“Can’t you just tell us when to teach them how to use an apostrophe?” The worthwhile struggle to cultivate agential preservice teachers in a compliance culture

ABSTRACT

Teachers are simultaneously regarded as the most important influence on student learning and, paradoxically, as untrustworthy agents who can’t be relied upon to deliver quality learning outcomes. Globally, this contested view of teaching is reflected in policies that limit teacher agency by prescribing how teaching will be conducted; for example, insisting on so-called evidence-based instructional models. Such policies also affect initial teacher education, which is increasingly policed for compliance with national teaching standards. However, teaching standards that reduce the teacher’s role to ensuring fidelity to acceptable pedagogies have been widely criticised, with calls for teacher agency and professional judgement to be more highly valued. We endorse this critique and draw on Bakhtin’s dialogic theory to illuminate data generated using collaborative autoethnography that reveals the worthwhile struggle for “good” initial teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Bakhtin
• ideological becoming
• teacher agency
• initial teacher education

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which this intellectual work has been conducted and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This project [2023/HE000094] has been reviewed by the Research Ethics and Integrity and is deemed to be exempt from ethics review under the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research and relevant University of Queensland policy [PPL 4.20.07].

Notes on contributors

Katherine Frances McLay

Dr Katherine Frances McLay is a sociocultural scholar whose research interests span literacy, dialogic pedagogy, professional and learner identity development, and technology enhanced learning.

Peter David Renshaw

Peter David Renshaw Emeritus Professor scholarship is framed by a sociocultural theory of education that foregrounds the social and cultural construction of knowledge and identity.