Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 838e844

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Teachers' talk of experiencing: Conflict, resistance and agency

Annalisa Sannino*
Center for Research on Activity, Development, and Learning, Department of Education, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 26 (Teollisuuskatu 23), FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This article draws on the concept of experiencing to highlight a positive connection between resistance
Received 4 March 2009 and agency, and its potential for teachers' professional development and educational change. The article
Received in revised form examines teachers' discourse during a Change Laboratory intervention aimed at developing teaching prac-
9 August 2009
tices. The intervention was initiated to deal with problems in the evaluation of students' learning. The article
Accepted 26 October 2009
analyzes in particular the case of a teacher whose discourse shifted from critical and disruptive to
constructive and agentive. The analysis explains this transition as a process of experiencing through which
Keywords:
this teacher faced and worked out critical conflicts related to her teaching.
Experiencing
Teachers' resistance Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Agency
Critical conflicts
Contradictions
Change laboratory

1. Introduction meaning, but in conceiving of a new meaning and bringing this

The problem of resistance to innovations in schools and how to
get teachers more involved in change efforts is often at the core
of discussions between teacher educators and researchers of teaching
practices and teacher education. Also quite commonly discussions
with teachers deal with their challenges with evaluating students'
achievements. The evaluation of students represents the specific
domain in which these issues of resistance and involvement in change
are often encountered. This is typically where different ideologies and
pedagogical values collide.
This paper analyzes a discursive process called experiencing
(Vasilyuk, 1988), which creates favorable circumstances for teachers
to engage in transformation and innovation. According to Vasilyuk,
experiencing is an activity organized with the explicit aim to work
out critical conflicts and to restore individual internal necessities.
Vasilyuk's concept of experiencing is not well-known in the West.
Previously it has been introduced by Kozulin (1991) as “ ‘living
through’ a crisis” (pp. 14e15). Kozulin points out that
“The task confronting a person in such a situation differs signif-
icantly from the problems associated with less profound critical
situations. The task here is not in recognizing the correct meaning
of the situation, and not in elucidating a hidden but existent
* Tel.: þ358 9 191 44577 (office) þ358 451 35 6343 (mobile); fax: þ358 9 191
44579.
E-mail address: annalisa.sannino@helsinki.fi
new meaning into actual existence. To be successful, the ‘work’ of
living through the deep existential crisis must be creative” (p. 15).
The analysis is based on data from a research intervention in an
Italian high school. The school commissioned the intervention
in order to deal with problems that teachers were having in the
evaluation of students' learning and in managing the students'
conduct in the classroom during the evaluation. In the intervention,
the participants faced and worked out conflicts and contradictions
of their teaching practice. This was a demanding collective effort
which involved resistance and confrontations among participants.
This paper examines in particular the case of a teacher whose
discourse through the intervention shifted from critical and
disruptive to constructive and innovative. What brought this teacher
to move from opposition to self-initiative? The analysis explains this
transition as a process of experiencing through which this teacher
faced and worked out critical conflicts related to her teaching.
Recent literature on agency offers some interesting discussions
on ways to strengthen and enhance teachers' agency when they face
difficult working conditions. Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain
(1998) propose self-narration as a precursor of teacher agency. More
recently Edwards (2005) has introduced the concept of relational
agency. This refers to “a capacity to align one's thought and actions
with those of others in order to interpret problems of practice and to
respond to those interpretations” (Edwards, 2009).
Along with these general analyses of agency, a number of
studies have focused specifically on the factors that may interfere
with teachers' agency. Paris' (1993) early study argues for an

0742-051X/$ e see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.10.021
 A. Sannino / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 838e844
understanding of teacher agency based on the evidence that
teachers conduct their work in multiple and often conflicting
historical and ideological contexts, facing critical organizational
obstacles. The author also points out that “the ideological walls that
block true agency are those that define curriculum knowledge as
a rationally created and sanctioned commodity, controlled and
enforced by experts who deliver it to masses of teachers who are
assumed to be incapable or unwilling to engage in such work”
(p. 149). With regard to accountability-related curriculum policies
Sloan (2006) points out that an “understanding of teacher agency.
as merely a capacity to resist and ‘act otherwise’ . obfuscates
important issues of teacher quality and equitability” (p.123). Also,
Lasky (2005) underlines the extent to which the implementation
of school reforms can threaten teachers and lead to teacher's
“unwillingness to change” (p. 913). Resistance in these studies is
either absent, or it is mainly seen in negative terms, as the opposite
or very restricted form of agency e an unfortunate consequence of
the introduction of new policies, or as a deviating type of initiative.
