THE LANGUAGE OF CRITICAL COLLABORATION IN HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS’ AGENCY DEVELOPMENT¹

ABSTRACT:

This paper aims at discussing the language of critical collaboration in agency development (EDWARDS, 2005, 2007; YAMAZUMI, 2007; ENGESTRÖM, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011; ENGESTRÖM; SANNINO, 2011; VIRKKUNEN, 2006a, 2006b) especially focusing on high school teachers and their in-service education, taking as research context the teacher education project, LEDA - Reading and Writing in Different Areas – carried out in public schools in the city of São Paulo. Methodologically, it is anchored in Critical Collaborative Research (PCCol) (MAGALHÃES, 2009, 2011, 2012), characterized as interventionist research focusing on the decapsulation and transformation of school learning, and, in this specific case, organized as fortnightly meetings with six teachers from different epistemological areas, one pedagogical coordinator from the language area and four applied linguists. The teacher education meetings focus on the relationship between participants triggered in the discussions about didactic and pedagogical practices. Based on data produced through video recording, preliminary results highlight changes in the significance attributed by the participants about the pedagogical teaching practices in the classroom, and indicate conscious theoretically grounded positions taken by the participating teachers, characterizing the development of relational and transformative agency and the emergence of a responsive, professional practice.

KEYWORDS:
Critical collaboration; Critical collaborative research; Relational agency; Transformative agency

RESUMO:

Objetiva-se, neste artigo, discutir a linguagem da colaboração crítica no desenvolvimento da agência (EDWARDS, 2005, 2007; YAMAZUMI, 2007; ENGESTRÖM, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011; ENGESTRÖM; SANNINO, 2011; VIRKKUNEN, 2006a, 2006b) de professores de Ensino Médio em serviço, tomando-se como contexto de pesquisa o projeto de formação de professores, LEDA – Leitura e Escrita nas Diferentes Áreas, realizado em escola pública de município da Grande São Paulo. Metodologicamente, está ancorado na Pesquisa Crítica de Colaboração (PCCol) (MAGALHÃES, 2009, 2011, 2012), caracterizada como pesquisa de intervenção com foco na desencapsulação e transformação da aprendizagem escolar, e organizado em encontros quinzenais com 6 professores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento, 1 coordenadora pedagógica da área de Linguagem e 4 pesquisadores da área da Linguística Aplicada. Os encontros de formação focalizam as relações entre os participantes a partir da discussão sobre práticas didático-pedagógicas. Com base na análise dos dados coletados por meio de videogravação, resultados preliminares ressaltam mudanças na significação atribuída pelos participantes a respeito das práticas didático-pedagógicas realizadas em sala de aula e indicam posicionamentos assumidos pelos professores participantes de modo consciente e teoricamente fundamentado, caracterizando o desenvolvimento de agência relacional e transformativa, bem como a emergência de uma prática profissional responsiva.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Colaboração crítica; Pesquisa crítica de colaboração; Agência relacional; Agência transformativa

Introduction

Much has been discussed lately about the role of human beings in understanding and transforming the social context to which they belong and in which they act; much has also been discussed about their own understanding and transformation in this process, influenced by this same context whose transformation occurs because of the same individuals. Studies along this line highlight the relevance of the concept of agency, with authors from various epistemological areas, all of them concerned with transformations provoked on and by human beings in the society in many ways, and often also with different understandings.

Studies have, in different fields, been dedicated to the understanding of how individuals engage in society and how they can perform their roles in such a manner that may provoke transformations for sustainability. In fact, the focus is to think about how the activities in which the human being is involved are organized so as to push them to act with a view to transformations that will affect the future. In this sense, the aim, in every learning activity, is not solely the transformation of the individual, but that of society, precisely by enhancing creative and critical modes of action.

By the same token, agency discussion in the socio-historical-cultural paradigm emphasizes studies of Edwards (2005, 2007), Engeström (2008, 2009), Engeström and Sannino (2011), Virkkunen (2006a), among others, who, above all, emphasize the development of individual agency in collaborative relationships in collective activities, focusing on conflict, and seeking to understand and explain the actions of individuals intended at creating transformation possibilities of the contexts in which they operate.

In this sense, they stress relational agency and transformative agency, whose characteristics emerge from dialogic processes and are aimed at building relationships between participants involved in the activity, focusing on decision-making in complex situations. From these theoretical assumptions and discussions about intervention research that are organized by critical collaboration (MAGALHÃES, 2011, 2012; MAGALHÃES; NININ; LESSA, 2014), considering the educational scope, this study aims at discussing the language that supports the methodological choices for the development of agency of high school teachers in an in-service teacher education project. The specific research context was the teacher education project, LEDA - Reading and Writing in Different Areas (RWDA), held in local public schools of São Paulo. Methodologically anchored in Critical Collaborative Research (PCCol) (MAGALHÃES, 2009, 2011, 2012), characterized as intervention research² focusing on the notions of decapsulation and transformation of school learning, the project is organized in fortnightly meetings with six teachers from different epistemological areas, one pedagogical coordinator of the language and its technologies area and four Applied Linguistics researchers. The teacher education meetings focused on the relationship between the participants triggered by the discussion about the teaching-learning of reading and text production based on the perspective of genres.

The paper is organized to revisit the concept of agency, present an intertwined notion of agency, collaboration, and contradiction, clarify theoretical and methodological assumptions underlying the research and discuss the agency development of teachers participating in RWDA, which, as stated above, is a continuous education project. Closing the paper, a section with remarks regarding the work carried out, the constraints encountered and the emerging prospects of the teacher education project per se.

Revisiting the agency concept

Agency, as previously stated, has been discussed in different epistemological areas, and its origin as a concept is reputed to Giddens (1979), evolving between the 1980s and 1990. Since then, the concept has been revisited and expanded, especially in the last decade, by socio-historical-cultural researchers in the educational field. This perspective highlights the activity system as the place for the occurrence of agency, since that is where interactions occur, and it is this same system that, driven by context and the individuals’ intentional actions, organizes and promotes the interactive activity itself.

