public school teachers and one administrator in a co-taught inclusion program in a large middle school in Seattle, WA. Five dimensions of a theoretical model for understanding teacher agency were identified. (i) The macrosociological context of teacher agency and (ii) context-specific constraints and opportunities provide a crucial lens through which to understand the choices of teachers. Within their macro- and micro-contexts, teachers find ways to (iii) exert agency within their perceived constraints, (iv) take advantage of ambiguities and contested spaces in education to exert agency, and (v) use available structures to exert agency. The theory for understanding teacher agency offers a structure for discussions of teacher agency in teacher education and other areas of the field of education.

Improving Educational Equity in Urban Contexts

Improving Educational Equity in Urban Contexts
Author: Carlo Raffo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2013-12-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1136659013

An enduring educational concern that has plagued researchers and policy makers in a number of affluent countries is the endemic nature of educational inequalities. These inequalities highlight distinct differences in the educational skills, knowledge, capabilities and credentials between learners’ demographic characteristics. They also point to issues of educational disadvantage that emanate from a combination of factors including family life, communities, the geographies of space and place, gender and ethnicity. This book examines some of the causes and responses to educational inequalities, and focuses upon poor urban contexts where educational disadvantage is at its most concentrated, and where educational policy and practice has, over time, proliferated. It questions how wider inequities experienced by young people in urban contexts generate educational inequalities and disadvantage, detailing explicitly what an equitable approach to education might look like. Included in the book is an innovative educational equity framework and toolkit with illustrative policy and practice case studies, bringing together unique scholarship and analysis to examine future educational policy in a holistic, comprehensive and equitable way. It will be valuable reading for postgraduate students, researchers and policy makers with an interest in education and educational equity.

Agency in Language Policy and Planning:

Agency in Language Policy and Planning:
Author: Jeremie Bouchard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2018-12-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0429849915

This collection brings together theory and ethnographic research from a range of national contexts to offer unique insights into the nature of agency in language policy and planning. Situated within a broader sociological framework, the book explores agentive processes at work in case studies from around the world, engaging in discussions of such key themes as language and identity, language ideologies, linguistic diversity in education, and language revitalization. Each chapter examines the ways in which decisions made at both the local and national level impact language use and in turn, the dynamic relationship between language use, policy, and practice in these contexts. Taken together, this volume advances our understanding of agency in language policy and planning and directions for future research, making this key reading for students and scholars in language and education, critical sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics.

Generation and Gender in Academia

Generation and Gender in Academia
Author: B. Bagilhole
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2013-07-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137269170

The first cross-cultural analysis of the differences in career trajectories and experiences between a senior group of women academics and a younger group who are at early and mid-career stages. Major themes in the autobiographical stories of these women were national context; organisational context; family, class and location; and agency.

Rights in Context

Rights in Context
Author: Professor Reza Banakar
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2013-02-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1409497313

This volume offers snapshots of how rights are debated and employed in public discourse to reshape legal and political relations at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It explores how rights are used to challenge the state of affairs by individuals and groups who seek justice, and the strategies devised to defy the existing rights by those who wish to recast the social and political order. This volume discusses rights, firstly, in relation to actual events and issues faced by policy-makers, courts, international agencies, or ordinary people. These range from the demands of minority groups living in the West to freely practice their culture and/or religion, to the threat of terrorism, the regulation of asylum rights, the investor's rights to disclosure and the rights of artists to freedom of expression. Secondly, rights discourse is examined in relation to attempts to redefine the form and content of rights, for example, by banning the right to wear religious symbols in public institutions or detaining terrorism suspects without trial. Thirdly, rights discourse is explored in connection with the attempts to develop new notions of rights, such as 'human security', which can more effectively respond to the challenges of late modern societies. Finally, the statuses of rights in sociological theory and socio-legal research are briefly discussed and analysed.