Studies which specifically focus on teacher resistance are usually
not connected to agency. They often see resistance as an obstacle to
change (Corbett, Firestone, & Rossman, 1987) which should be elimi-
nated (George & Camarata, 1996). This article aims at highlighting
a positive connection between resistance and agency, and its potential
for teachers' professional development and educational change.
2. From resistance to agency, from conflict to contradiction
The term resistance is commonly used with a negative conno-
tation to indicate an oppositional action to something that one
disapproves or disagrees with. However, there are studies which
show that rather than inherent conservatism and disruptive
opposition, resistance manifests early forms of agency. According to
Litowitz (1997)
“The very process that motivates internalization of knowledge can
be manifested as a resistance to cooperation in the smooth func-
tioning of the process. For example, in a study of interactions
between mothers and their preschool children, dyads were asked
to engage in any free-play activity of their choice. In spite of her
child's objections, one mother insisted on reading a story with
her child (.). This mother tried several different ways into book-
reading as an activity: ‘we do this all the time’; ‘you know you love
to read books’. But the child always refused: saying ‘no’; turning
away; refusing to sit still; grabbing the book from her mother, etc.
The mother tried to establish a routine in which the child would
be forced to participate: ‘Oh, look, a little dog. What's he doing?’
Refusing to be carried in the activity, the child gave only absurd
answers; for example, reducing the task beyond even picture
descriptions, the mother asked how many eyes the dog had, to
which the child responded, ‘five!’ Such rejections of activities can
signal early attempts to perform the adult's functions of choosing
and structuring activities. (.) The desire to move beyond partic-
ipation to responsibility is in itself an act of resistance, a resistance
to being dependent and controlled by another” (pp. 481e482).
In line with Litowitz, Kindred (1999) emphasizes the idea of
resistance as an act aimed at authorship:
“Resistance is a way to say no, but it also expresses a desire for more
engaging and less degrading work relations and activities . Work
resistance is itself a form of expression, but countless examples also
reflect its predominantly muted quality as it is actively, yet often
silently, conducted.” (pp. 208e209). Also, “Resistance is not only
a contest of authority, as it presents itself, but ultimately it is a move
toward authorship. It is an act along the path of appropriation and
empowerment, or making ‘mine’ ” (p. 213).
839
Kindred (1999) points out that the engagement of resistance
must be promoted rather than repressed or avoided: “The engage-
ment of resistance e not its repression or its avoidance e is critical
for (.) the kinds of participatory shifts that support practical and
actual organizational change. (.) Its expression [the expression of
resistance] may be the entry act itself, a point of orientation from
which further learning can proceed” (pp. 198e199).
Kindred explicitly contrasts this new connotation of the term
resistance with common defensive views of resistance:
“As a form of acute attention, resistance, despite the negative
style of its expression, is a purposive entry into a dialogic and
potentially exploratory process. Although it is an act of self-
preservation in the least, it can also be a move toward empow-
erment. Most important, though, it is a developmental act within
a process of cognitive and cultural change. Although resistance is
most often considered sign of disengagement, it can in fact be
a form, as well as a signal, of intense involvement and learning.
In the simultaneity of negation and expression, it is an active
dialogue between the contested past and the unwritten future,
between practice and possibility” (p. 218).
While providing different conceptualizations, both Kindred's and
Litowitz's views on resistance are strongly positive and agentive. A
dichotomous view of resistance as either only positive or only negative
is, however, not fruitful as such for understanding the dynamic and
the potential of resistance. Norman Long (2008) suggests to overcome
this dichotomy by relating resistance and agency.
“We need to develop a theoretical perspective that enables us to
explore the social embeddedness of specific acts of resistance.
By ‘social embeddedness’ I imply more than the kinds of self-
organizing processes, interpersonal networks, and informal
normative commitments identified. as essential for accessing
resources, developing livelihood strategies, and managing
enterprises or projects. Although such dimensions are obviously
critical for the kinds of mobilizing and organizing processes
necessary for implementing acts of resistance, their precise form
and content, as well as the sociopolitical spaces they carve out or
seek to occupy, are shaped by a broader set of conditions and
components. Thus we also need to specify the ways in which
existing institutional constraints, knowledge/power processes,
and material affordances shape possibilities for engaging in
particular actions, counteractions, and discourses. These
elements compose the fields and arenas in which struggles take
place, and are themselves reconfigured by the particular actions
and negotiations that ensue. The outcomes and effectiveness of
specific forms of resistance or contestation rest, then not only on
the organizing capacities and strategic capabilities of so-called
subordinate actors but also on how rigid or malleable ‘domi-
nant’ institutional frameworks and discourses are perceived to
be” (pp. 71e72).