In this sense, the idea of agency cannot be understood as any action taken by the individual or the subject, but as an action that is directly related to the social structures in which the activity system is immersed. The subject's actions, intentional and conscious, in their relations to other participants, have repercussions on the transformations that the activity system undergoes. In other words, the agency we are referring to involves intentional and conscious actions, and are overlapped with the collective needs and interests of the subjects of activity. In this respect, Emisbayer and Mische (1998 cited in VIRKKUNEM, 2006a, p. 63) define agency as: “[…] a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past, oriented through evaluation of present toward future possibilities”.

What will happen in the future – i.e., how these future possibilities materialize - will depend on the actions to be taken by the subjects in social relations, but above all, on their ability to control their actions so that they are guided to the transformation of the context. Virkkunen (2006a) states that exercising such control over one's own actions entails the establishment, by the subject, of a direct relationship with the object of the activity and with the others in the activity, its collectivity. Therefore, this control would be linked to the means by which the individual accesses and uses their practical and conceptual tools, bearing in mind the rules and social relations involving the community in which the activity is immersed.

It is from this discussion that Virkkunen (2006a, p.66,) re-discusses agency, conceptualizing it as a hybrid, “[…] based on an amalgamation of different activity systems that retain their specific objects and logic and their specific ways of reproduction, although the objects of these activities overlap.” Agency has this hybrid character, when the subject evaluates the present time from both the individual and the collective perspectives, and guides future actions by linking two activity systems. Collaboration, in this agency context, is long term and takes place between at least two systems, which aim at preserving their identities in the collaborative work, but also seek to articulate the differences, coordinating them.

By addressing educational contexts, such as the investigation reported here, the focus falls on the work of teachers and, in this aspect, Engeström (1987) already pointed out that all work activity is organized around an object that is considered the real motive for the activity. Complementing this idea, in subsequent studies, Engeström and Sannino (2011) draw attention to the fact that the object and the contradictions that accompany it have the power to generate agency. In this regard, Hekkila and Seppanen also (2014, p.7) emphasize:

This means that although a work community is understood as a collective working on a certain object, every individual employee has their own relationship to the work: every individual creates their personal sense of this meaning and object. Thus, the changes in work and especially its object may be experienced differently by different employees.

Engeström and Sannino's Studies, in several different investigations, have led to the emergence of different types of agency. Resulting from the above discussion that presupposes the agency immersed within an activity system, we seek to discuss the transformative agency which, according to Engeström (2011), emerges during the processes of educational intervention, precisely what occurs in the context of critical-collaborative teacher education considered in the investigation presented here.

Transformative agency is here understood as the ability of the subjects to consciously expand/alter their professional activity to discuss complex issues in the community (EDWARDS, 2007, 2011; ENGESTRÖM and SANNINO, 2011). In this perspective, the transformative agency emerges from the displays of contradictions, i.e., displays of conflicts and dilemmas experienced by the subjects when involved in collective activities. Engeström (2013) also emphasizes that transformative agency should be understood not as a single action by the subject, but as a very specific set of actions that potentially trigger a transformation in the collective. He, therefore, identifies six categories of transformative agency that emerge during the participation of subjects in an activity system, as shown in the following table.

Table 1 Categories of transformative agency

Category	Example (linguistic marks)
Resistance to change, to new suggestions and initiatives; attitude of rejection addressed to management, co-workers or the teacher educator.	No, that was not quite what I said. That's what you say…
Criticism to the activity in process and its organization; They are intended at identifying problems in the current conduction of the work.	In my opinion, this will not work if we do it that way. I think that the coordinator should have done it differently…
Clarification of new possibilities or potential possibilities in the activity, relating positive past experiences/successful practices.	That's interesting; then we could perhaps do it like this…
Prediction of new models/patterns in the activity, with suggestions for the future of the activity.	If we could do it like this, perhaps the students would take an interest in the work.
Commitment to actions so as to make them concrete and change the activity.	(Conscious and voluntary speech acts) I'm very interested in this … I could arrange this…
Action to change the activity throughout its development.	I've already changed some things. I'm already doing that.

Source: Adapted from Haapasaari, Engeström and Kerosuo (2014, p.5) and Engeström (2011).

It is also worth mentioning the type of agency that is called relational agency which, as discussed by Edwards (2007), involves the subject's ability to offer and request support for other subjects, engaging with the world through actions that take into account the positions of other participants in interactions. In this sense, the subjects’ actions always occur in relation to those of others. From the researcher's point of view,

[…] the concept is intended to capture a capacity to align one's thoughts and actions with those of others to interpret aspects of one's world and to act on and respond to those interpretations. In CHAT terms [Cultural Historical Activity Theory] it is a capacity to work with others to expand the object that one is working on by bringing to bear the sense-making of others and to draw on the resources they offer when responding to that sense-making. (EDWARDS, 2007, p.4).

It is this relational agency that helps us understand how the subjects enter the tasks that are proposed to them in an activity system and how they negotiate meanings to reshape both the tasks and the activity itself. In this regard, the relational agency focuses both on learning as a result of individual actions in the construction of social relations and on the transformation that the learning resulting from these relationships can cause to the collective context. More effectively, relational agency “[…] involves an ability to work with others to strengthen purposeful answers to complex problems” (EDWARDS, 2011, p.34).

Expanding this discussion, we turn to Edwards (2007, p.13) that, when describing relational agency as a joint action on an object within the activity, emphasizes the following:

• The possibility of contesting interpretations of the object, while working within sets of professional values;

• The mobility, or changing nature, of the object;

• The fluidity of relationships: collaborations may be with different people and relationships may shift within the action;

• The location of joint action within systems that are able to deal with expanding understandings of the object;

• That expanding objects occur within coevolving systems.

The development of relational agency occurs through the subject's knowledge harnessing and depends on the ability they have to work collaboratively with the knowledge that is shared by the activity subjects – as well as that which is distinct. Thus, the greater the difference between the subjects, the higher the requirements in terms of conscious actions that they should take, and also the more significant the movement towards dealing with the contradictions in the activity system.

