Towards a Contextual Understanding of the Influence of Critical Incidents on Teacher Agency: a Case of the Lebanese Private Schools

Abstract

Literature considers teacher agency as an essential condition for teachers to be able to play an effective and influential role in the field of education (Everitt, 2019; Jenkins, 2019; Lasky, 2015). Teacher agency is affected by many conditions such as context (Alvunger, 2018; Biesta et al., 2015; Buchanan, 2015; Eteläpelto, et al., 2015) and professional identity (Buchanan, 2015; Kontovourki et al. 2018; Lasky, 2015; Stillman and Anderson, 2015; Tan, 2016) which is in turn influenced by lived experiences Novak and Knowels, 1992; Drake, 2006; Avraamidou; 2016; Howell and Allen, 2016). According to literature, teacher agency remains to be studied in educational research (Akar, 2020; Hilal, 2021). The relationship between agency and past experiences and incidents in particular is an area that presents a major gap in literature. This fact evidently applies when focusing on education field of Lebanese private schools. Understanding this relationship could present a ground for understanding why different teachers manifest different levels of agency in similar contexts.

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of past experiences, particularly critical incidents, on the level of teacher agency in the private school context. This will be done by adopting Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a guiding conceptual understanding of the relationship between personal dispositions and their effect on the habitus in relation to the person’s position in the field of education. Under the critical research paradigm semi-structured interviews were conducted with five private school teachers where the data was analyzed through the method of analysis of narratives and the findings were presented through the formation of three personas that saw light based on what the participants shared. The date showed that there is a clear influence of critical incidents on how private school teachers’ agency manifests. The study also found that the time in terms of human development that the critical incidents being critically reflected on occurred and teachers chose to focus on and discuss could play a role in how agency manifests. The study recommends further research, longitudinal in nature, to study the influence of this critical agency on how agency continued to manifest. It also recommends considering those findings in preservice and in-service context