Ecologies of educational reflexivity and agency – a different way of thinkingabout equitableeducational policies and practicesfor England and beyond?

Carlo Raffo, Claire Forbes & Steph Thomson

University of Manchester

Abstract

The current UK education policy for Englandemphasis on equity and social mobility focuses on narrowing the educational attainment gap between more and less advantaged groups of young people – an approach that has strong parallels in many Anglophone countries around the world. We argue that these policy and associated practice proscriptions tend to privilege an individualised narrative of agency for young people, teachers and schools more generally. Our paper argues that this individualised approach is highly problematic in that it decontextualizes the complex and real agentic work of young people in schooling, making it difficult to empirically and theoretically account for differences in educational outcome between and within groups of young people. Informed by a social realist perspective, and in particular the work of Margaret Archer, we propose a theoretical model that we suggest provides greater explanatory and predictive power. The model focuses on the way ecologies of development emerge for young people. We suggest that such ecologies reflectdifferent structural and cultural factors and processes,combining in ways that enable and/or constrain young people’s educational reflexivity and agency and their ensuing educational engagement and attainments. We believe that building a typology of such ecologies of educational reflexivity and agency provides improved ways of developing equitable educational policies and practice- ones that relate clearly tothe compositional mix of young people in schools and enable the development of interventions that better relate to such ecologies.

Key words – educational policy, ecology, equity, reflexivity, agency, structure, culture

Introduction

Educational inequities in the form of inequalities in educational attainment have long been a key defining feature of the educational landscape in most affluent country contexts. With low levels of educational attainment linked to historic problems of social exclusion (Sparkes 1998) and more recently of constrained social mobility (Blanden et al. 2005), UK education policy for England has attempted to improve educational equity by narrowing the attainment gap between those groups of young people most and least educationally advantaged. Although the education policy landscape of the last 20 years or so is littered with a plethora of beyond school priority policy and practice interventions to improve educational equity(Antoniou et al. 2012 ) the core policy focus for both the last New Labour government and the current Coalition government has been on a powerful cocktail of school system reform. This has includedneo-liberal marketization of schooling, focused in school target setting, data driven curriculum and pedagogical improvements and high-stakes accountability measures (Raffo et al. 2010). Central tothis increasingly dominant reform agenda is a continuing belief that schoolsare the main drivers for systemic improvements in educational outcomes and equity. This key belief is fed by ‘evidence’ of success stories of schools who ‘win’ against the odds and whose strategiesneed to be appropriately scaled-upto all underperforming schools throughout the country. Such evidence has become the mantra for current educational policy makers in England[1]andit is also the dominant educational discourse in other countries such as the US[2].

At the heart of these narratives/discourses appear to be the need for the successful implementation of two overarching and yet interdependentschool focused strategies. The first of these relates to processes of technical school effectiveness/improvement (Harris et al. 2007) and in particular the careful and forensic use of monitoring data to measure value added performance; direct forms of excellent teaching supported by visible formative and summative assessment strategies (Hattie 2009); high expectation and policing of behaviour (both of students and parents) associated with a ‘zero-tolerance/no excuse’ policy[3], and a strong leadership vision (Harris and Chapman 2002). The second provides the foundation on which to enact the first and focuses on the beliefs and behaviours of young people in school. Seen by policy makers as agents of their own destiny (Du Bois 1998) and therefore central to the enablement of school processes, young people need to be encouraged to engage with school bybecoming positively ‘mindful’[4] of their educational possibilities and to cleanse themselves of any negative educational behaviours/traits. Current policy endorsed strategies include notions of young people in schoolsbuilding ‘resilience and character’[5] and improving their aspirationsin order to enhance their educational attainment[6].To help schools develop and implement intervention strategies to assist those socio-economically disadvantaged students seen as being most at risk of having the ‘wrong’ type of educational beliefs and behaviours for educational success[7], the current Coalition government hassince 2011 provided schools with additional funds through the Pupil Premium[8]. However the latest data from 2014suggests that it is lower attaining students on Free School Meals (a proxy for socio-economic disadvantage) who have the largest dip in their achievements with attainment gaps between FSM and non-FSM widening[9]. This suggests that the Pupil Premium, similar to many other compensatory funding mechanisms of the past (Raffo et al 2010), is struggling in its own terms to enable schools deliver systemic improvements in educational equity.