Edwards (2011, p. 34) highlights the fact that when new ideas are not too far from the expertise needed for a particular practice, the more easily the subjects will put into practice their “relational agency”. However, in situations where specific knowledge is more elaborate, more complex, one may need to “transform it” in order to make it more accessible to the individuals. In other words, and relating to the focus of the research reported here, Edwards's argument suggests that “[…] the construction of common knowledge that allows the rapid transfer or favors the understanding is an important prerequisite for fast and responsive relational work.” (EDWARDS 2011, p.34).

Therefore, considering the importance of working, in education sessions, with knowledge that is validated by all participants, the efforts of the teacher educator participants to create spaces for discussion of shared knowledge are important because they favor the development of the subject and create opportunities for the development of relational agency when dealing with more complex situations, as stated above.

Relational agency, as emphasized by Edwards (2007), can serve different purposes at different times of professional development. In initial education, for example, it can mean sharing interpretations of existing problems in the professional context. This confirms the existence - which cannot be seen as negative – of actions of resistance and criticism since it is through discussions involving problems that negotiations of meaning take place. It is precisely in these discussion contexts that the ability of the individuals to work with others, albeit in controversial situations involving explicitly showing resistance and differences, no longer is considered a weakness, but is seen as a tool driving negotiation and the search for consensual sharing for the development of the professional activity. Furthermore, from the findings of Edwards (2007) in this regard, we emphasize that these situations collaborate to reducing actions that only indicate the “following” of orders or prescriptions by the subjects.

In dialogue: agency, collaboration and contradiction

As discussed by Virkkunen (2006a) and Edwards (2007), the questioning and transformation of action patterns historically valued in a context involve collaborative participation, but also require criticism from participants with a view to producing a new policy framework. Based on Kotter (1996), Virkkunen (2006b, p.43) points out that the concept of agency implies a form of collaboration that “crosses organizational boundaries already established”. In other words, it is necessary for the collaborative participation to involve organizations that question routine senses and meanings and the socially-historically established relationships that underpin them.

The discussion of agency in teacher education activities in schools contexts, following critical educational framework research, as carried out by us (MAGALHAES, 2011, 2012; MAGALHÃES; NININ; LESSA, 2014), centrally involves a discussion of the concepts of collaboration and contradiction in the dialectical organization of language, which allows the interweaving of participants’ voices for the production of new ways of thinking and acting. The focus is on the involvement of the participants to actually listen and act with each other, not as neutral observers, but as active agents in taking shared decisions, by questioning practices and theories for the construction of the new. As pointed out by Freire (1978), this is a pedagogy of dialogue that is built through questions and answers organized by the language of argumentation. This discursive organization may enable the construction of critical collaboration areas for understanding needs, gaps in teaching and learning, and socio-historically produced senses and meanings, aimed at involving the school as a whole in its reorganization (NININ, 2011).

As discussed in other texts (MAGALHÃES; OLIVEIRA, 2016), collaboration, as well as contradiction, are primarily philosophical constructs that organize collective experiences through which human beings are constituted and constantly transformed and, likewise, create and transform their action contexts. Collaborating is this process of building with others in which subjects work together to understand and transform themselves, and each other, in their collective context of action and the world. As Ninin (2013) and Magalhães (2014, p.25-26) point out, collaboration involves:

• creating an environment of trust and respect between participants, where, they intentionally listen to each other and - based on values and needs, fears, knowledge, the unknown, doubts, conflicts, emotions, problematic issues, agreements, and differences - disagree from each other and rethink themselves;

• developing commitment and responsibility for conducting the project;

• building productive mutuality and interdependence, in order to develop a transforming shared perspective that may question differences, agreements, and disagreements so as to promote the joint achievement of negotiated outcomes;

• sharing other ways of thinking, allowing for the expansion of their own understandings;

• creating contexts in which language is dialogically and dialectically organized, i.e., organized by means of argumentation;

• sharing theories and proposals about the reorganization of practices and social activities;

• allowing everyone the chance to speak, to deepen ideas and points of view, to question the senses attributed to the focused concepts, to ask for clarification, explain ideas and understandings about the object in question, to disagree, resume or complement ideas, describe experiences as means to link theory to practice and enable sharing of new meanings, which would not be possible without the support of colleagues;

• creating contexts in which cognitive and affective conflicts are not separated and lead to mutual internalization (JOHN STEINER, 2000), in which:

  • ○

    the participants are responsive to the actions of others and responsible for their own choices;

  • ○

    the agency's expansion is a result of the dialectical internalizing and externalizing processes as part of the joint discussion about senses and the sharing of meanings;

  • ○

    the dialectical relationship between individual and social processes for knowledge construction can be created, promoting the understanding of contradictions between senses that are socio-historically and culturally produced (VYGOTSKY - based on Marx and Engels) and create conflicts and tensions.

It is important to note that the understanding of the collaborative relationship, as defined in this paper, differs from the concept of cooperation that, to our mind, does not involve a relationship of partnership, negotiation of senses and meanings for the production and expansion of the activity under discussion. Although for many researchers (FULLAN; HARGREAVES, 2000), collaboration and cooperation are synonymous.

The discussion about contradiction is recovered by Engeström and Sannino (2011) as a central philosophical construct in Marx's discussion of the dialectical method, in terms of the existence of opposing trends in the development of a phenomenon. Contradiction is, in fact, the basis of the Marxist dialectics. Taking into account Engeström's and Sannino's (2011, p.370) point of view, contradiction cannot be understood as synonymous to “[…] paradox, tension, inconsistency, conflict, disagreement, dilemma, which, in turn, can be understood as manifestations of contradictions […]” because the contradiction relationship is immersed in the context of “its actual historical development.”

In this regard, the contradictions between/in human actions cannot be resolved through combinations and balance of competing priorities. In this paper, the various discursive displays of systemic contradictions are analyzed by means of linguistic-discursive clues, in the analysis of the utterance situation that situates participants as historically constituted subjects enabling the understanding of the dynamics of organizational transformations and agency development in the relations. Thus, we are guided by the discussions proposed by Bronckart (1999) – whose studies are more specifically anchored on Adam (Elements of textual linguistics) – when he highlights that the utterance mechanisms are the ones that, besides contributing to the establishment of pragmatic coherence in the text, allow us to understand the interlocutors’ judgements, opinions, and feelings by means of voice management in interaction situations, expressions and meanings of modalization.

