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Proactive Feedback-Seeking, Teaching Performance, and Flourishing Amongst Teachers in an International Primary School

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Agency at Work

Part of the book series: Professional and Practice-based Learning ((PPBL,volume 20))

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider teacher agency as an important concept amongst educators. We investigate individual agency in an educational setting in the form of workplace learning. Specifically, we argue that agentic, proactive feedback-seeking is an important way for teachers to engage in learning. Proactive feedback-seeking is hypothesised to improve both subjective teaching performance and general well-being in terms of flourishing. We present a case study of an international primary school located in Jakarta, Indonesia, that is based on both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative analyses revealed that there exists a positive relationship between proactive feedback-seeking and subjective teaching performance. No evidence was found for the hypothesised relationship between proactive feedback-seeking and flourishing in this study. Given these unexpected results, we turned to qualitative data to help better our understanding of the dynamics of proactive feedback-seeking in an educational setting. In the discussion, in which we integrate the results of both streams of research, we point out several contextual elements that most likely inhibited the relationship between proactive feedback-seeking and flourishing whilst providing a list of circumstances and conditions in which the positive relationship between proactive feedback-seeking and subjective teacher performance can be founded on. We then offer implications both for further research and teaching practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Inter-Community School, Jakarta, Indonesia

    Jade Harwood

  2. Department of Education, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Dominik E. Froehlich

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  1. Jade Harwood
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  2. Dominik E. Froehlich
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Correspondence to Dominik E. Froehlich .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

    Michael Goller

  2. University of Jyväskylä , Jyväskylä, Finland

    Susanna Paloniemi

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Harwood, J., Froehlich, D.E. (2017). Proactive Feedback-Seeking, Teaching Performance, and Flourishing Amongst Teachers in an International Primary School. In: Goller, M., Paloniemi, S. (eds) Agency at Work. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60943-0_21

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