"This isn't my real writing": The fate of children's agency in too-tight curricula. Issue 2 (2nd April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dyson, Anne Haas
• Is Part Of: Theory into practice. Volume 59:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 119
• Page End: 127
• Publication Date: 2020-04-02
• Subjects: Education -- Research -- Periodicals; Educational innovations -- Periodicals; 370.105
• DOI: 10.1080/00405841.2019.1702390
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0040-5841

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this article, I adopt a practice theory consideration of student agency, that is, I consider students' power to act on their interests and intentions, on their own inclinations; this will-to-act-on-the-world is central to becoming an active, adaptive participant across the life span. As practice theorist Shery Ortner has explained, none of us have unencumbered agency; we are all constrained and empowered by the institutional structures within which we live. Influenced by practice theory, I draw on ethnographic studies to examine the dynamics through which increasingly structured classrooms for young school children may dampen child agency or push it underground or out-of-school, thereby pushing out as well important dimensions of children's intellectual energy. I conclude with a consideration of what makes young children's composing, or any constructive and creative act, willful and intentional, that is, "real."