@article{fedd2c105d67426ebb81a69c79c3e593,
title = "How do teachers exercise relational agency for supporting migrant students within social networks in schools from Scotland, Finland, and Sweden?",
abstract = "This study examines how teachers exercise relational agency - working flexibly with other actors in their social networks to support migrant students. Teachers and other staff members from 7 schools in Scotland, Finland and Sweden participated in social network surveys (n = 1116), online logs (n = 275) and interviews (n = 82). A mixed-method social network analysis shows how networks facilitate relational agency as teachers reach out to others to mobilise resources and tacit knowledge within their school communities. The findings point to the critical role of professional collaboration and suggest that social networks shape how teachers work with specialists to support migrant students.",
keywords = "collaboration, migrant students, mixed methods, relational agency, social network analysis",
author = "Nata{\v s}a Panti{\'c} and Marc Sarazin and Thibault Coppe and Didem Oral and Evelina Maninnen and Kaisa Silvennoinen and Anna Lund and H{\"o}kk{\"a} P{\"a}ivi and Katja V{\"a}h{\"a}santanen and Shupin Li",
note = "Funding Information: An online log for Teacher Reflection on their Agency for Change (TRAC), designed to collect data on relational teacher agency was adapted to focus on migrant student support specifically. TRAC log consists of three sections that reflect aspects of the relational agency including: the purpose of interactions (1-WHAT was the problem or situation that actors sought to address), the role of the actors they interacted with (2-WHO they reached out to seek support) and reasons why (3-WHY they reached out and how they were supported), including a reflection on the outcome. In particular, the log asked staff to describe in detail a “time (over the past 6 months) when they reached out to someone to support or help a migrant student”.SAOM showed that these interactions often involve going to people in designated roles or with specific expertise. In all countries, we found evidence that staff tend to interact with English/Swedish/Finnish as additional language teachers regarding migrant student support (e.g., see significant “Migr: EAL-alter” effect in Juniper School and in Rowan School in the Appendix). In Scotland and Sweden, staff members are also going to other student support staff (e.g. see significant “Migr: Role-sup alter” effect in Juniper School).In each site we could identify pockets of collaboration that enabled staff to exercise their relational agency to access resources and knowledge available to them. The higher structural equivalence of interactions coded as AoC in Rowan and Beech in Scotland, Pine tree in Sweden and to a small extent in Silver Birch in Finland indicate that in these sites groups of colleagues are more involved in collaborations with the same designated actors around migrant support, which is also corroborated by the qualitative findings. For example, Stina, who is the Swedish as a second language teacher in Pine Tree, is involved in most of the interactions regarding migrant support network. In her role she is seen as the main person to deal with newly-arrived students because they need to learn Swedish. For example, a mathematics teacher reported approaching Stina to get information about student's prior knowledge, so she knows where to start, got recommendation on suitable materials, word lists in student's mother tongue, and contact details for the student's multilingual classroom assistant (Teacher, Sweden, Pine Tree, log ID 115).Comparisons of the social networks across sites also uncovered how the same support roles can be used differently in different schools. For example, migrant support networks show how the same (English as Additional Language) specialist, Vera, who supports all three schools in Scotland, was sought after differently across the three sites. In Rowan school, Vera is by far the most central actor in the school's migrant student support network, in Juniper she is one among several very central actors, while in Beech school, Vera was relatively central, but not among the most central actors in the school (see Fig. 2.)The same kind of contrast is noticeable in Scotland between Juniper school, where staff are more sensitised to the diversity in the student cohort that intersects with other markers of diversity and vulnerability, and Rowan school where agency and collaboration for migrant support is primarily directed at removing linguistic barriers to access the curriculum. Commonly, the focus of collaboration between teachers seems to be on support for academic learning, while collaboration with support staff and other professionals encompasses a more holistic support for students' learning and wellbeing, including emotional support. These findings reflect the literature suggesting that meso-level school structures and cultures might be particularly consequential for the development of inclusive practices as they mediate other influences (Ainscow, 2005). At the same time relational agency and school collaboration around migrant support may reflect policies in Finland, Scotland and Sweden, in particular around professional autonomy and migrant support systems. For example, Finland is well known for its teacher policies that allow high levels of professional autonomy, which can be broadly seen as protecting professional agency, however, as noted by Manninen, H{\"o}kk{\"a}, Tarnanen, and V{\"a}h{\"a}santanen (2022), Finnish school staff members have also expressed barriers for support processes of increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse students when school communities' old ways of doing are challenged. Professional agency was restricted by a strong tradition of pedagogical autonomy where the boundary between shared guidelines and staff members{\textquoteright} own values was ambiguous (Manninen et al., 2022). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Authors",
year = "2023",
month = dec,
day = "26",
doi = "10.1016/j.tate.2023.104442",
language = "English",
volume = "139",
journal = "Teaching and Teacher Education",
issn = "0742-051X",
publisher = "Elsevier",
}