Based on the writings of Vygotsky (1987), we believe collaboration and contradiction to be socio-historically and culturally situated relations, and fundamental in the process through which we become who we are. This process of becoming who we are is established through a complex relationship between the individual and the collective, which involves active participation for the transformation of the self, the other and the world. As already pointed out, the understanding of how participants act to build critical-collaborative relationships is key in this paper, since this may enable everyone to act towards/in the joint production of the object under construction in the focused Activity, the focused concept the actions that supported what has been accomplished.

Therefore, this involves the recognition that a person can be a resource to another, as pointed out by Edwards (2007, 2011), when discussing relational agency, in the negotiation process, in which each participant acts as support for others, whilst understanding and jointly producing new ways of thinking and acting in relation to the questions posed, and to the methodological choices and the theory that supports them. This includes: the senses of being an educator based on theoretical and methodological discussions in today's society, in relation to the focused socio-cultural and historical contexts; expectations about who the students are and about their learning and development possibilities; and the interpretation of the needs and issues of concern indicated by the participants in these relationships. In this framework, the concept of relational agency is quite relevant for the understanding of negotiation development and of the progress of transformative agency in the actions of participants whilst producing new knowledge.

In Engeström and Sannino (2011), we find the manifestations of contradictions:

Table 2 Manifestation of contradiction categories

Manifestation of contradiction categories	Examples (language marks)
Dilemma: characterized by everyday thinking, related to socially shared beliefs, that brings out the individual dilemma. The issues are, in this view, reproduced/reformulated and unresolved.	(Marked by hesitations, pauses, on the one hand… on the other hand… yes, but…) ○ Ex.: It is / it is / yes / we have seen that this is happening in class, but we cannot change now. We need to state it here / it is / here / on the didactic sequence / uhn / these skills because this MUST be registered here, you know?
Conflict: takes the form of resistance, disagreement, argument and criticism; It occurs when a person feels negatively affected by the judgment of another or a group because of any conflict of interest; the resolution occurs when the subject acts in terms of submission, or of a dominant third-party, or commitment, or impasse, or retreat.	(The strongest mark is that of denial: no, I do not agree with…; this is not true; no it's not like that…) ○ Ex.: Teacher educator: But it does not seem to us that teachers are so comfortable with that / with this task / as you say… Coordinator: Yes / No / it was not quite like this that I put it to them. But you see / I / I just asked them to do the didactic sequences because / it is / because if we leave it out to them, they would not be doing any of that. I do impose, yes, because they need to do it, but it is not in the sense / to force them.
Critical conflict: situations where the subject is facing internal doubts that paralyze them in the contradictory insoluble issues they cannot solve by themselves; there is a silencing of the subject due to a guilty feeling; the situation is considered impossible or unintelligible.	(Linguistic marks that characterize emotion, personal issues, morals, that are presented by means of the narrative structure and the use of strong metaphors, the participant seeks to find a new personal sense for the situation; it takes the form of personal liberation or emancipation) ○ Ex.: Participating teacher: Look / do not give up working with us, okay? We're still at preschool level (laughs)
Double bind: cases in which the subjects repeatedly face seemingly hopeless situations, which tend to worsen, generating explosive crises for the subject.	(Rhetorical questions that indicate urgent need to do something, but at the same time, this something seems to be impossible; desperate questions like “what can we do?” appear with a sense of urgency; transition from individual self to the collective, expressions of helplessness) ○ Ex.: Participating teacher: You have even already explained to me how to do this in class, right?/ You have talked quite a lot about that, but I think that we still don't know how to do it. I keep thinking, “how can we do this / provoke this discussion during class?”…

Source: Adapted from Engeström e Sannino (2011, p.373-374).

The authors explain these events, highlighting their importance for data analysis in research. They propose an analogy:

We may think of the analysis of contradictions in discourse data as similar to the peeling of an onion. The outer layer of the onion consists of rudimentary linguistic cues, that is, simple expressions such as ‘but’ and ‘no’, or somewhat more vague but still relatively straightforward forms like narratives seasoned with metaphors and rhetorical questions. Going through and identifying them may help us to locate potential discursive manifestations. For example, clusters of ‘buts’ may lead us to dilemmas, and clusters of ‘we’ may lead us to conflicts.

This does not mean that rudimentary linguistic cues correspond mechanically to specific manifestations. Clearly a ‘but’ can express many other things besides a dilemma, and a rhetorical question is certainly not always a sign of a double bind. (ENGESTRÖM; SANNINO, 2011, p. 374).

Engeström and Sannino (2011) also warn readers of the fact that one cannot carry out linguistic analysis that is closed in itself; there will be situations where more rudimentary indicators may reveal much more than a dilemma - a contradiction, perhaps – much in the same way that a rhetorical question does not always indicate double binding. In this sense, it is important to note that the analysis cannot be separated from the socio-historical context in which the activity takes place; besides, the historicity of each subject involved cannot be ignored.

Collaboration categories are stressed below as per the definition provided in this paper, i.e., differing from the concept of cooperation. Also, the linguistic marks found in collaborative interactions are provided, as discussed by Ninin (2016, p.186-188).

