Agency Discourse and the Reproduction of Hierarchy in Mathematics Instruction

There is widespread agreement that students should be supported to experience intellectual agency. However, “traditional,” teacher-centered forms of instruction tend to limit students’ opportunities to exercise agency, and many studies have shown that such instruction is highly resistant to change, particularly in mathematics. This article examines how teachers at five elementary schools used discourses emphasizing student agency to make sense of their mathematics instruction, in the context of a professional development program that highlighted fostering agency as a means for advancing equity. The author finds that although teachers took up agency-focused discourse in meaningful ways, they simultaneously perpetuated the assumption that some children are smarter and more capable than others. This illustrates ideological dimensions of instructional change and stability at the level of teachers’ everyday work. Approaches to student-centered reforms that do not attend to these dimensions may fall short of their aspirations to serve “all students” well.