Long's work on resistance to western projects in developing
countries is based on the notion of individual and collective struggles
with authorities of industrialized countries. He discusses the common
notion of resistance, which refers to struggles of individual or collec-
tive subordinate actors “against sites of power and authority, or what
are often called ‘dominant’ actors or regimes” (p. 70). Long questions
the robustness of this notion to “embrace fully the complexities of
these struggles” (p. 70). Specifically discourse represents for him the
entry to the complexities of these struggles.
“Discourses frame our understandings of life experiences by
providing representations of ‘reality’ (often taken for granted) and
constitute what we consider to be the significant or essential
objects, persons, and events of our world. But of course it is
840 A. Sannino / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 838e844

possible to have different or conflicting versions of the same both dilemmatic motives of the individual and contradictory
discourse, or incompatible discourses relating to the same systemic tensions at the level of the activity which the individual
phenomena. . It is important, therefore, to unravel the discourses inhabits. There is a substantial difference between conflict experi-
utilized in specific arenas of struggle” (p.75). ences and developmentally significant contradictions. The first are
situated at the level of short-time action, the second are situated at
Long insightfully indicates directions to be taken in future studies.
the level of activity and inter-activity, and have a much longer life
“Hence we need to develop a form of analysis that centers on
cycle. They are located at two different levels of analysis. The roots
understanding actors' everyday life struggles, the semiautonomous
of the conflicts can be explored only shifting from the action level of
fields of action in which they operate, and the creativities e both
conflict to the activity level of contradiction (Sannino, 2005, p. 169).
discursive and pragmatic e they display in resolving the problems
they face. Unless we attempt this, we are unlikely to identify the
3. The intervention
crucial sites of struggles and the combinations of coercion and consent
that compose the topography of power relations” (pp. 77e78).
The principal of the school and the representative of the
Struggles for Long (2004) mainly emerge between the motives of
teachers contacted the author because they wanted a training
those who intervene and the motives of participants in the inter-
course on formative and summative evaluation and management
vention. In order to understand the genesis of self-initiative and
of the classroom. A deep-seated tradition in Italy, from elementary
agency in resistance, it is not sufficient to inquire about the conflicts
school to university, consists in evaluating students one by one
between external powers; it is important to explore also the sources
orally asking questions. These evaluations take place during the
of resistance at the level of conflict within the individual. In
class hours, while the classmates follow and wait for their turn.
the English translation of Vasilyuk's book (1988) resistance is not
Usually students are expected to sit silently while the evaluation
explicitly conceptualized. The term “defense” is rather used with
takes place. Up to the high school, students are not allowed to leave
the psychological connotation of “processes aimed at releasing the
the room during the class hours.
individual from discord among impulses and ambivalence of feel-
Instead of a training course I suggested to conduct a Change
ings, at preventing him from becoming conscious of undesirable or
Laboratory with the teachers on these same themes. The Change
painful contents, and, most importantly of all, at removing anxiety
Laboratory is a method of research intervention for developing
and tension” (p. 71). With regard to defense Vasilyuk points out that
educational and work practices (Engestro €m, 2007). The suggestion
“the more important point, both theoretically and practically, is
was enthusiastically received by the principal of the school and the
to understand and explain the inner conflicts and contradictions
representative of the teachers. A Change Laboratory was conducted
inherent in experiencing processes in terms of struggle between
by the author and a colleague (subsequently called “the interven-
heterogeneous principles” (p. 171). In Vasilyuk's (1988) theory of
tionists”) with 12 teachers in the school for a period of three months.
experiencing, struggles refer to conflicts between motives of a single
Also the school's technical assistant participated in the Change
subject. This paper argues that an act of resistance to the interven-
Laboratory sessions. During the intervention discussions led to the
tion and the interventionist can be an external manifestation of an
identification of the following problem that teachers were facing: the
inner conflict of the individual who expresses resistance.
classes of about 30 students were difficult to manage while individual
By critical conflicts Vasilyuk (1988) refers to situations in which
evaluations were performed. Other students did not show interest in
individuals face inner doubts that paralyze them in front of contra-
the evaluation, got distracted and started doing other things.
dictory motives unsolvable by the subject alone.
