Agency is an illusion: Barriers to participation in teacher education and schools

This article investigates student teachers’ perceptions and experiences in teacher education regarding codetermination and participation as a part of education for democracy and citizenship, along with how they visualize their future teaching in this interdisciplinary theme as teachers in schools. The data material includes 16 extensive interviews with six student teachers in their final year of teacher education in Norway. The results demonstrate a discrepancy between their perceptions and praxis concerning participation. First, the student teachers in their last year of teacher education felt the ability to participate in and through their education was present, but they chose not to take advantage of this possibility. They underlined the importance of participation and agency in education for democracy but did not seem to assign the same importance to their involvement in education. Second, when visualizing how to teach democracy and citizenship in schools, they suggested facilitating pupils’ self -determination in situations where the pupils’ decisions and participation do not change or impact anything. In so doing, they described participation and agency as an illusion; something that is important, necessary, and valuable but with no practical implications. The student teachers seemed to transfer this same illusion of pupils’ agency and participation in their planned teaching in the future. The results from the current study illuminate two important aspects where one presumably influences the other. The first main result is that the student teacher feels that the ability to participate and act in and through their education is present, but they choose not to take advantage of this possibility. They see a close connection between participation and teaching democratically but do not seem to assign the same importance to their involvement in education. The second main result is on how they plan their future teaching on democracy and citizenship in schools, which exemplifies how they plan to facilitate pupils’ autonomy and self-determination in schools. The student teachers explained how they will be facilitating pupils ’ co-determinization as future teachers in schools in sit uations where the outcome of the pupils’ decisions does not matter much. They indicated that pupils’ preferences should be limited within the frames of the pedagogical intentions and not change or alter the planned teaching. The interviews revealed a discrepancy between the students ’ perceptions of education for democracy and real-life praxis, both as students in teacher education and in their planned teaching as educators themselves (see Figure 1). Thomas: Two-way communication. You must have some social antennae to sense the room, to set up a scheme that is not monotonous. I feel that there has been a lot of banking education, if I may say so, that it is just communication one way, and maybe open to a question, but that is not what we need. We think more about how we can contribute to an activity. It is quite clear that if we are to sit for four hours and someone is reading from a PowerPoint, then yes, we could have done something completely different. To establish relationships is to invite us to a vulnerable space, I may say.