Contexts for Agency: A Framework for Managing Educational Development Work

Authors

Kathleen Landy, Cornell UniversityFollow
Anna L. Bostwick Flaming, University of Iowa
Suzanne Tapp, Texas Tech University
Eric C. Kaldor, Brown University

ORCID IDs

Landy 0000-0002-2581-5113

Bostwick Flaming 0000-0002-7206-747X

Tapp 0000-0002-3603-7708

Kaldor 0000-0002-0741-1326

Date of this Version

Spring 2022

Document Type

Article

Citation

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development (2022) 41(1)

doi: 10.3998/tia.445

Special issue: What's the Problem Now?

Comments

License: CC BY-NC-ND

Abstract

Often working in multiple roles and operating at multiple scales, educational developers deal with layered tensions and a complex context that can be difficult for an individual or team to reconcile. In May 2020, the authors participated in a cross-institutional scholarly project, the Pandemic Educational Development Research Collaborative (PEDRC), designed to explore the impact of multiple crises (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic and our collective civil and political unrest) and associated large-scale instructional changes on educational developers and their work. The Contexts for Agency framework reflects the project’s emergent theme that the circumstances in which we act have considerable influence on our decision-making. Specifically, the framework identifies identity, institution, and impact as critical contexts for the decisions educational developers make. The authors highlight multiple benefits to analyzing what we know—and what we don’t know—about our respective contexts and offer suggestions for applying the framework using a guide for structured reflection.