Table 3 Collaboration patterns and its realization in argumentative perspective³

Pattern	Subject's Action	Participating characteristic	Linguistic-discursive marks that either expand or constrict collaboration and argumentation3
Responsiveness	Subject sustains one's own participation and that of the other, with a view to responding, either through action or reflection. Asking or answering imply considering the other's answer or question as mediating artifact for one's own development; it involves engaging with the other's response.	The participant details points of view seeking connection with others.	– Declarative sentences that mark not only the presentation of points of view, but also the resuming of voices from other participants ○ Ex.: Relating to what you said… / Considering what you said, what I think is… – Mechanisms of assumptions and implied meanings that can function as modifiers of the argumentation movement; ○ Ex.: The teachers who read the Argumentative Sentences [AS] before our discussion are better organized to discuss them (it is assumed that there are teachers who do not read the AS before the discussion). – Questioning mechanisms, presenting questions at pragmatic, argumentative and epistemic dimensions; ○ Ex.: Does what you have said have anything to do with what Vygotsky means when he discusses…? (Epistemic Perspective) ○ Ex.: Can we relate what you have said to what she said? how? (Argumentative perspective, pragmatic or epistemic nature) – Conversational mechanisms that mark the participation of the subjects; ○ Ex.: We usually do it like this… (participant's choice for collective voice, which supports his/her action) – Voices distribution mechanisms that mark the subject's implication (involvement) in the discourse (person of speech, direct, indirect or free speeches) and indicate the responsibility of the utterer in relation to what is said; ○ Ex.: I think that… / We consider… / We usually do… / They do it like this… / It says here: “such and such…” – Voice distribution mechanisms, marking the subject's initiative to submit views; ○ Ex.: I think that… / In the activity that [I] have developed, this happened… / About what you've said, I think … – Appraisement mechanisms that mark the subject's evaluation of the matter being discussed; ○ Ex.: It was a good activity (adjectives of appreciation) / I did not like it (expression with derogatory value) / questions that discredit the participant's point of view. – Verbal mechanisms of cohesion that allow us to see the nature of the positions presented in terms of temporality (sometimes referring to the moment of speech, and others referring to the act of speech production), the aspectuality (referring to the internal time in which the situation occurs) and the types of processes (verbal, material, mental, relational, existential, behavioral); ○ Ex.: We do this kind of activity (present tense with generalizing meaning, can refer to the act of speech production or to a reference axis – teacher's actions) / We did this activity (past tense relating to the reference axis - the actual action by the teachers) / When I did this activity in my actual classes, I used five lessons to discuss this issue with students. / I would think about doing an activity with images (mental process, which expresses an action only within the mental realization) / I write comments on students’ activities (material process, indicative of concrete practice - that can also be an effective practice of the participant or can indicate a generalization of their actions). – Lexical mechanisms related to lexical choices and how they are discursively articulated; ○ Ex.: This exercise that analyzes the images I find interesting and I've used it several times because students like it (lexical choice that refers to daily knowledge or scientific knowledge) – Nominal cohesion mechanisms, that allow for the identification of the modes of connection between the arguments; ○ Ex.: About what you've just said, I think… (anaphoric constructions to recover previous speeches) / Let's discuss what she said. What do you think of… – Voice distribution mechanisms, marking the implication of the subject in discourse; – Modalization mechanisms that mark the truth, probability and mandatory conditions (logic modalization); righteousness (deontic modality); trial results (appreciatively modalization) and capacity (pragmatic modalization); aimed at easing relations of asymmetry and resistance; ○ Ex.: You can do this activity, but not even like this… (meaning you have permission to) / what you did was nice (indicator of action judgment) – Coherence mechanisms, marking the chain of ideas (through linking words that indicate cause / consequence, restriction / concession, opposition / contrast, explanation, justification, exemplification, conclusion); aiming at the articulation of points of view; ○ Ex.: In this sense, this means that… / However, this task doesn't represent…
Deliberation	The subject takes initiative to seek for consensus based on arguments. Asking implies knowing the reason for asking a given question to the other (conscious act), it implies the intention to engage in the interaction, in the asking and answering game.	The participant makes arguments clearly, explicit; supports one's points of views.
Alterity	The subject considers one's point of view in relation to that of the other. Asking implies knowing the other and, in this perspective, what is asked is never something the other has no means of answering. The expected/requested response cannot be pre-established by the person who poses the question.	The participant is discursively articulated in moments of interaction, distancing oneself from personal positions to understand the others’ points of view.
Weighing	The subject abandons personal positions in favor of collective interests; balanced participation. Asking implies considering oneself part of a group and therefore weighing the knowledge needs of the group.	The participant acknowledges and puts forward for discussion both diverging and converging positions, aiming at expansion.
Mutuality	The subject ensures pronouncement and participation spaces. Asking implies considering every and any response as a means to boost reasoning. From this perspective, there is no “wrong answer”.	The participant considers any participation as legitimate.
Interdependence	the subject takes into account the essentially dialogic and polyphonic nature of interaction processes. Asking implies considering one's own knowledge as unfinished or susceptible to changes due to the several voices that crisscross the speech of responding interlocutors.	The participant ensures the presence and the interweaving of different discursive voices in interactions.

Source:Ninin (2016, p.186-188).

The following figure summarizes what happens to the subjects when immersed in an activity system, and highlights the relationship between historicity (contradictions), agency and collaboration.

In interaction situations throughout the investigation process, participants (both researcher and members of the researched context) impact each other. Because they were historically constituted differently, the interlocution between them occurs by the confrontation of points of view, confrontation of knowledge, bringing to the fore the sociohistorically situated contradictions that are discursively manifested by means of several levels of conflicts and dilemmas, thus provoking the subjects and pushing them to exercise agency. Agency, in turn, is displayed by criticism and resistance, in its initial stage, progressing to the individual's commitment not only to the other with whom they interact but also to themselves and the context, in a collective perspective, aiming at transformation. Critically-collaboratively characterized, this type of action by the subject is supported by attitudes of responsiveness, alterity, deliberation, mutuality, weighing and interdependence – all of which are carried out by and in the discourse, taking into account the enunciative, linguistic and discursive spheres.

Theoretical and methodological assumptions

The concept of agency, as discussed here, involves a theoretical and methodological framework in which individual and collective learning and development are embedded in a social and historical context permeated by tensions and conflicts mainly triggered by contradictions arising from the clash between traditional theories and practices and new possibilities brought to the discussion. Thus, the movements of collaboration and contradiction in the organization of relations in the teacher education context are central to the understanding of teachers’ agency development in the mutual and intentional production of the focused activity object.

Thus, methodologically, this paper is based on the Critical Collaboration Research framework (PCCol) (MAGALHÃES, 2009, 2011, 2012), characterized as educational intervention research (ENGESTRÖM, 2011), focusing on the decapsulation and transformation of school learning, guided by crisis, unpredictability, humility, vulnerability, deliberation and creativity.