The Change Laboratory promotes transformations in workplaces by
“These conflicts are often resolved only inadequately and one- initiating cycles of discussions among practitioners and intervention-
sidedly. Although temporary, partial restoration of harmony ists. This Change Laboratory was conducted using the general model
to consciousness and personality may be achieved, overall the and toolkit of meditational artifacts, as reported in numerous publi-
solution of such conflict may have negative results as destruc- cations (Engestro €m, 2007; Virkkunen, Engestro €m, Helle, Pihlaja, &
tive to the personality as the actual events being experienced. Poikela, 1997). A period of preliminary ethnographic inquiries
Thus experiencing can often be a prolonged, chain-reaction type preceded the beginning of the intervention. During this face the
of process, at each successive stage of which one has to deal not interventionists observed the activities in the classrooms and con-
only, or not so much, with the original critical circumstances as ducted interviews with teachers and students. Subsequently the two
with the unfortunate consequences of foregoing attempts to interventionists met with the group of practitioners in Change Labo-
cope with those circumstances” (p. 171). ratory sessions which lasted for two hours and took place once every
second week. A follow-up session was also conducted after a period
Through tensions and confrontations, the process of experi-
during which the teachers experimented with new solutions they had
encing opens up possibilities for the individuals to face and work
identified in the Change Laboratory. At the end of the intervention,
out their contradictory motives together with others. The experi-
which coincided with the end of the school year, participants strongly
encing of critical conflicts is, however, not only introspective labor
suggested to start a new intervention cycle during the next school year,
realized together with others. As the expression ‘contradictory
with a larger number of teachers in the school.
motives’ indicates, personal and interpersonal crises are strongly
One of the tools used in the Change Laboratory is called “mirror”.
intertwined with contradictions in the collective activities. An
€ m, 1987; Leont'ev, 1978) is a long-term collective It consists in an empty surface on which key data stemming
activity (Engestro
from the ethnographic fieldwork and from previous intervention
formation realizing the subjects' relationship to an object. This
sessions are reproduced for stimulating and provoking discussions
relationship is mediated by societal and instrumental resources
on problematic aspects of the daily work practices. These data may
available in a given culture. Teaching, for instance, is the teachers'
be videotaped episodes of interaction, filmed interviews or key
activity oriented toward students and toward the subject matter
documents.
they are to learn. Such an activity is mediated by tools used in the
The Change Laboratory is based on Vygotsky's (1987) method of
school, as well as by rules and division of labor in the given school
double stimulation:
community. Contradictions (Il'enkov, 1977) are historically evolving
systemic tensions within an activity and/or between multiple “By using this approach, we do not limit ourselves to the usual
interrelated activities. Experiencing is therefore collective work on method of offering the subject simple stimuli to which we expect
 A. Sannino / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 838e844
a direct response. Rather, we simultaneously offer a second series
of stimuli that have a special function. In this way, we are able to
study the process of accomplishing a task by the aid of specific
auxiliary means; thus we are also able to discover the inner
structure and development of higher psychological processes.
The method of double stimulation elicits manifestations of the
crucial processes in the behavior of people of all ages. Tying
a knot as a reminder, in both children and adults, is but one
example of a pervasive regulatory principle of human behavior,
that of signification, wherein people create temporary links and
give significance to previously neutral stimuli in the context of
their problem-solving efforts. We regard our method as impor-
tant because it helps to objectify inner psychological proc-
esses.” (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 74e75).
Engestro €m (1996) has put double stimulation to new use in
the Change Laboratory method. According to Engestro €m (2009)
“Double stimulation is an expansive method. It pushes the
subject to go beyond the problem initially given, to open up and
expand upon an object behind the problem” (p. 303). In Change
Laboratory interventions problematic practices, e.g., evaluation
practices in the case of the Italian high school in this article,
represent first stimuli for the practitioners and are discussed and
redesigned with the help of theoretical models used as second
stimuli.
Change Laboratories have been mainly discussed at the level
of collective systems. Recently the subjective involvement of the
participants has begun to gain attention as an important dimen-
sion in Change Laboratories. In my recent work (Sannino, 2008)
I connect the Change Laboratory method with the concept of
experiencing. This individual dimension is an important aspect
of the general interventionist method of the Change Laboratory,
but it has not been pursued in most of the empirical analyses
that Change Laboratory interventions have generated so far. Mirror
materials, for instance, are heavily subjective in the sense that
they evoke contents, events or problems which participants do
not usually have a chance to reflectively focus on in their daily
work practices: “This mirror consists of experientially powerful
depictions of problematic occurrences and aspects of the everyday
practice of the workplace community: videotaped disturbance
situations, dilemmatic interview excerpts, critical feedback from
customers, troublesome performance statistics, and so on”
(Engestro € m, 1996, p. 137).
Participants of the Change Laboratory reported in this paper
were asked to produce autobiographical texts as part of the mirror
material. These texts turned out to be particularly useful for
eliciting experiencing among the teachers whose work is mainly
discussed in this paper.
