Teachers’ beliefs as a component of motivational force of professional agency

This article investigates teachers’ beliefs – addressed here as worldviews – in the context of educational change. The intention is to develop a dynamic approach according to which worldviews are professional resources of meanings and personal constructs. We questioned what constitutes their ‘mental realm’ and how they, referring to subjective realities of a person’s world construction, can be conceived as collective and professionally shared. The topic was tackled theoretically in the frame of a cultural-historical approach to mind in which we drew upon insights of the integrative concept of meaningful activity. Worldviews were addressed in a school-based development of a secondary school in Austria when the teachers were updating their school’s profile. A special interview method (Ultimate Meanings Technique, UMT; Leontiev, 2007) was used to assist teachers and mediate their discussions on worldviews. In the findings, we propose methodological ideas for addressing ‘the mental’ and approaching worldviews as a type of tertiary artefacts, discuss the role of the UMT interviews in the school-based development and draw attention to a historical tension inside professional vision. The article underlines the importance of worldviews for creating historically responsive space of core meanings and for strengthening professional power of educators’ taking agency for change.
Source: Learning, Culture and Social Interaction - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research