ABS249 - The expansive learning cycle transformed into a tool for educational design

The aim of this presentation is to give an empirical example of what can be an indicator of transformative agency in a Change Laboratory (CL). The idea of a CL is to empower the participants to enable transformative agency and changes in their activity. The researchers are supposed to both provoke and sustain the work of the participants. We argue that the issue of agency – both relational and transformative – is of great importance in a CL but that sustaining participants’ agency is a demanding task. Furthermore, participants’ agency must be analysed empirically.
A CL-project at the Swedish Manilla-school (grades 1-10), a special school for students with impaired hearing aimed at qualifying math-teaching. The team consisted of teachers in all grades and a group of researchers. The researchers produced mirror data. The teachers prepared themselves by reading the epistemology underpinning the national curriculum. At the end of the project, teachers created a new way of using the expansive learning cycle and the process of change laboratory, fit for their purposes, for designing, developing and assessing their math-teaching. This we see as an indicator of a transformative agency.