The Dance of the ‘Duality of Structure and Agency’

Abstract

The implementation of the Sustainable Schools Program (SSP) was accompanied by the development of educational rhetoric–reality gaps. Such gaps were represented by the incongruence of a teacher’s classroom pedagogy and self-description of that pedagogy, and between a teacher’s understanding of the rhetoric of SSP and actual implementation of SSP. Most significantly, when asked to implement SSP through the mandated socially-critical pedagogy, most teachers failed to do so, and chose a vocational/neo-classical or liberal-progressive approach. The case studies of the teachers who were required to implement SSP indicated that the practicalities of undertaking a socially-critical pedagogy most strongly influenced a teachers’ ability to effectively implement the program. This chapter draws on Giddens’ theory of structuration to identify the critical ontological elements of structure and agency that both constrained and enabled the teachers to deal successfully with the practicalities of implementing a socially-critical pedagogy, most particularly in relation to: learning spaces; routine and time; and other learning resources. Giddens’ notion of the duality of structure and agency informs the understanding that relationships between these ontological elements defined the major differences between the teachers whose practices represented best practice, and those whose practices represented a rhetoric–reality gap in the implementation of SSP through a socially-critical pedagogy.