Issues of structure and agency

In contrast to the agency accounts of current and past educational policy discourse that focus on young people (Du Bois 1998), teachers and schools (Muijs et al. 2004) and parents (Deforges and Abourchar), there have been accounts whose analytical focus is on advantaging/disadvantaging structures and culturesthat determineclass based differences in educational outcomes (Jencks 1972; Bowles andGintis 1976; Bourdieu andPasseron 1977; Anyon 1997; Lipman 2004; Lauder at al. 2009).Rather than examining individualised accounts of educational failure or success most of these explanations tend tofocus on issues of resource, power, the cultures and capitals of elites and educational policy that reflects the interests of those elites and that together create educational inequalities. These arguments suggest that there are many structural and cultural barriers associated with the social injustices of society that account for why poorer young people fair worse in the education system than their more socially and economically advantaged counterparts. Raffo et al.’s study (2010) mapsout these various explanations and yet what appearproblematicin accounts that focus on either agency or structurearetheir particulardifficulties in accounting for either individual or aggregate difference. On the one hand structural accounts struggle to explain thecomplexities, contradictions and nuances as to why some young people, some teachers and some schools succeed ‘against the odds’. In other words these accounts fail to explain how and why there are ‘intragroup’ differences in educational attainment of young people. On the other hand those policy orientated accounts that focus on the agency of young people, teachers and parents, although succeeding in highlighting the breakdown of structure by describingthe experiences of individual young people seen as‘successful’ outliers, struggle to maintain any sustained argument for the very strong and enduring ‘intergroup’ educational attainment differences between different categories of young people. Given the limitations of such accounts, there have been historic and continuing attempts by those researchers with a more nuanced appreciation of the interconnectedness of agency and structureto develop explanations that marry the objective circumstances of life with the subjective reflexivity of individuals.Building on the work of Beck at al.’s(1994) notion of reflexive modernisation and perhaps some later day articulations of Bourdieu’s reflexive habitus (Adams 2006) these studies appear to provide richerand more nuanced theoretical thinking toolsthan those that are predominately structuralist in orientation or those that give unalloyed primacy to subjective agency. In the evolving arena of youth studies Rudd(1997) reported some time agohis appreciation of the difficulties of disentangling agency from structural influences and concluded in his study that young people’s attitudes, perceptions and actions need to be understood within the notion of structured individualisation. Likewise Furlong and Cartmel (1997) in the concluding section of their book use Elias (1978, 1982) to attempt to explain away the dualism between the self and the outside world. They remind us that Elias argued that

….individuals are tied together by chains of mutual dependence to form changeable social configurations. Thus individuals are inseparable from their social contexts and as a social configurations change, similar changes are manifest in the constituent parts.” (Furlong and Cartmel 1997, 114)

Such synthesised arguments continue to the present day (Raffo 2011, Reay et al. 2011;McLeodand Yates 2006) and yet although such thinking enables ‘thick’ descriptions of young people’s enabled and/or constrained agency what they continue to perhaps lack is aspects of analytical clarity. In particular in reading such work it is often difficult to decipher which elements of agency and structure do what, and in what order, in terms of the decisions taken and actions enacted by individuals. Objective structures and subjective dispositions are merged with apparent ease as if they reflectsimilar entities with similar capabilities. But as Archer reminds the field, people have emotions and feelings, structures do not; structures can be centralised, but people cannot. Hence objective structures need to be seen as analytically distinct from subjective agency with the relationship between the two more appropriately theorised. Without this analytical clarity the prospects of such explanations being able to explore and then predict with some degree of accuracy the way different individuals and categories of young people will act in schoolslocated indifferent contexts are likely to be less than satisfactory.

Issues of reflexivity and agency

At the outset we would like to emphasise that trying to understandhow schools and education work is in essence about trying to understand how young people think about, and then engage with,the practice of schools and education.This therefore requires an explanatory theoretical model that focuses on the individual as a primary unit of analysis and in particular how individuals make decisions (their reflexivity) and engage in purposeful actions (their agency) about their schooling. In so doing, however, our thinking is not individualistic in its approach. In fact as suggested by some of the arguments highlight above, we are highly critical of individualist accounts that do not locate reflexivity and agency within structural and cultural accounts. And yet we are also critical of overly deterministic perspectives that do not allow individuals any say over what they think and do.Our model,building as it does onthe work of Archer (1995, 2003, 2007), is neither downward conflationist whereindividuals’ actions are solely the result of impacting structures and cultures, nor upward conflationist that alternatively suggests an individual’s complete control over his/her own decisions, actions and destiny. And yet at the same time we want to ensure analytical distinction between structure and agency in order to avoid certain confusing centralist conflationary tendencies. In so doing we follow Archer by suggesting that structural conditioning necessarily predates actions that either reproduce or elaborate on structures. As Archer notes:

. . . the characteristics of homo sapiens (as a natural kind) cannot be attributed to society, even if they can only be exercised within it. On the contrary, human beings must have a particular physical constitution for them to be consistently socially influenced (as in learning speech, arithmetic, tool making). Even in cases where the biological may be socially mediated in almost every instance or respect . . . this does not mean that the mediated is not biological northat the physical becomes epiphenomenal. (Archer 1995, 288)

In developing Archer’s ideas, Scrambler (2012) notes that,as humans we are simultaneously the products of biological, psychological and social mechanisms whilst retaining our agency. Acknowledgement must be made also of the sometimes mundane and sometimes dramatic interruptions of contingency. Thushumans can be said to be biologically, psychologically and socially ‘structured’ without being structurally determined.

