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Start date: 2020Subject: search.filters.subject.Educational change

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    Secondary school English language teacher agency in the aftermath of COVID-19 crises : a study from a West Sumatran Region, Indonesia : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-11-26) Yuliandri, Yuliandri
    The COVID-19 pandemic saw the prompt shift to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT), which was challenging for both learners and educators worldwide. This study explores the experiences of secondary school English language teachers working within a resource-limited setting of Lima Puluh Kota Region, West Sumatra, Indonesia. It focuses not only on the ERT period but also on the re-transition to face-to-face teaching post-pandemic. It seeks to answer two research questions: 1) What adjustments did English language teachers make to their practice during and after the pandemic lockdown period, and how did they perceive and articulate these experiences? 2) How did the teachers exercise their agency, negotiate their professional identities, and manage their emotions in response to these experiences? This study adopts a qualitative dominant mixed-methods design. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis are employed to analyse data which was collected from teachers from July to November 2022 through a survey (n=63), two rounds of interviews (n=10), and classroom observations (n=10). The findings indicated that while the teachers were emotionally affected by the abrupt shift to ERT, which was intensified by Digital Divide issues, they tried to negotiate the availability of resources and use their agency to find ways to continue teaching. Some were able to discover benefits beyond the difficulties as ERT exposed them to digital technologies, a wide range of learning modes, and opportunities to pursue professional development (PD). Throughout and after the pandemic, teachers actively negotiated their professional identities, which contributed to their professional growth and increased reflexivity on their current and future practices. This shifted their perspectives about teaching and learning and the role of technology, which proved useful when they encountered challenges re-transitioning to face-to-face classrooms. This study contributes to the literature by 1) adding evidence of how English language teachers exercised their agency during and after the pandemic and illustrating the temporal and contextual aspects involved in the process, 2) revealing different pathways of professional identity negotiation, and 3) breaking down the interplay between agency, identity, and emotions, and outlining the significant role of emotions in both enactment of agency and professional identity negotiation. In addition to these theoretical contributions, practical implications, which focus on the need for school technology infrastructure in the region, and tailored teacher professional development at both school and MoE levels to foster student teachers’ and experienced teachers’ awareness of the intersection of agency, identity and emotion in the teacher education curriculum and training programmes, are discussed.
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    The policy implications of 'thinking problematically': problematising the parent-school partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand's Tomorrow's Schools education reform policy : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024) Hailwood, Kim
    Prior to the 1987 general election, New Zealand’s fourth Labour Government announced its intention to review the administration of the state schooling system. The government explained that the proposed education reforms would result in more parental and community involvement, highlighting that school boards of trustees, with elected parent representatives, would facilitate the development of a deeper partnership between parents and schools. The 1989 Tomorrow’s Schools reforms consequently instituted changes to the way the New Zealand schooling system was organised and governed. Over the last 30 years, Tomorrow’s Schools has generated substantial commentary and analysis. The purpose of this thesis is not to ass ess whether the Tomorrow’s Schools policy was an appropriate or effective solution. Rather, the study adopts Bacchi’s (2009) Foucauldian-influenced post-structuralist ‘What is the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) method to examine how ‘problems’ are thought about and represented in policy documents. In particular, the WPR approach questions the established understanding that policy is reactive; that is, a ‘problem’ exists, and policy is implemented to ‘fix’ the ‘problem’. The study has two overarching objectives. First, to provide a worked example of Bacchi’s (2009) WPR model in the field of education, focusing primarily on the solutions advanced in the government-appointed Picot Taskforce’s 1988 ancillary report (Administering for excellence) and the government’s 1988 policy response document (Tomorrow’s Schools). The second objective is to comprehensively assess the WPR framework and its ability to recognise, challenge, and disrupt normative discourses, particularly in relation to the parent-school connection. Bacchi’s (2009) methodological framework specifically steps back from what appears common sense and asks how it has come to be. Accordingly, the goal is to subject the government texts to multiple forms of problem-questioning in order to identify the assumptions, origins, silences, and effects of the policy; thereby enabling other ways of conceptualising the ‘problem’. As a result, attention is directed to a framework that explicates the purpose, power, and politics involved in policy. As the first study to use Bacchi’s (2009) WPR model to examine New Zealand’s Tomorrow’s Schools education reform policy, this thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by opening up governing practices to scrutiny through the interrogation of problematisations. In this way, the study pays attention to the normalised and taken-for-granted truth claims that shaped and were shaped by the Tomorrow’s Schools policy. At the same time, the thesis adds to a growing body of international literature highlighting the analysis of problematisations in education policy research.