Abstract

There is widespread agreement that students should be supported to experience intellectual agency. However, “traditional,” teacher-centered forms of instruction tend to limit students’ opportunities to exercise agency, and many studies have shown that such instruction is highly resistant to change, particularly in mathematics. This article examines how teachers at five elementary schools used discourses emphasizing student agency to make sense of their mathematics instruction, in the context of a professional development program that highlighted fostering agency as a means for advancing equity. The author finds that although teachers took up agency-focused discourse in meaningful ways, they simultaneously perpetuated the assumption that some children are smarter and more capable than others. This illustrates ideological dimensions of instructional change and stability at the level of teachers’ everyday work. Approaches to student-centered reforms that do not attend to these dimensions may fall short of their aspirations to serve “all students” well.

摘要

人们普遍同意应支持学生体验智力代理。但是，以教师为中心的“传统”教学形式往往会限制学生行使代理的机会，许多研究表明，这种教学对变化的抵抗力很高，尤其是在数学领域。本文考察了五所小学的教师如何在专业发展计划的背景下，强调学生中介以使他们的数学教学有意义，从而强调了发展中介作为促进平等的一种手段。作者发现，尽管教师以有意义的方式进行以代理为中心的话语，但他们同时延续了这样的假设，即某些孩子比其他孩子更聪明，能力更强。这说明了教师日常工作水平上教学变化和稳定性的意识形态维度。不考虑这些方面的以学生为中心的改革方法可能无法满足为“所有学生”提供良好服务的愿望。