Formation of pedagogical agency of future teachers in the educational space of the university

Abstract

The article examines the formation of pedagogical agency (subjectness) among students of teacher-training programmes within the educational space of the university. The relevance follows from a shift in the teacher's professional role: teachers are now expected not to reproduce prescribed routines but to reshape the curriculum, adopting an authorial stance towards their own activity. The aim is to reveal the content, structure and dynamics of a future teacher's pedagogical agency in the university environment and to relate the Russian subject-activity tradition to the international discussion of professional agency. The methodological basis combines the subject-activity approach (S.L. Rubinstein, A.V. Brushlinsky), E.N. Volkova's concept of teacher's subjectness, the anthropological model of developmental levels (V.I. Slobodchikov, E.I. Isaev), S.V. Mazova's «college – university» educational space, S.P. Budnikova's learning-professional community, and an ecological reading of agency as achievement. Pedagogical agency is defined as the twofold capacity of the teacher to be the author of his or her own activity and to create conditions for the pupil's authorship. This capacity is neither brought ready-made by the student nor transmitted by the university, but achieved in the interaction between the student's personal resources and the affordances of the educational space. The components and levels of a student's agency, the pedagogical conditions, the subject-oriented situations and the obstacles to its formation are described. The novelty lies in connecting the subject-activity tradition with the ecological conception of agency and in specifying the properly pedagogical character of subjectness.