The participants' stance toward the intervention was initially
saturated by reluctance and outright hostility. Their talk during the
early phases of the intervention was dominated by complaints
about policy makers and high-level administration, complaints
which teachers used to justify the impossibility of creative local
action. During the intervention, a different way of talking about
change emerged, involving the taking of individual and collective
initiatives for small-scale changes and innovations.
One of the teachers who had previously expressed open criti-
cism toward the intervention suggested to turn the individual oral
exam into a collaborative game modeled after a television quiz.
Instead of interrogating an individual student while other students
are asked to silently follow, the teacher formed two teams, each
consisting of three students. The teams competed, while another
student kept the score on the blackboard and the others served as
an audience that helped the teacher to translate the collective
scores into individual grades.
841
3.1. The initial resistance and conciliatory statements
At the beginning of the intervention teachers openly manifested
reluctance and hostility toward the intervention, as in the following
examples from the first intervention session. The data excerpts are
translated from Italian.
Example 1. While all the participants were one by one intro-
ducing themselves, one teacher took the floor by saying: “I have
been teaching law and economics for 15 years and I am trying to
understand why I am here today.” (Teacher A)
Example 2. At the beginning of the first intervention session, the
interventionist was briefly mentioning the themes of the inter-
vention e evaluation and management of the classroom e and how
these themes are usually defined in textbooks. The interventionist
was abruptly interrupted by a teacher who said: “I don't agree with
what you are saying. (.) We are in trenches here (.). The evaluation
comes after a learning process (.) We work with human material, we
do not put labels on tomato bottles” (Teacher B).
Later on in the intervention, in explicit continuity with the
previous speaking turns (in Examples 1 and 2), the same teachers
and others also expressed conciliatory statements and opened up
further steps in the participatory shift initiated with the manifes-
tations of resistance.
Example 3. “It would be optimal (.) to face problems with a higher
margin of creativity and to find solutions (.) together. In this sense
the school does not always support us practitioners. We see this in
the experiences of the afternoon projects of the European Social
Fund, where the method, the approach and the degree of interac-
tion are different from the constrictive model that we use in the
classroom”. (Teacher A)
In the conciliatory statement of Teacher A (Example 3) we
can observe a manifestation of conflicting motives. The teacher
says that it would be optimal to engage in some creative process
e but teachers do not have support. He indicates that there is
a conflict between the motive of creatively engaging in work on
solutions of problematic aspects of the practice, and the motive
of performing traditional teaching. This statement also expresses
a contradiction between his practice as a teacher in regular
classes in the morning and the afternoon activities supported
with external funds.
Another teacher (Teacher C), addressing the interventionist, said
the following.
Example 4. “We need to understand the codes that we use. We say
summative evaluation, which as you said before is such a sad
concept if you do not take into account the individual. Perhaps this
is true at a theoretical level. (.) Perhaps by summative evaluation
we mean evaluation in which we give a grade, taking into account
human aspects, which have their affective and emotional dimen-
sion, perhaps we know what the student is going through in his life,
perhaps we also refer to the student's conduct. In general we do
this on the battlefield. You made a beautiful premise when you
suggested to concretely work together. At a theoretical level, we
perhaps need to find a common code”.
Textbook definitions of evaluation suggested in the intervention
visibly did not touch the reality of these teachers. Thus, toward the
end of the first intervention session, the interventionists asked the
teachers to write autobiographical accounts with their reflections
on concrete problems that they encountered in the evaluation and
in managing classes. The autobiographical accounts were then used
as mirror material in the Change Laboratory sessions. In her text
teacher B wrote the following.
842 A. Sannino / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 838e844
Example 5. “I have been teaching first and second-year students law
and economics for several years (.) For me, the exam has always
been a moment in which I evaluate not only the student's preparation,
but also my own method. It represents also a moment of reflection for
me and an opportunity to take up again contents already covered.
Moreover the exam is an opportunity for the students to notice
possible gaps and their own potentials. (.) The main difficulty for me
is to make sure that others in the classroom follow [other students'
individual oral exams] without getting distracted.”
The autobiographical text of Teacher B (Example 5) mainly
expresses a conflict between the teacher's attempts to make the
evaluation relevant for the whole class and attempts to control the
other students so that they do not get distracted. The contradictory
level is also present. This level implicitly emerges through the
reference to the convention of individual evaluation conducted
while other students are waiting for their turn, and to her will to
make this evaluation relevant also for the other students.
The contradiction is built in this very system of evaluation that
aims at being at same time individual and open to others, and turns
out to be alienating for the whole class. This is a contradictory
pedagogical practice based simultaneously on individualism and
control. The practical ethos here is that teachers should devote
themselves to students individually and at same time control them
as a group. This idea gives no credit to the students as agents. This
was the core of the contradiction in the practices in this school:
absolute individualism combined with absolute control.
