ESTABLECIMIENTO DE UN ITINERARIO DOCENTE OBLIGATORIO ENTRE EL “GRADO – MPGS – PIR”

Agency becomes a way to assess teachers‟ work and subsequent relations evolving out of the education systems that draw from both local and global policy making. The local policy making is influenced by global policy making. In many ways the education systems function by relying on structure and agents that are involved in operating the educational system (Sinclair, 1999). Transformation as a result of globalisation sees not only structures but also in what people do or undergo. What teachers do is framed by the concept of agency in relation to the global education policy (Vongolis-Macrow, 2005). The 1990s presented a new era for teachers when it included global dimensions to the way that their profession was conceptualised (Mason, 1998).

The educational globalisation era has highlighted the macro agencies which announced the shift from national to global perspectives (Robertson, 1990). In the 1960s, the World Bank conducted research, calculating human capital values and how these could be used to fight the cycle of poverty in the developing world. As a result, investment in educational development was not only beneficial to economic empowerment of the people, but was also built and contributed to the social progress of mankind through the growth of the right to education as a human right and necessity (Psacharopoulos, 1985).

As agents within the education system, teachers always seek to form alliances with other social groups in order to broaden and strengthen their collective capacity to control their working conditions, practices and representations in social issues (Connell, 1995; Lawn,

84 1987; Ozga & Lawn, 1981). Teachers‟ obligations and responsibilities in restructured education systems became directed towards the ultimate delivery system of education as a product/service in order to improve the performance of students (Hoy, Jardine, & Wood, 2000). In order to ensure that an improved educational system was built, emphasis was put on the need to ensure that teachers were not only concerned with student achievement but also with wider social issues that affected their positions and their professions (Hartley, 1992). The continued authority of the teacher as a knowledgeable specialist, allowed for a meaningful role for teachers that could be pursued with freedom and passion (Britzman, 2000). The global economic restructuring on knowledge in education, made teachers‟ expertise to be used in learning and pedagogy is not just used to inform or reform. Rather, based on speculations, teachers began to be taken as the mere messengers of the system and were denied the representation at the level of policy decision making in the whole education system (Smyth and Shacklock, 1998).

85 The global demand for knowledge transfer in education gives teachers the authority and new meaning in the way education and knowledge are conceptualized.

Agency, as it is represented in the figure below, is also central to the teacher, to the students, to everything else like departments, structure of the disciplines to which the student belongs to and the social context. The student is expected to speak or write positively or negatively on the educational impact (Martin, 2002). The use of students‟ disciplinary genres and their particular structure and context in teaching EAP contributes to the overall shape of the writing in the discipline.

Established as a macro agency, especially constructed to represent teachers at the global level of policy making, a teachers‟ union aims to further the cause of organizations of teachers and other educational employees, to promote the status, interests and welfare of their members, and defend their trade union and professional rights (Education International, 2002). Education International embarks upon protecting teachers‟ professionalism, giving opportunities to educational and social change that aims at intervening in the construction of teachers‟ agency. It represents teachers as a global, autonomous collective that is able to address social, educational and teacher changes (reform by UNESCO). What Education Figure 2.3 Agency, department, discipline and context

86 International is trying to do is to maintain the collective strength of teachers and all employees in education (Education International, 2002) in order to manage change and assert control over the way that teachers respond to change.

Adapting to the complex demands made on teachers by new structures is an issue facing their profession. In a detailed report called Teacher‟ Roles and Global Change, Higginson (1996) concludes that while there is much rhetoric about the necessity of teachers‟ input into education policy and changes in practice, teachers‟ opinion on policy, objectives and strategies are rarely sought. Delors (1996), speaking at the 45th International Conference on Education held by UNESCO, identifies globalisation as a source of conflict for today‟s teachers and appeals for more analysis of teachers‟ conditions under the influence of globalisation in order to analyse the double standard operating against teachers. While teachers not only engage in the change by contributing to new structural conditions, the educational policy tends to often disempower them by excluding them from the process of educational change (Young, 1998; Zanten, 2000).

Power and authority, likewise, play an important role in the relationship between discourse and social groups (Hyland, 2000). Power relations is a vital and influential concept which impacts positively and negatively on EAP teaching and learning (Weedon, 1987). This researcher worked within a feminist post-structuralist tradition and sought to integrate language, individual experience and social power in a theory of subjectivity. The student/subject is not conceived of as passive, s/he is conceived of as both the subject of and the subjected to relations of power within a given group. Cummins (1996) complements the work of West, Bourdieu and Weedon. He maintains that coercive relations of power refer to the exercise of power by a dominant individual, group or country that is detrimental to others and serves to maintain an inequitable division of resources in a society. The collaborative relation of power on the other hand contributes to empowering rather than marginalising, is

87 more additive than subtractive and prevails through and mutual interpersonal/ intergroup relations. “Power is created with others rather than being imposed on or exercised over others” (Cummins, 1996:15). By extension, relations of power can serve to enable or constrain the range of identities that language learners can negotiate in their classrooms and communities.

From a research on four American teachers‟ unions, McClure (1999) gives insight into the vested interests of organizations acting on behalf of teachers. He asserts that the power of the organization barricades reform and teacher autonomy. Although some scholars propose teacher unions as a means to solve the issue of power in institutions, Kirkpatrick (2000) and others such as McClure (1999) argue against it, suggesting that it (teachers‟ union) presents an obstacle to the establishment of good relationships between teachers and their communities.

The question of power should be viewed in relation to language and society, for language and society are tied up together and one cannot function without the other (Pennycook, 2001). Rather than considering language education as a common-sensical practice, it should be seen as an approach to language that goes beyond its mere description (Pennycook, 2001:50). Power should, therefore, be understood as “the socially constructed relations among individuals, institutions and communities through which symbolic and material resources in a society are produced, distributed and validated (Norton (2000:7). Power relations are largely shaped by institutional, instructional and discursive practices in each community (Norton, 2000; Gee, 2001; Wenger, 1998). As Bourdieu (1997) has already noted, power is created with others rather than being imposed on or exercised over others. The use of students‟ disciplinary genres and structures while teaching EAP (on the part of language teachers) and the teaching of the discipline/content (on the part of discipline or content teachers) all contribute to shape the context of the discipline (Luke, 2000).

88 Lemke (1995: 178) points out that the ideological power of academic discourses puts science together with the domains of art and politics. With regards to the relationship existing between socio-linguistics and power, Pennycook (2001) suggests that the question of power should be viewed in relation to language and society because language and society are so intertwined and tied up together that one of them cannot function without the presence of the other. Lin (1997) views power and agency as focusing more on what the powerful parties like the government, the media, do in a society or say about subordinate groups (e.g. their discursive construction of teachers and students as incompetent & indolent) without also, at the same time, showing the agency of members of those groups in their local everyday