23 research outputs found
Dialogue with Magdalena Górska
No full textThis chapter analyzes dusty lungs syndrome and prosodies of phone-sex breathing in order to articulate how the quotidian material agency of bodies is not only a political issue but also enacts politics. By introducing the concept of matter-work as an articulation of the everyday work that bodies do in metabolizing natural-cultural worlds, the book develops a non-universalizing and politicized understanding of embodiment in which human bodies are conceptualized as agential actors of intersectional politics. In this conversation with Magdalena Gorska, the authors discuss the development of her PhD dissertation: Breathing matters: Feminist intersectional politics of vulnerability. Thus, while the notion of intra-action is one of the concepts that’s most often cited from Barad’s work, the author thinks the notion of difference – and differencing as a form of dynamism – is just as crucial for agential realism
Opportunities and limitations for learning within teachers’ collaboration in teams: perspectives from action learning
No full textAnsatser til en agential realistisk tænkning om læring
No full textDenne artikel udforsker, hvad man kan forstå ved læring med udgangspunkt i agential rea- listisk tænkning. En agential realistisk tænkning om læring gør en dyd ud af at udvise sensitivitet overfor den kompleksitet, læring som fænomen er karakteriseret ved. Læring er derfor en dynamisk og emergerende stør- relse, der er kendetegnet ved hele tiden at være i processer af at blive til, ligesom det også er kendetegnende for agential realistisk tænkning om læring, at spektret af kompo- nenter, der tillægges handlekraft i relation til læring, udvides markant. I artiklen fokuseres på materiel-diskursivitet, spatialitet og tem- poralitet. Derudover gentænkes begreber som tilegnelse og transfer, og der argumenteres med udgangspunkt i et observationsnotat for, at intra-aktivitet og “spring” er karakteristiske egenskaber ved læring. I en agential realistisk tænkning om læring er begrebet re-konfigura- tioner et omdrejningspunkt og med det brydes en tendens til at forstå læring som enten mere af det samme eller radikal forandring i form af “tiører der falder”. For skønt læreproces- ser, der ikke genkendes som “aha-oplevelser”, ikke gør meget væsen af sig, er det sådan, de forekommer flest.This article explores what can be understood by learning based on agential realist thinking. An agential realist thinking about learning is sensitive to the complexity that characterizes learning as a phenomenon. Thus, learning from an agential realist perspective is a dynamic and emergent phenomenon characterized by constantly being in processes of becoming and by expanding the range of components involved in the constitutive processes thereto. This article focuses on material-discursivity, spatiality, and temporality. Furthermore, concepts like acquisition and transfer are revisited in the article and it is argued – via an excerpt from a field note – that intra-activity and “leaps” are characteristics of learning. Re-configurations are pivotal for this thinking about learning and the concept of re-configurations breaks the tendency to understand learning as either more of the same or a radical change in the sense of “penny dropped”. For although learn- ing processes that are not recognized as “aha moments” do not call much attention to them- selves, this is how they occur most often
Teacher gender and career patterns
No full textIn general, across the world, the career trajectories of men and women are clearly differentiated. There has been much research that demonstrates men and women tend to occupy different positions in the workplace and there is a clear gender divide between some occupational groups, with, for example, men predominant in engineering and women in nursing (horizontal segregation), and a gender divide within many occupations, where men disproportionately occupy senior positions and women disproportionately more junior ones (vertical segregation, Hakim, 1979). Such divisions have most recently been confirmed by the British Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which, in its annual report, ‘Sex and Power: Who Runs Britain? (EHRC, 2008a), likened women’s progress in the workplace to that of a snail, and recorded a ‘worrying trend of reversal or stalled progress’ in terms of ‘women in top positions of power and influence across the public and private sectors.
An ecological perspective on mentoring: Austrian and Israeli academic depictions of mentor-teachers’ work
No full textThis paper offers a comparative analysis of the Austrian and Israeli academic perspectives on teacher induction mentoring. It applies an ecological perspective to reveal focal points and gaps in mentoring academic discourse. While mentoring research is comprehensive, the authors find some aspects that require further attention, especially cultural contexts in which mentoring processes occur. This article provides valuable insights for educators, policymakers, and researchers seeking to enhance the quality of mentoring programmes for novice teachers, advocating for a more comprehensive approach that encompasses all aspects of the ecological model
On the unacknowledged Significance of Teachers´ Habitus and Dispositions
No full textIn recent years, a growing number of studies have focused on teachers’ careertrajectories. At the same time there has been a special focus on attrition and retention,with worries about a sufficient supply of qualified teachers seemingly an almostworldwide phenomenon. In a comprehensive meta-analysis Borman and Dowling(2008) summarize 34 studies. The authors refer to Ingersoll (2001) in distancingthemselves from previous work which they claim only quantifies the issue. Insteadtheir goal is ‘to understand why attrition occurs or, more formally, what factorsmoderate attrition outcomes’ (p. 367). Their synthesis of research evidence points tofive important constellations of variables affecting attrition and retention (i.e. teacherdemographic characteristics, teacher qualifications, school organizational characteristics,school resources and school student body characteristics). They also indicatethat teacher attrition rates and the reasons for attrition vary across the lifespan. Thislatter point is also taken up in the VITAE project (Day et al., 2006) which focuseson variations in teachers’ work, lives and effectiveness during different phases oftheir careers. Both studies also point out the need for more complex theories andstudies which might point to how combinations of factors influence teachers’ careertrajectories. However, although both studies are very comprehensive, neither of themtouches upon the possibility that socio-economic and sociocultural factors might bemediating factors in explaining variations in trajectories. For Borman and Dowling,teacher demographic characteristics comprise gender, race, age, marital status andnumber of children, while Day et al. primarily focus on generational factors.In the explorative study on which this chapter is based, I have made a preliminaryeffort to show that socio-economic and sociocultural factors matter and mightprovide a missing link in research on teachers’ lives and trajectories. Although thisstudy focuses on teacher education students only, the results indicate that the basicorientations will influence career decisions and thus contribute in explaining differentteacher trajectories. However, further research will be needed to supplementand refine the instruments and put the results to scale.<br/