3.2. Steps forward in the participatory shift
After the manifestation of resistance and related conciliatory
statements, the following further steps in the participatory shift can
be identified.
Step 1: With whom are you fighting?
During the second intervention session the interventionists
confronted the participants with expressions that they widely used
during the previous meeting (Teacher B, example 2: “We are in
trenches”; Teacher C, example 4: “We in general do this on the
battlefield”; Teacher A, example 3: “The constrictive model that we
use in the classroom”) and asked: “Against whom are you fighting”?
The technical assistant answered as follows:
“Each one of us has some aim that for one reason or another has
collapsed, because we turned toward easier ways or for other
reasons. At the end the result is that one does things that one would
have never thought end up doing. At the end you realize [turning
toward the slides on which the statements from the previous
session were shown] that you are fighting. With whom am I
fighting? With myself, with my personal dissatisfaction.”
Step 2: The article
In the same session the technical assistant told about a text he read
some time before, written by a teacher who had turned his class of
mathematics into a game. After this account, Teacher B took the floor
manifesting her interest in the experience reported in this reading. The
interventionists suggested that the group could read this article
together. Teacher B took again the floor with a concrete suggestion:
“We could try to do team evaluation so that each student works on his own
evaluation and is responsible also for the evaluation of the others”. The
interventionist responded: “This is a good idea to work on together”.
Step 3: On the diverse evaluation methods
In the same session teachers presented their own methods of
evaluation. Teacher D said that, in order to avoid that others get
distracted during the individual evaluation of a student, she asks
the class to express their own opinion of what the student should
get as a grade. If, however they do not evaluate well, they them-
selves get a bad grade. Teacher B strongly reacted to this description
by her colleague. Their exchange is reported below.
Teacher D: “I tell them to be attentive and to listen, to follow the
evaluation because if they evaluate wrong, if I am not satisfied with
the grade, if they make a mistake in their judgment they themselves
will get a bad grade.”
Teacher B: “You'll terrify them that way!”
Teacher D: “That way you can be certain that they follow, and
never get distracted. I have been doing that since the beginning of
my career. This is a good method of self-evaluation and of class-
room evaluation.”
During the third intervention session the discussion around
different methods of evaluation continued. Teacher E said: “I simply
ask them some questions. Students are very serene. It is not an inter-
rogation really. I spontaneously ask each of them a question each day. I
don't do that as if it is a heavy moment of anxiety. Every day I follow
their development and that's all. That is simply a development that I
closely take notes of.” Teacher D replied saying that she considers
anxiety in the evaluation necessary for making the situation an
opportunity to develop.
The participatory shift, as these three steps illustrate, is a move-
ment from general resistance (Examples 1 to 4), to the expression
(Example 5), realization (step 1) and work on critical conflicts (steps
2 and 3). These conflicts refer to deeply internalized cultural prac-
tices which are also contradictory and self-defeating. In order to
understand the nature of the participatory shift it is useful to further
inquire about the critical conflicts hidden behind resistance.
3.3. Completion of the participatory shift
During the third intervention session, Teacher B intervened
saying that she had started experimenting with evaluation in teams
as a collaborative game modeled after a television quiz.
“I have formed two teams of three students, one very good, one who
needs support so that she can be stimulated and encouraged by
others, and one that is in the middle. I said that I would evaluate
them in economics. The right answers that one of you will give will
have an impact also on the evaluation of the others. The grade is
not given by me. The class will express the evaluation. I will only
record the grade. I noticed an immediate ferment and voices saying
‘I recommend that you study this’, ‘Focus on this topic’, ‘You know
how she asks questions, so, when you study do it that way’. When
my teaching hour was finished and I left, students were still
speaking that way. How this will continue, I do not know.”
I will not go into the details of the experimentation and its
results. In this paper my intention is rather to analyze factors that
led to the initiative of the experimentation. The other teachers
continued discussion on other issues. At the end of the session
Teacher B again took the floor with a long speaking turn which
clearly depicts an ongoing process of experiencing. In the following
the speaking turn is split in different sub-excerpts to allow a more
accessible reading of the important aspects of the teacher's talk.
The teacher explicitly addressed the interventionist and related to
her autobiographical text and the preceding discourse. These
discussions enabled her to look at herself from the outside.
“I need to ask you [turning toward one of the interventionists]
a question. When I saw what I wrote and I thought about what we
said here, then I tried to see myself from the outside with new eyes,
and I realized that something was missing.”