Why do we state that PCCol is an educational intervention type of research focusing on the decapsulation and transformation of school learning? When we analyze this methodology as interventionist, we emphasize the idea that this education intervention – collaborative in nature – “[…] seeks evidence of maturing psychological functions and considers that the individual can only make the most of these interventions because his/her developing functions recognize the assistance received by means of intervention.” (NININ, 2017). As pointed out by Virkkunen and Schaupp (2011, p.634), educational intervention “is a specific mode of collaboration projected to boost development even further”. This educational movement occurs in situations in which participants are provoked to critically look at their own actions, which causes a rupture of in their learning modes – motivated by the critical collaborative language organization in the relations. As stated by Engeström (2002, p.191), this expansive perspective breaks learning encapsulation – a phenomenon that we have been calling learning decapsulation –, thus favoring the expansion of the activity object and its transformation beyond the school context.

Theoretical-methodological choices concentrate on the organization of a collective process of involvement and transformation in search of critical collaborative solutions that are shared and may allow for learning and development of all the participants.

As already noted, the analysis and discussion of the interaction relations created and the development of agency by the participants of the school community are included in the RWDA Project, whose goal is to create teacher education spaces in the school context so that the school, understood as a learning community, may understand and transform their actions. The project is organized in fortnightly meetings with six teachers from different epistemological areas, one pedagogical coordinator from de Brazilian educational macro-area of Language and its Technologies and four researchers from the field of Applied Linguistics. Teacher education meetings have a duration of one hour and thirty minutes – as part of a weekly period reserved for the school's collective teacher education – called Collective Pedagogical Work Time (HTPC)⁴ – and focus on the relationship between the participants triggered by the discussion about the teaching-learning of reading and text production from the perspective of discourse genres. All meetings are filmed and/or audio recorded and transcribed (following the coordinates of the Ethics Committee at PUC-SP) for analysis and discussion. Prior to formal analysis, the data produced in each teacher education meeting are presented to the participants, in discussion and study sessions, for action clarification as well as their theoretical basis. After this moment, the data are formally analyzed by the researchers – who sign this paper. Data from this meeting were analyzed based on linguistic categories, closely related to (1) the socio-historical context in which the activity is immersed, and (2) the historicity of each subject involved, contributing to the understanding of how collaborative relationships can create relational agency contexts so that conflicts, tensions, dilemmas are focused, reflected upon and lead all participants involved (school members and university researchers) to learning and development of transformative agencies.

All excerpts analyzed here come from the same date (April 4^th, 2016), whose focal point was the researcher's return to the school in order to discuss the continuity of the project and its organization. The discussions of the meeting carried out on April 4th focus on decisions taken for the development of teacher education work based on understandings of the two participating groups - the school members and the teacher educators. They mainly address the aspects that are considered important by the teachers and the coordinator for the continuity of the teacher education project.

Agency Development

Four teacher educators attended the selected meeting (F1, F2, F3 and F4), as well as five teachers (Arts -A, Portuguese – P1 and P2; Physical Education - PE; Reading Room teacher - R) and a pedagogical coordinator (C). The meeting was organized around a proposal by the school's general coordination, aimed at developing a guiding document for schoolteachers, called didactic sequence, whose methodological framework follows the theory discussed by João Luiz Gasparin, in the book “Uma Didática para a Pedagogia Hiatórico-Crítica” [A Curriculum for Historical-Critical Pedagogy] (GASPARIN, 2013).

According to Gasparin, who takes Vygotsky's theoretical frame as the basis for the discussions on knowledge construction, educational actions are organized from the Content Initial Social Practice (PSI); a Moment of Challenge or Problematization, Instrumentalization and Catharsis; and Final Social Practice of the Content (PSF). The continuing teacher education has given priority to discussions that link this methodology to the teaching materials used at the school (“Student Notebooks” and “Teacher Notebooks” / Curriculum Proposed by the State of São Paulo⁵). The teacher session chosen to be discussed in this paper specifically focused a conversation with the school participants on how they have worked with this methodological proposal.

Initially, we chose passages in which participating teachers explicitly criticize the activity being developed, marking one of the transformative agency categories. However, as we show in Figure 1, criticism, attitudes of resistance, among other factors, mark the position of the individual that, somehow, reflects a contradiction – manifested by conflicts, dilemmas, critical conflicts or attitudes that indicate a double bind – concealed in the subject's core. Let us observe:

Figure 1
Constitution of Subjects in the Activity System: contradictions, agency and collaboration

Excerpt 1 ⁶

A₃: So, because I've gotten to the point that I went into C's room and said ‘I'm discovering that I do not know how to teach’ // because all that I did in my post-graduation course, everything that I studied // Ah! I am so stupid / so because / and then C said ‘calm down, calm down [laughs] I will help you [laughs] calm down’ do you understand? Because, well, what the others say, also say, because all I will do as an Art reinterpreting is complicated, it is bound by the sequence [didactic sequence], so I never know how far I can go. ‘The student is asking me; I cannot answer now; he's busy; I can't […]’. P1₁: What Gasparin proposes also gives some guidance // But honestly, I feel a little trapped by it. C observed a lesson of mine, she saw that I was following the sequence and immediately skipped to another part, then I came back, […] C saw that ‘I messed up and now what?’ [laughs] I was like ‘so what am I going to do?’

The Art and the Portuguese Teachers criticize the organization of the activity, identifying a problem in it that manifests itself through conflict, linguistically marked by negations (I cannot teach / I never know how far I can go / I cannot answer now / I messed up, and now what?). While discussing complex issues during the teacher education sessions – some of which make the participants feel vulnerable, and yet, they choose to reveal their insecurities – these participants show evidence of transformative agency, because every discussion collectively enhances the changes in professional practice or, at least enhances the importance of discussing professional practice in a guided and grounded manner.

In P1₁, we see a discursive display that highlights a dilemma experienced by the participant (marked by the coordinating conjunction denoting contrast, “but”), however modalized (I feel a little trapped). This demonstration may indicate collaboration, in the sense that it shows weighting, appraisal, because when the participant modalizes, she appears to be holding a position which is common to the other participants, and especially to the educational coordinator, i.e., that it is necessary to document the pedagogical practice in the school, even if it interferes with the practice, often “putting it on a plaster cast”.