Given this is the case what is left for the agency of individuals? Archer suggests thatagency and outcomes are the result of subjective powers of reflexivity that all humans hold such that:

The subjective powers of reflexivity mediate the role that objective structural or cultural powers play in influencing social action and are thus indispensable to explaining social outcomes. Archer (2007: 5)

We concur that agencyisnecessarily contextualized. In particular we are persuaded that such agency relates to a three-stage modeldeveloped by Scramblerwhose work builds onArcher’s thinking:

1 Structural and cultural properties objectively shape the situations that agents confront involuntarily, and inter alia possess generative powers of constraint and enablement in relation to

2 Subjects’ own constellations of concerns, as subjectively defined in relation to the three orders of natural reality: nature, practice and the social.

3 Courses of action are produced through the inner reflexive deliberations of subjects who subjectively determine their practical projects in relation to their objective circumstances.” (Scrambler 2012, 147)

In following Scrambler and Archer we argue that inner reflexive deliberations – or inner dialogues - reflect the interplay between people’s nascent and evolving “concerns” (the importance of what they care about) and their “context” (the continuity or discontinuity of their social environment). Perhaps most importantly these concerns and contexts are shaped by the mode of reflexivity that people regularly practice. However contrary to much theorising that appears to accept uniform modes of reflexivity we are persuaded by Archer’s theoretical and empirical work that highlights not one but four ideal-typical modes of reflexivity – communicative reflexives, autonomous reflexives, meta-reflexives and fractured reflexives:

  1. Communicative reflexives are characterized by internal conversations that require completion and confirmation by others before they result in courses of action. We all engage in communicative reflexivity, but only for some is it the dominant mode of reflexivity. ‘What is distinctive about the internal conversation of communicative reflexives is that its conclusion requires the input of others: intra-subjectivity needs to be supplemented by inter-subjectivity’ (Archer 2007, 102). Given our natal or initially ‘involuntary’ placement in society, these ‘others’ are typically recruited from those who comprise communicative reflexives’ local peers or reference group, hence the tendency to social immobility. Where dissonance and difficult of context radically challenges the communicative reflexives beyond a negotiated stasis then the greater the likelihood of themmoving into fractured reflexive mode (see below).
  1. Autonomous reflexives sustain self-contained internal conversations, leading directly to action. When this is the dominant mode of reflexivity those involved neither seek nor require the involvement of others in their decision-making. Autonomous reflexives also engage in communicative reflexivity, but this is for them not strictly necessary. ‘Whilst the autonomous subject may respond readily, articulately and take interest in the reactions of others, none of these interchanges is driven by need’ (Archer 2007, 114). One therefore might argue that although existential insecurities related to securing a stable sense of self and identity may be core human concern, autonomous reflexives may be less perturbed by the Other’s perception of an autonomously produced self. Perhaps the only time the autonomous reflexive engages theOther in any detail is where the level of dissonance and experienced crises suggests an incapacity for the individual to find autonomously appropriate solutions/actions through their reflexivity.
  1. Meta-reflexives are critically reflexive about their own internal conversations and critical also about the prospects of effective action in society. The concept of meta-reflexivity, implying reflection on reflection, may seem abstruse, but self-monitoring is part and parcel of day-to-day living. In those for whom it is the dominant mode, meta-reflexivity is a routine kind of self-questioning. ‘Why did I say that?’, ‘Why am I so reticent to say what I think?’ Meta-reflexives are ‘conversant with their own meta-reflexivity’. They are self-critical and tend to be preoccupied with the moral worth of their projects and their worthiness to undertake them. One might also argue that the meta-reflexiveis likely to be concerned about the moral worth of projects as ‘called’ by the Other and hence more open to existential insecurities associated with those projects.
  1. Fractured reflexives are those whose internal conversations intensify their distress and disorientation rather than leading to purposeful courses of action.As such, fractured reflexivity lends itself to passive agency: its proponents’ deliberations go round in circles and lack conclusions. And second, it is communicative reflexives that are most fragile and vulnerable to displacement into the category of fractured reflexive.

Our predictive or generative model builds on this thinking. We argue that forms of reflexivity are related to the life course and issues of development. We suggest that these forms of reflexivity are also bound up with elements of culture and structure that reflect the nascent and evolvingecologies (Bronfenbrenner 1979) into which young people are born, grown up and develop,including parents, families,friends and neighbourhoods contexts. Given this thinking how do these ideas of structure, culture, modes of reflexivity and agency relate to the way individuals engage with education at different stages in their development?

Educational agency and educational outcomes – issues of intersectional reflexivity

In a deep sense,schools and education more generallyhave the potential of beingimportantly formativein young people’s developing sense of self and identity. They are therefore highly constitutive in relation to the act of reflexivity and agency. In particular, given current educational policy imperatives in England and beyond, attaining educational outcomes is at thecore of that reflexivity, whether seen as positively or negatively by young people. Althoughcentraltoreflexivity and agency schools are not neutral or hermetically sealed from extraneous influences but instead coalesce and intersect withother cultural and structural fields.Although such notions of intersectionality are central to our thinking, it might be useful, in the first instance, and as a heuristic, to explore how the schooling system per se relates to young people’s educational reflexivity and agency.