 A. Sannino / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 838e844
The intervention provided this teacher with a mirror (“I tried to
see myself from the outside with new eyes”) which allowed her to
face a critical conflict in her teaching practice:
“Now I know that I can make people laugh. For somebody who teaches
law this is laughable but I really felt that I missed creativity. It seems
self-evident then to ask: “How come did you end up that way?”
Teacher B then continued by highlighting the nature of her
critical conflict in terms of a struggle between two conflicting
motives. On the one hand she wanted to be true to her profession
and pursue her passion for teaching by involving the students in
the intellectual endeavor of her teaching:
“The limit that I perceived is this of having to administer myself as
a person, (.) to follow students as we have discussed here, to give
to these students yourself that way (.). The lesson is over in 55
minutes. What happens to me after that is that I find again 30 other
students in front of me and have to be different. You remain yourself
of course, but you are not yourself anymore, because you have
different people in front of you every 55 minutes. I tried to say that
also today: In five second-year classes I have five different methods
and this is chaotic.”
On one other hand she felt compelled to condemn and escape
a school system that does not correspond to her teaching values:
“I have to admit that I feel culpable because at the beginning of the
day I give a lot. Then I end up starting quantifying and talking and
talking and talking, and those who listen they just can do whatever. I
am sorry to say that but it is the truth. When you have five hours of
teaching in a row with five different classes, perhaps I manage to give
something to the first three, but what do I give to the two others? I
feel guilty because this is a question of quality of the service. We are
all equal. There is no such thing as a class that deserves and a class
that does not deserve. Then of course one starts saying ‘These
students are weak, there I don't care, I can give very low grades and
you can start boiling in your own broth.’ I shouldn't think that way.”
At the end of her speaking turn Teacher B explicitly formulated
her wish to find a way out of this critical conflict. She emphasized
the radical tension that she is experiencing by conveying the
representation of the school in which she works as a prison for her.
This representation clearly clashes with the desire to fulfill her
professional teaching values.
“I do not want the panacea, I would like to understand how to
reconciliate what I would like, therefore what I desire, and what is
my professional fulfillment and brings me to school with enthu-
siasm in the morning. And on the other hand there is this feeling
that I have to suffer the punishment of forced labor.”
This excerpt shows also that experiencing is not only work on
oneself. Experiencing is also productive expansion in the commu-
nity leading to objective results, as Teacher B herself pointed out in
the same intervention session:
“I bring myself into play, that's how I am, I work this way. Sooner or
later from one we will become two, and then perhaps a third one
will also join in.”
4. Discussion
The participatory shift that supports change is not in the resis-
tance itself. I agree with Kindred (1999) in that engagement in
resistance makes a participatory shift possible. The participatory shift
is in the engagement in resistance. But what does it mean to engage
in resistance? The engagement in resistance consists in overcoming
confrontational opposition by participating in a collective effort to
843
identify hidden phenomena which triggered the act of resistance
itself. Behind resistance there are conflicts. Engaging in resistance is
to engage in a field of struggles. It is a field of conflicts and contra-
dictions in which people dwell every day in their practice. If the
interventionist wants to support practitioners in their attempt to
engage in working out the contradictions in their work, practitioners
have to be supported also to face and express the conflicts between
the motives that characterize their relations toward their object. In
other words, working out conflicting motives is an avenue into an
engagement with the actual systemic contradictions of the given
activity. The talk of the teachers about the battlefield (Teacher B,
example 2: “We are in trenches”; Teacher C, example 4: “In general we
do this on the battlefield”) strongly indicates that their conflicts are
systemic rather than just personal. Within change efforts such as the
intervention in this high school, contradictions can to an important
extent be manifested in discursive processes of experiencing with
the help of which participants try to make sense of, deal with and
transform or resolve the systemic contradictions of their activities.
Teacher B seemed to come closer to an understanding of the core of
this contradiction than her colleagues. From the very beginning of the
intervention she emphasized the necessity to make the other students
involved in evaluation (Example 5). The necessity of involvement of
the other students indicates that she was close to understanding that
this type of excessive individualism cannot work. She did not give up
on the control, but she started experimenting with one part of the
equation, namely the excessive individualism, by breaking out of this
traditional mold of individual evaluation.
What made this breaking out possible? From the very first
session Teacher B was troubled by her own evaluation practice. She
was offended by the traditional distinction between summative and
formative evaluation that the interventionist took up (Example 2).
She interpreted this distinction as if the interventionist was sug-
gesting simply a switch from summative to formative evaluation.
With her resistance she emphasized that this was not the real issue.
One concrete element which clearly facilitated this movement from
resistance toward initiative was the work on the article (step 2 in
the participatory shift). In Vygotsky's (1987) terms, the article
represented a mediating artifact, a second stimulus, that Teacher B
grabbed because it presented some form of collaborative evaluation.
