Agency and Structure—Influences on a Principal's Initiation of Change in School Practices

Abstract

Changes in the curriculum and in the organization of schools are occurring in response to the changing nature of society and through consideration of what is appropriate learning for students. In primary schools in Queensland, it is often the task of the principals to initiate these changes. This paper proposes that elements of the duality of agency and structure, as proposed by Giddens (1979, 1981, 1982, 1984) in his theory of structuration, can provide some understanding of the complexities of the actions of principals and of teachers in school change. The knowledgeability of agents, the dialectic of control between them, and the enabling and constraining features of structure, as rules and resources, are elaborated. A specific change in practice in a suburban primary school is analysed using these notions. The analysis suggests that there is some evidence that the day-to-day activities of participants in the change in practice were being re-created by knowledgeable agents who were reproducing the structural conditions which made the activities possible.