Geography Curriculum Making in Shanghai: Teacher Agency in Times of Change

Abstract

This study took place after two profound changes to educational policy in Shanghai. First, in 2012, the teacher qualification pathway opened the profession to prospective teachers from diverse academic backgrounds. Second, in 2014, the status of school geography changed due to the University Entry Qualifications (known as Gaokao in Chinese) reform, which caused a dramatic rise of students taking geography as one of their Gaokao subjects and a consequent increase in demand for geography teachers. This study explored to what extent these diverse lived experiences in times of change affect geography teachers’ sense of agency in their teaching practice, focusing on curriculum making.

The study utilised and extended existing frameworks of geography curriculum making (Lambert and Morgan, 2010; Lambert, Solem and Tani, 2015) and teacher agency (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Priestley, Biesta and Robinson, 2015) to analyse and explain Chinese teachers’ experiences during this period of change. A different curriculum context ignited new sparks for agency. A qualitative case study approach was adopted to investigate nine teachers from nine Shanghai schools. Five entered teaching before the 2014 Gaokao Reform, known as the pre-Reform cohort. Four entered after 2014, known as the post-Reform cohort. Research activities involved participant-produced reflective diaries, teaching materials and semi-structured interviews. The interview structure is developed from key elements – teachers, students, school geography, academic geography and education – in the geography curriculum making framework and three temporal dimensions (past, present and future) in the teacher agency framework.

Key findings explicitly link curriculum making and teacher agency. First, the pre-Reform cohort deeply understood their interactions with students and the subject while there was evidence of a more instrumental view in the post-Reform cohort. The cohort difference showed how examination-oriented environment limited participant teachers from realising their agency for curriculum making. Secondly, the cohort difference is also visible in teachers’ curriculum making diagrams’ alignment and divergence to the Lambert model. It showed that policy changes in China influence the Lambert model’s usefulness in a different context. The social contexts in changes need to be considered in discussing teacher agency for curriculum making. Thirdly, within both cohorts, undergraduate initial teacher education supports teachers to develop more sophisticated expressions of curriculum making. These teachers’ achievement of agency for curriculum making is related to their epistemic flexibility, vocational motivations and access to diverse professional networks.

The study concludes by suggesting that teacher agency for curriculum making is enhanced by a more supportive ecological environment with more thoughtful policy changes, fewer hierarchies in professional development schemes and reduced performativity pressure.