Structure, reflexivity and their interplay
Understanding university faculty members’ implementation of teaching excellence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11166751 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tengteng Zhuang (0000-0003-3940-4216, Beijing Normal University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 78-96 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0142-5692 • E-ISSN: 1465-3346 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01425692.2022.2132470 |
| OpenAlex | W4304778232 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 44 |
Against the backdrop of teaching being downplayed in higher education, this study unravels how the university faculty members’ implementation of teaching excellence is influenced by the interplay of objective structural conditionings and subjective internal deliberations, drawing upon Margaret Archer's social realist framework and her distinction between human reflexive modalities. By exploring 21 faculty members from three Chinese universities with different structural constraints and enablements, the study shows that dual modalities are manifest in all faculty members, among which meta-reflexivity applies to everyone. However, autonomous reflexivity and communicative reflexivity play more dominant roles in generating purposeful actions under the same structure. Furthermore, some structural forces are non-negotiable constraints, and people having the same reflexivity modality may act differently under different structural conditionings. The study calls for universities to cater to both structural arrangements and reflexive deliberations to transform constraints into enablements for teaching excellence
Epistemology · Excellence · Higher education · Modalities · Pedagogy · Political science · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Critical Realism in Sociology · Higher Education Governance and Development · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy
Case Study Research in Practice
What contributes to first-year student teachers’ sense of professional agency in the classroom?
Teachers’ professional agency in contradictory times
Characteristics of teachers as change agents
The role of beliefs in teacher agency
Measuring student satisfaction at a UK university
The Discovery of Grounded Theory
Power landscapes within Chinese universities
Structure, Culture and Agency
Realist Social Theory
The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity
Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation
Unmasking the teaching quality of higher education
Academic identities and university faculty responses to new managerialist reforms
For Structure
Approaches to reflexivity
Cultural capital and agency
Reflexivity, structure and agency
Teaching in the ‘margins’
Structure and agency in learning
Contributions to realist social theory
A social realist perspective on student learning in higher education
The development of agency in first generation learners in higher education
What makes an excellent lecturer? Academics' perspectives on the discourse of 'teaching excellence' in higher education
Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists
Agency and learning in the lifecourse
Is research mediating the relationship between teaching experience and student satisfaction
What Is Agency
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |