Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:56:58.413Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 4 - A Relational View of a Future-Orientated Pedagogy

Sustaining the Agency of Learners and Teachers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2023

By
Anne Edwards
Edited by
Nick Hopwood  and
Annalisa Sannino
Nick Hopwood
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Sydney
Annalisa Sannino
Affiliation:
Tampere University, Finland
Get access

Summary

This chapter focusses on how insights from Vygotsky’s work on child and adolescent development can be employed to create a relational pedagogy that nurtures the agency of students as learners, enabling them to be creative makers of their and their communities’ futures. These insights are augmented by more recent contributions to his legacy. Consequently, the role of motive orientation, imagination and agency in taking forward learners’ trajectories is discussed in relation to playworlds in early education settings, makerspaces in schools, the careful use of moral imagining in creating new futures for disengaged adolescents and responsive relational teaching in mainstream schooling. The four approaches all employ pedagogies which aim at the unfolding of student agency and which can be explained by the concepts: relational expertise, common knowledge and relational agency. The need for school systems to create environments where teachers can support student agency is recognised.

Keywords

agentic learnersrelational pedagogyrelational expertisecommon knowledgerelational agencymotive orientationimagination
Type
Chapter
Information
Agency and Transformation
Motives, Mediation, and Motion
 , pp. 84 - 106
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arievitch, I. (2003). A potential for an integrated view of development and learning: Galperin’s contribution to sociocultural psychology. Mind, Culture and Activity, 10(4), 278–88. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327884mca1004_2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, S. R. (2017). Hackerspaces: Making the maker movement. Polity Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, A. (2005). Relational agency: Learning to be a resourceful practitioner. International Journal of Educational Research, 43(3), 168–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2006.06.010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, A. (2010). Being an expert professional practitioner: The relational turn in expertise. Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, A. (2011). Building common knowledge at boundaries between professional practices. International Journal of Educational Research, 50, 33–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2011.04.007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, A. (2014). Designing tasks which engage learners with knowledge. In Thompson, I. (Ed.). Task design, subject pedagogy and student engagement (pp. 13–27). Routledge.Google Scholar
Edwards, A. (Ed.). (2017). Working relationally in and across practices: A cultural-historical approach to collaboration. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, A. & Hedegaard, M. (2020). Moral imagination: A resource for transformation? Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 30, 100502. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2021.100502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleer, M. (2020). Studying the relations between motives and motivation: How young children develop a motive orientation for collective engineering play. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 24, 100355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.100355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galperin, P. (1976). Introduction to psychology. Moscow State University Press.Google Scholar
Hedegaard, M. (2012). The dynamic aspects in children’s learning and development. In Hedegaard, M., Edwards, A. & Fleer, M. (Eds.). Motives, emotions and values in the development of children and young people (pp. 9–27). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hedegaard, M. & Chaiklin, S. (2005). Radical-local teaching and learning. Aarhus University Press.Google Scholar
Hedegaard, M. & Edwards, A. (Eds.). (2019). Supporting difficult transitions: Children, young people and their carers. Bloomsbury.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedegaard, M. & Edwards, A. (2023). Taking children seriously: A relational approach to education. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedegaard, M. & Fleer, M. (2013). Play, learning, and children’s development. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumpulainen, K., Kajamaa, A. & Rajala, A. (2019). Motive-demand dynamics creating a social context for students’ learning experiences in a making and design environment. In Edwards, A., Fleer, M. & Bøttcher, L. (Eds.), Cultural-historical approaches to studying learning and development (pp. 185–99). Springer.Google Scholar
Lindqvist, G. (1995). Lekens estetik. En didaktisk studie om lek och kultur i förskolan. Forskningsrapport 95: 12, SKOBA, Högskolan i Karlstad. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995. (The aesthetics of play: A didactic study of play and culture in preschools. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Studies in Education 62.)Google Scholar
Lisina, M.S. (1985). Child-adults-peers: Patterns of communication. Progress Press.Google Scholar
Marsh, J., Wood, E., Chesworth, L., Nisha, B., Nutbrown, B. & Olney, B. (2019). Makerspaces in early childhood education: Principles of pedagogy and practice. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 26(3), 221–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2019.1655651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mjelve, L. H., Nyborg, G., Edwards, A. & Crozier, W. R. (2019). Teachers’ understandings of shyness: Psychosocial differentiation for student inclusion. British Educational Research Journal, 45(6), 1295–311. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nilsson, M. & Ferholt, B. (2014). Vygotsky’s theories of play, imagination and creativity in current practice: Gunilla Lindqvist’s ‘creative pedagogy of play’ in U. S. kindergartens and Swedish Reggio-Emilia inspired preschools. Perspectiva, 32(3), 919–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-795X.2014v32n3p919.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyborg, G., Mjelve, H., Edwards, A. & Crozier, R. (2022a). Teachers’ strategies for enhancing shy children’s engagement in oral activities: Necessary but insufficient? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 26(7), 643–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2020.1711538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyborg, G., Mjelve, L. H., Edwards, A., Crozier, W. R. & Coplan, R. J. (2022b). Working relationally with shy students: Pedagogical insights from teachers and students. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 33, 100610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2022.100610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sannino, A. (2020). Transformative agency as warping: How collectives accomplish change amidst uncertainty, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 30(1), 9–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2020.1805493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural politics of everyday life. Open University Press.Google Scholar
Stetsenko, A. (2013). The challenge of individuality in cultural historical activity theory: ‘Collectividual’ dialectics from a transformative activist stance. Outlines – Critical Practice Studies, 14(2), 7–28.Google Scholar
Stetsenko, A. (2017). The transformative mind: Expanding Vygotsky’s approach to development and education. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stetsenko, A. & Arievitch, I. (2004). The self in cultural-historical activity theory: Reclaiming the unity of social and individual dimensions of human development. Theory and Psychology, 14(4), 475–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354304044921.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, C. (1977). What is human agency? In Mischel, T. (Ed.), The self (pp. 103–35). Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of modern identity. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vadeboncoeur, J. A. & Vellos, R.E. (2016). Recreating social futures: The role of moral imagination in student-teachers’ relationships in alternative education. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 7(2), 307–23. https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs72201615723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vadeboncoeur, J., Panina-Bears, N. & Vellos, R. (2020). Moral imagining in student-teacher relationships in alternative programs: Elaborating a theoretical framework. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 30, 100470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2020.100470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1926/97). Educational psychology. St Lucie Press.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1998). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 5. Child psychology (Rieber, R. W., Ed.). Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(1), 7–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (2020). Vygotsky’s pedological works, Vol 1. Foundations of pedology (trans. and ed. Kellogg, D. and Veresov)., N. Springer.Google Scholar
Winther-Linqvist, D. (2021). Caring well for children in ECEC from a wholeness approach: The role of moral imagination. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 30(B), 100452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2020.100452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×