Excerpt 2

P2₂: The didactic sequence is very good; it helps a lot. We research a lot. The comfort zone doesn't exist at all here; // everything changes; every meeting, something new happens. Then, / I think that often this paperwork takes a lot from the educational [work]. We waste a lot of time filling out so much paperwork, while we could be preparing another lesson; doing things differently. Sometimes, I prepare the sequence, and send it to C well in advance with this fear of making a mistake. Because, sometimes, the PSI does not fit the content that you are going to work. It's difficult to find something. You study and go back, and read Gasparin again and make changes. There are lessons that I've modified 8 or 9 times because they don't work: ‘How am I going to do the first moment with the student? How am I going to do this?’ So, it is this part, you know? We end up wasting a lot of time in the bureaucratic filling out of paper/[…] […] P2₄: Yeah, something like that happens, because sometimes it makes you want to cry, you know? You feel desperate. You think that everything is working out, and it is not;, and you think, ‘Wow, my God, what now? Everything has to have a command; it must be so, why am I evaluating like this? Why am I doing this?’ There are times that not even I know. I gave them the critical review and asked them to rewrite it. I know that some of them did what they had to do; they got it. […] When I started the correction, I drew up a command with 10 items; then I realized that I had failed in that command. Then I prepared the command to present the methodology, and I also realized this failure. I said, ‘Gee, look at what I am evaluating!’ F1₁: But what is the idea of ‘failed’? What does ‘failed’ mean? P2₅: For example, they presented. Then // they talked about the author's biography; I did not put the item biography. In the poem presentation, I did not put // the intervention. I wrote down some things; others I could not. So, I failed in this part. I did a very good job with them, but I failed at the time of/ how am I going to evaluate this? Do you see? Because I have started to be critical in this part, too. ‘Am I doing it right? And now, oh! My God?’ I will wrong him because I think he didn't do a nice job?

In this excerpt, the contradiction occurred through conflict and double bind: the participant explains repeated situations that apparently, for her, have no way out. They seem to show a tendency to worsen, and we see P2 start with criticism of the work being developed (I think that often this paperwork takes a lot from the educational [work]. We waste a lot of time filling out paperwork), identifying problems in the following up of the activity, but continuing with the presentation of a narrative of her actions, pervaded with rhetorical questions (How am I going to do the first moment with the student; how am I going to do this./ Wow, my God, what now? Everything has to have a command; it must be so; why am I evaluating like this? Why am I doing this?) and transitions from the individual self to a collective us (I think / we waste / I do / does not fit the content that you are going to work / you study / I've modified / we end up wasting), though mainly keeping the focus on the I to highlight the crisis that she now faces in her professional activity. The conflict becomes evident when we see the denial in the discourse of the participant (didn't put / could not do / do not think he did/how am I going to evaluate this?), indicating an agency movement that, in a way, characterizes her awareness about the activity being development. As discussed by Engeström and Sannino (2011), these manifestations of contradiction move the activity and drive the development of agency, precisely because they are shared by the subjects, that do not seem to be paralyzed by the complexity of their contexts.

Excerpt 3

P1₁₂: But I just think the catharsis comes, sometimes even in the PSI. Even when they already know what they are talking about, from their experiences, they just did not know the theory, right? But their practice tells them that they already know. F3₂₃: So what's bothering you is that, if catharsis happens in the PSI stage, it is out of the line, right? x, y, z… F1₂: Do you mind that? P1₁₃: No. In this case, I don't. It bothers me when I get out [of the order], ME! When I'm doing the PSI and during the PSI, I have already asked a question that was supposed to problematization and not PSI, do you understand? Working on his [the student's] world knowledge, there is a problem there already, in that moment and I go back and stay there, you see? PSI, problematization, PSI, problematization … F3₂₄: But when the student gets out [of the order], you like it! P1₁₄: Oh, I think it's perfect. (laughs).

From the perspective of relational agency, we see in this excerpt, a participating teacher who is struggling between an actual possibility for knowledge building, which took place in her lesson, and a prescription triggered by the methodology that guides their teaching practices. In P1₃₁, the participant presents a critical conflict that could have ended with her silencing or becoming distant, precisely because she had to face a problem that she understood as seemingly hopeless (It bothers me when I get out [of the order], ME! / there is a problem there already, in that moment and I go back and stay there, you see?). What we see, however, is that, driven by a question (Do you mind that?) and by an embedded assessment inserted in the argument by a participating researcher (But when the student gets out [of order], you like it!) the participating teacher reveals a break, a rupture with the prescriptive model. In this sense, we see the relational agency in P1: a way of acting that can serve as support to other participants for the understanding of pedagogical practices and of the activity system. It is in this regard that relational agency becomes an instrument for the development of transformative agency.

Excerpt 4

A₁₂: […] So, for me, it is distressing because it's something new, something I do not know if I'm right or not. Do you see? From the moment that I'll get ‘Hey, is this teaching sequence right?’ Then / Am I on the right track?! Then, inside the classroom, I'll be able to know if I'm going to one side or the other if the student gave me opening or not. Like today, for example, in the 2nd year. They had to say to me/I was already in the questioning [problematization]/say to me the theater genres. And / they were making a poster. They made the poster, and they had to show it to me, to make sure that they understood correctly. I had a group that went to present to me, and they said: they took the poster in front of the class and said [to the class] ‘What do you think of this picture?’ // I said [thought] ‘my God, poor students’ they kept asking the others so that the others could / I mean, they're so conditioned / what I'm seeing, what I realize now / [is that] they are so conditioned to the PSI (laughs) / to ask the question that they asked the question to the others and I said [thought], ‘Lord, now what?’ F2₂₉: But isn't it good to ask others questions? A₁₃: It's good, but // what was being proposed? I wanted them to identify TO ME the theater genres. The tragedy and comedy through words and through images. So they had to show TO ME what the group // F2₃₀: THEY had to do the task. A₁₄: Yes. No. // They wanted the rest of the classroom (laughs) F3₃₃: They were teaching a lesson. F2₃₁: They were teaching a lesson and began at the PSI (laughs) ((Overlapping voices)) F3₃₄: I think it's fantastic // the student is doing something cool and / second: you point out something important. Perhaps the pressure of all of you with the PSI is so big, so focused on it that the student is thinking, suddenly, that this is what matters. And then? How will you link things so that they don't see only this focus? // But it's really cool this. ((Overlapping voices)) C₁₃: Did students answer what they saw? A₁₅: (laughs) yes, they did (laughs) […] F1₃: The question is the following// you said that it bothered you to realize that students were reproducing what the teacher does. And you think that does not happen in other schools where you have worked. The other students did not reproduce what the teacher does / no. What did the other students (in the 24 and half years that you worked) do? // F3₃₅: When you gave this activity?! A₁₆: They did not reach this focus. F1₄: What did they do? Tell us. A₁₇: They took the poster to the front of the class and said “so this is here” “we understood it like this, and this, and so on…” F1₅: Well, they went there and showed / for whom / what did they understand?! A₁₈: they showed to me, not to the other students. F1₆: Ah! That was the question that I wanted to ask. F2₃₃: (laughs) Yeah, I also wanted to get there (laughs) F3₃₆: Which of the two things did you like best // of the things that happened? A₁₉: What did I like? F3₃₇: Yeah. A₂₀: Well, I liked what the group presented, but I said: “and now, how am I going to intervene there?” F1₇: Oh, your doubt is about what YOU have to do now with this new situation?

