Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Fostering Agency In Single-Gender, Middle Level Ela Classrooms: A Descriptive Multiple-Case Study, Jennifer V. Stowe

Theses and Dissertations

Students’ sense of agency or self-efficacy has been linked to student achievement levels (Goodman & Eren, 2013; Johnston, 2004; Skinner, Wellborne, & Connell, 1990). Research has also established that teachers position their students as having agency in the context of the classroom, frequently by the ways that they use language (Johnston, 2004; Paulson & Theado, 2014). However, little, if any, extant research describes teacher language as it relates to agency within the middle level English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Additionally, studies concerning agency rarely address the ways in which gender may influence the ways in which teachers position their students …