Studying Agency in Literacy Teacher Education: A Layered Approach to Positive Discourse Analysis

Critically oriented forms of discourse analysis have focused largely on oppression and injustice. Signaling a new turn in the field, scholars have called for an analytic focus on moments of liberation and agency, referring to this orientation as “positive discourse analysis” (PDA). In this research, we turn our attention to a case study of agency and leadership in teacher education. We analyze the discursive contours of a workshop designed and presented at an Educating for Change Curriculum Fair by a preservice teacher, whom we refer to as Leslie, about culturally relevant teaching. Arguing that PDA is not a new approach but a shift in analytic focus, we draw on the tools of narrative analysis, critical discourse analysis, and multimodal analysis. This turn toward the “positive” provided us with insight into the discourses processes associated with agency: how Leslie accepts and extends invitations for agency, uses problems to extend learning, uses narratives and counter-narratives and creates multiple storylines for herself and others. We call for further research that considers agency across contexts so that we might be better able to identify agentic stances and deepen such acts.