In this excerpt, we highlight the moment when the discussion focused on a teacher beginning her participation in the project, in her first meeting with the group. The teacher's opening - before people that, until then, were unknown to her - explaining her views can even be understood as a reflection of the actions of the group of teachers, since, though this was her first contact with the teacher educators, in meetings held in the school only between teachers, the teacher educators - researchers had already been introduced to this teacher. We may have, as researchers, built with participating teachers a relationship of trust, so much so that they referred to us as a partner or as people who study with them, or even as people who allow them to say what they think and feel without the evaluation perspective.

The report reveals to us an agentive behavior from the part of the participating teacher, a behavior marked by critical conflict, through a narrative that shows her inner doubts, in a situation that seems like a dead end to her (do not know if I'm right or not / if I go to one side or the other, if the student will give me opening or not). Besides it shows the double bind, essentially marked by a dialogue with herself (I said “my God, poor students “) and marked by rhetorical questions (I said “Lord, what now?” / but I said “and now, how am I going to intervene there?”). This attitude from the part of the teacher affects the development of the group, because, as she explains her point of view, she offers the group a tool to advance the understanding of the methodology under discussion. The questions and mediation by the teacher educators are also seen as instruments to broaden this understanding. This type of agency helps us to understand the reconfiguration tasks (ENGESTRÖM; MIDDLETON, 1996). As argued by the authors, the relational agency occupies a conceptual space between keeping the focus on learning as strengthening for individual understanding and keeping the focus on learning as systemic change.

Seen in these terms, we understand the relational agency as a trigger for the transformative agency as it can evolve from individual to collective questions. Edwards also emphasizes the fact that relational agency is characterized by a sense of mutual responsibility, i.e., the agency but a step towards the development of “a mesh of mutual responsibilities” (EDWARDS, 2007, p.6) that somehow invades the professional group, interfering with the understanding of the participants. A's attitude – contesting the object of the activity, or at least explaining her strangeness with regards to it, her difficulty to understand it and her criticism as to the status of the activity, while working within a set of prescribed professional values – supported by the other positions presented by members of the group and encouraged by the mediation of the teacher educators - indicates the development of relational agency and, as a consequence, that of the transformative agency too.

In conclusion

As initially shown, this paper aimed at discussing the language of critical collaboration in the development of high school teachers’ agencies in a context of continuing education focused on the decapsulation of school learning. We have discussed the concepts of collaboration and contradiction as enhancers of development of agency. The analysis of collaborative and contradiction movements found in the discursive events of participating teachers and teacher educators has revealed features of relational agency as enabling the development of transformative agency for the understanding of the complexity of the teacher education activity as an object.

The discursive events in the form of dilemmas, conflicts, critical conflicts and double bind situations have enabled the school participants and researchers to: (a) realize the difficulties in understanding the theoretical basis of the approach prescribed by the school – Gasparin Methodology; (B) identify the levels of understanding of the Gasparin theoretical basis – effective didactic-pedagogical activities in the classroom - planning of didactic-pedagogical activities (theory – practice planning – teaching practice).

The excerpts discussed revealed the strong presence of contradictions and –also showed that it was possible – especially for researchers – to plan modes of intervention that enabled the overcoming the contradictions observed. Intervention activities were planned with research participants bearing in mind the contradictions that became evident during the teacher education meetings. In general, they directly influenced lesson planning and other activities carried out with students in the school. This clearly indicates the importance of the choice of instruments in the activity systems in order to redirect tasks so that participants progress in the understanding and transformation of their action contexts.

• 1
  This text is the result of research supported by CNPq [National Council for Scientific and Technological Development]
• 2
  The intervention perspective, with a focus on school learning decapsulation and transformation will be clarified in the theoretical-methodological section.
• 3
  Linguistic aspects adapted from Liberali (2013, p.74).
• 4
  The Collective Pedagogical Work Time (HTPC) was an achievement for the teachers and refers to the time set by the city and state schools, in order for teachers and coordinators to meet, and discuss, analyze and propose solutions aimed at to collective needs of the school's education. This time is included in the weekly working hours of professionals and aims to promote the exchange of experience, to reflect on the teaching practice and individual and collective improvement of educators. The Collective Pedagogical Work schedules must be followed in the school by teachers under the supervision of the pedagogical coordinator.
• 5
  The State of São Paulo Curriculum constitutes basic guidelines for the teacher's work in the classroom. To support the work carried out in five thousand state schools, the São Paulo State Education Department developed in 2008 by employing the resources of the Coordination for Basic Education Management, a curriculum for elementary, mid and high school years. […] The Curriculum of the State of São Paulo is complete with a set of materials especially for teachers and students: The “Teacher's Notebooks” and the “Student's Notebooks” are organized by subject matter, according to the grades, year and term. In them, Learning Situations are presented to guide the teacher's work in the teaching of specific subject content and guide the student's learning. Available at: <www.educacao.sp.gov.br/curriculo>. Accessed: April 12^th, 2016.
• 6
  In the transcriptions, the / symbol indicates a short pause and the // symbol indicates a long pause.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  2017

History

• Received
  May 2016
• Accepted
  Mar 2017