The first stimulus was her problem with the management of
the class during individual evaluations (Example 5). The interven-
tionists offered her as a second stimulus a handbook distinction
between summative and formative evaluation and she rejected
this in the act of resistance because it did not touch her reality
(Example 2). The interventionists opened up the door to another
possible second stimulus that materialized in the talk of the tech-
nical assistant on the article (step 2).
Vygotsky (1987) points out that the experimenter can bring in
a potentially meaningful second stimulus. This study indicates that
the interventionist's second stimulus can also be rejected. This may
be necessary so that the practitioners can find their own mean-
ingful second stimulus in the process of opening up to the conflicts
and contradictions which characterize their practices. It is not so
important what second stimulus the experimenter brings in as long
as she or he is willing to engage in this painful experience of getting
it rejected and replaced. A concrete manifestation of this engage-
ment by the interventionist is in the question that she asked
“Against whom are you fighting?” (step 1). The response by one of
the practitioners e “With whom am I fighting? With myself, with my
personal dissatisfaction” e puts forward that the teachers' own
pedagogical practice is inherently conflictual and contradictory.
The teachers in the intervention many times emphasized the
need to have smaller classes, as if this would be the solution to their
problems with evaluation and management of the classroom. This
is a typical reaction to internal conflict and contradictions. Subjects
844 A. Sannino / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 838e844
try to explain them in terms of external conflicting factors beyond
their control, in this case educational authorities versus teachers.
This reminds us of Marx's dialectical distinction between internal
and external contradictions, as discussed by Il'enkov (1977).
“For Marx (.) it was an index of the one-sidedness and superfi-
ciality of knowledge when an object was presented in thought
simply as an external contradiction, signifying that only the
outward form of the manifestation of an internal contradiction had
been caught, instead of the contradiction itself. Dialectics obliges
one always to see, behind a thing's relation to another thing, its
own relation to itself, its own inner relation” (p. 335).
When the technical assistant said that the conflict is in the
teachers themselves (step 1), a further step in the participatory
shift of Teacher B opened up. Her inner conflict consisted in this
impossible ambition to reconcile individualism and control. This
pedagogical dilemma was a manifestation of the systemic contra-
diction that gave rise to conflicts of motives at the individual level.
Experiencing needs to be mediated by means of externalizations. A
crucial aspect in this process of mediation was the interventionist's
suggestion that the teachers could write their own autobiographical
accounts. The combined second stimulus of the autobiographical
account (Example 5) and the article (step 2) made it possible for
Teacher B to engage in a participatory shift from resistance to
self-initiative.
5. Conclusion
This study indicates that subjects can move beyond resistance by
engaging in externalized forms of experiencing and by expressing
their conflicts and contradictions. This may trigger the sensitivity
of a participant in the intervention to grasp relevant second stimuli
which may have been brought in by him/herself, by others, or by the
interventionist.
The participatory shift from resistance to self-initiative is
a movement of both externalization and internalization: external-
izing inner conflicts and internalizing a meaningful second stimulus.
Probably the interest of Teacher B in the article was triggered by her
being involved in self-reflective work on the problematic aspects of
her teaching and starting to face her inner conflicting motives. In
this sense the principle of double stimulation cannot be reduced
to a technicality of the interventionist effort, divorced from experi-
encing. For a second stimulus to be received and to trigger agentive
initiative, there must be fertile ground in conflicts to be resolved.
The intervention reported here, the case of Teacher B in partic-
ular, sheds new light on ‘resistance’ as a manifestation of conflicts
experienced by teachers in their practice. An understanding of
experiencing can therefore be instrumental for supporting educa-
tional innovations. This case is potentially relevant for reflecting on
ways to support agentive resistance, not only to conceive it posi-
tively, but to nurture it practically. How does one do this as an
interventionist? How to train interventionists to face and support
productive resistance?
In an intervention in which practitioners are supported to
externalize and to face their internal conflicts, discussions must be
supportive also of the expression of conflicts. The talk of experi-
encing is very intimate talk which touches the professional identity
of the subject and highlights weaknesses and incoherencies. As
Kindred (1999) puts it: “Resistance as part of a process of learning
(.) involves externalizing and dismantling many of the beliefs and
narratives that erode the self-worth of workers on a daily basis”
(p. 217). In order to externalize conflicts a subject has to feel
support in the dialogue. The paradox of the interventionists is that
while they are themselves refused by the act of resistance, at the
same time they have to facilitate in a supportive way this discursive
opening toward the expression of conflicts.
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