Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Crash or Crash Through: Part 1 573
A key advantage of exploring teaching and learning in terms of the agency–structure dialectic
is that efforts to improve learning do not focus only on individuals. Here the focus is on creating
collective agreements and responsibilities for the quality of teaching and all learning within a
community. Because agency is recursively related to structure, cultural production is always contextualized,
involving interactions with material, human, and symbolic resources. If interactions
are to be successful, participants in a community must have effective social networks and, within
a particular field, those with the respect of others can use their social capital to access resources
and enact culture in ways that reproduce and transform the culture of science.
CRASH OR CRASH THROUGH
Will Amira crash through or will she crash? Of course the metaphor of crashing connotes many
images, from sleeping to meeting a grisly end in a motor vehicle accident. The vignettes about the
dihybrid cross are evidence of an adolescent female with the power to coordinate mathematical
and abstract thinking with science concepts such as genotype, phenotype, heterozygous alleles,
and dominant and recessive genes. Amira could work out the details of the dihybrid cross despite
her teacher having struggled to present the ideas in a whole-class activity. Although she was
unsuccessful in completing the task in class, she was clearly on the right track. Even though
the topic was not taught in subsequent lessons, in an interview six months later Amira worked
out the details of the phenotypic ratios for a dihybrid cross when both alleles are heterozygous.
In so doing she demonstrated an impressive knowledge of the culture of science and reiterated
her confidence in being a successful scientist. Amira had an identity of being interested in and
good at science. But how is her ability to solve problems that she has not previously been taught
evidence of agency that can be transferred into fields not associated with learning introductory
biology? Can Amira appropriate the culture of science to meet her own goals, especially those
pertaining to academic success and life outside of school? If only success depended on Amira’s
determination to succeed. However, her agency is interconnected with the structures of the many
fields in which she participates. Accordingly, whether or not Amira meets her goals is dialectically
interconnected with the practices of others and schema such as expectations and rules, at least
some of which are potentially hegemonic. In the next of this two-part series of chapters I examine
contextual factors that structure and mediate Amira’s achievement in school and progress toward
her goal of becoming a doctor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The research in this chapter is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant
No. REC-0107022. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation.
NOTES
1. The philosophy of Edward Gough Whitlam, the former labor prime minister of Australia for three
years, Dec 1972 to November 1975, was to crash through or crash. In the end Whitlam was to crash when Sir
John Kerr, the Queen’s appointed representative in Australia, removed him from office. The act of removing
an elected national leader was highly controversial.
2. Pseudonyms are used throughout this paper.
3. There is a hint of disrespect in the interview that is not evident when Amira approaches teachers with
suggestions for help.