Living in Dilemmatic Spaces: Stories of Excessive Entitled Teachers and Their Transformative Agency
After Excessive Teacher and Faculty Entitlement
ISBN: 978-1-83797-878-6, eISBN: 978-1-83797-877-9
Publication date: 18 September 2024
Abstract
This chapter presents three Chinese teachers' narrative accounts about how they live in dilemmatic spaces due to excessive entitlement. Still, the teachers move forward with transformative agency. The thick description of the three teacher participants has been reported elsewhere as the narratives of Lee – a math teacher, Ping – a Chinese language teacher and Wang – a school principal. In this chapter, however, ‘excessive teacher entitlement’ is used as a new lens to assist me in revisiting their stories of living in dilemmatic spaces. Narrative inquiry as a method unpacks the three teachers' life experiences. Although Lee, Ping and Wang encounter different entitlements and various dilemmas, their transformative agency in transitioning from a survival mode to thriving human beings brings out the similarities in their experiences. Using Vygotskian philosophy and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this chapter focuses on the teachers' transformative agency as breaking away from given boundaries in their professional lives and taking up initiatives that confront the tacit excessive entitlement in and around them. Furthermore, transformative agency is promising in that it helps develop new practices in teacher education. Finally, the new understanding emanating by viewing the three subjects' experiences from the angle of excessive entitlement has the potential to inspire teachers in other contexts to become conscious of manifestations of excessive entitlement not only in themselves or others they interact with but also in the macro context we live in. This consciousness also increases the likelihood of the urge to find ways to ameliorate excessive entitlement and to move closer to one's cherished professional values.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgement
This work is funded by the Beijing Social Science Foundation (Grant No. 22JYC016). I would like to express my special thanks to Tara Ratnam and Cheryl Craig, who have assisted me with writing my chapter by their feedback that pushed my thinking to new levels of understanding. I really learned a lot from the cyclically revising process and the email exchanges I've had with them. My thanks also go to the reviewers for their comments on the initial version of this chapter.
Citation
Wei, G. (2024), "Living in Dilemmatic Spaces: Stories of Excessive Entitled Teachers and Their Transformative Agency", Ratnam, T. and Craig, C.J. (Ed.) After Excessive Teacher and Faculty Entitlement (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 47), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 117-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720240000047008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Ge Wei. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited