Introduction

Acting as ‘curriculum makers’ is particularly important for novice teachers because it (a) influences the degree to which they engage in a principled, reform-oriented analysis when creating learning opportunities for students (^{Beyer & Davis, 2012}); (b) emphasizes the agency of teachers in curricular processes and positions teachers as agents of change (^{Craig & Ross, 2008}) and (c) allows a deeper understanding of the ways in which teachers exercise control and agency in their curricular work (^{Harris-Hart, 2009}). More importantly, wherein teachers act as curriculum makers, there are close connections with leadership and this implies a strong relationship between the structures, norms, and patterns of interactions in the working conditions of schools (^{Grimett & Chinnery, 2009}).

While in the literature of teacher education the discourse of involving teachers in the production of the curriculum is widely recognized through the ‘image of teachers as curriculum makers’ (^{Clandinin & Conelly, 1992}; ^{Fullan, 2003}; ^{Craig & Ross, 2008}), in practice, it goes far beyond this recognition. Teachers generally have very few opportunities to engage in the redesign of the curriculum. In the teaching practicum, it rarely occurs as most teacher education programs fail to provide enough resources (like context, time and conditions for schoolteacher participation) for such experiences and continue to emphasize technical rationalist conceptions of the curriculum. Some studies have acknowledged the importance of developing teachers' pedagogical capacity for curriculum design by affirming that this is an essential aspect in teaching practice and it is common for novice teachers to encounter many difficulties when attempting to develop this capacity (^{Davis, 2006}; ^{Nicol & Crespo, 2006}; ^{Grossman & Thompson, 2008}; ^{Beyer & Davis, 2012}). Despite this, few studies have focused on the attempt to develop this pedagogical capacity when novice teachers are in the field, more specifically, when they are involved in their teaching practicum.

Developing teachers' pedagogical capacity for curriculum design may influence the degree to which teachers engage in a principled, reform-oriented analysis when creating learning opportunities for students (^{Beyer & Davis, 2012}). In an experience of engaging teachers in the design of the curriculum in a teaching methods course, ^{Beyer and Davis (2012}), for example, highlight that that most of the novice teachers also experienced an increase in confidence by the end of the course, with regard to the designing of lessons and saw themselves as curriculum designers during their first year of teaching. They concluded that it is paramount that novice teachers are afforded opportunities to develop their pedagogical design capacity. ^{Beyer and Davis (2009}) also note that developing teachers' pedagogical design capacity includes developing their ability to act upon these personal resources while interacting with particular material resources when creating powerful learning opportunities for students (^{Ball & Cohen, 1999}; ^{Remillard, 2005}). For them, in fostering their pedagogical design capacity, teachers must learn how to negotiate the affordances and constraints of particular curricular features while taking into consideration their own understandings, instructional goals, and classroom needs. It is, therefore, an important area in which novice teachers need support (^{Beyer & Davis, 2012}).

Acknowledging the importance of developing teachers' pedagogical capacity for curriculum design, this article reports an experience of the development of pedagogical capacity through a co-planning. I demonstrate that taking part in collaborative environments, such as co-planning, is one of the ways of acting that allows stakeholders to engage in curriculum production. Participating in more democratic spaces and being able to redesign their own curricula during teaching practicum has effects on how novice teachers perceive the participation of high school students. Thus, I argue that having had the opportunity to interact in co-plannings and redesigning the curriculum, new attitudes emerges at school.

The context

This article is part of a doctoral dissertation which aimed at understanding the transformation of teacher identities during their teaching practicum organized within PIBID through (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue) as a methodological approach (^{El Kadri, 2014}). Teacher identities were investigated through new teachers’ ways of acting, interacting, representing and being and data sources include audio-records of (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue) meetings, lectures by novice teachers given in academic seminars, papers, journals and reports. The analysis carried out was a longitudinal one focusing on two particular new teachers during two years. Thus, this study is also part of the Brazilian Institutional Bursary Program for the Initiation to Teaching (henceforth PIBID¹). PIBID is a program designed by CAPES to enhance teacher education and teaching in public schools by offering bursary to teachers.

Our group was comprised of 1 teacher educator and researcher (me), one schoolteacher (Alice) and 12 novice teachers. In the beginning, all of the novice teachers were the third and fourth year of the undergraduate course, which means they were all required to engage in the teaching practicum. In this article, I exemplify the findings by drawing on the data involving this group.

The research praxis lasted from August 2009 to December 2011. We met regularly during this time in co-planning, (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue) classes, cogenerative dialogues, schools meetings and supervisions. Data, in this article is analyzed through (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue) heuristic (^{Roth, 2002}).

During the two-years of working in the project, I recorded all forms of engagement in teaching-learning tasks on the part of the PIBID (18 new teachers during the two-year program). All the encounters were recorded and fully transcribed. The new teachers’ written assignments were assembled into portfolios that entered the database. The data sources also include talks in seminars, reports, transcribed cogenerative dialoguing session, and recordings of individual supervision sessions. The database now consists of more than 8,000 pages of transcripts produced over the two years. Our reflection on this data and other analysis can be seen in several other papers (^{El Kadri et al., 2018}; ^{El Kadri, 2018}). In this paper, however, my analysis is based on some interactions and some extracts from novice teachers’ journals and conference presentations.

The transcripts of cogenerative dialogues are analyzed through categories extracted from the Critical Discourse Analysis (^{Fairclough, 2003}; ^{Van Leeuwen, 2008}), the heuristic of (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue) and interaction conversational studies (^{Cheyne & Tarulli, 1999}). The extracts of journals are analyzed through the Representation of social actors theory² (^{Fairclough, 2003}; ^{Van Leeuween, 2008}) and the transitivity systems³ (^{Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004}).

The project proposed by our Language teaching education program entitled, ‘Collaborative Teacher Education and curriculum innovation in English teaching’, aimed at addressing two main issues: the need to increase the quality of teacher education courses and to innovate the English teaching curriculum. This proposal was based on contemporary trends that the relationship between schools and universities is the core of teacher education models in which theory and practice are reconstructed in a dialectical way through collaboration. Based on these tenets, the PIBID-English project proposed to develop actions to place the novice teachers in the school context and to construct (collectively) innovative pedagogical practices to then be implemented collaboratively. In this article, I report the experience of redesigning the curriculum and developing teachers’ pedagogical capacity.

(Coteaching | cogenerative dialogue) and co-planning as models for teacher education

Cogenerative dialogue is characterized by encounters in which students and teachers participate in conversations regarding praxis that focuses on teaching and learning with the purpose to further develop existing understandings of the learning/teaching situation in order to build local theory and thereby increase the action potential of all participants (^{Roth, 2002}). Cogenerative dialogue has seen increased usage among many researchers with the majority emphasizing the premise that students and teachers should be participating in conversations about praxis with a focus on teaching and learning. Although it may be argued that this is equivalent to reflective sessions, the difference is within the premise that in order to participate in cogenerative dialogue, participants are required to have shared experience in teaching (coteaching).

One of the most significant features of cogenerative dialogue meetings is the ability for such meetings to provide space for all participants to utilize a more equitable approach towards making sense of and generating an understanding of praxis (^{Roth, Lawless, & Tobin, 2000}), which, in my view, cannot be misunderstood power-relations-free. Thus, the main theoretical underpinnings of such encounters is the belief that each participant brings unique understanding and experiences to the field of activity while experiencing and interacting with the field in different ways (^{Wassell & Lavan, 2009}). Furthermore, the meetings conjure an emancipatory feature that works against the control of interests and ruling relations that characterize most current educational systems (^{Roth, 2002}).

^{Roth et al. (2000}) explain that coteaching and the associated Cogenerative dialogue evolved because they found that such processes led to understandings that allowed them to generate new possibilities for action and thereby engage in expansive learning and in the transformation of praxis. They argue that they have realized that conceiving (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue) as a dialectical unit offers far more benefits than conceiving them separately.

A considerable amount of literature has been published on the results and benefits of (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue). These studies are not solely interpreted as a methodology for the improvement of teacher education by providing new opportunities for learning to teach and for the enhancement of student learning, but also as means to overcome the theory/practice gap. The main benefits of implementing (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue), according to the studies, are its impacts on the teaching and learning experiences of all participants, as it increases opportunities for actions that would otherwise not occur. For instance, several researchers have noted that a very important type of learning occurs from pairing up both activities: the creation of resources that provide teachers (not only novice teachers but all the participants involved) with opportunities for the development of agency (^{Elden & Levin, 1991}; ^{Roth et al., 2000}; ^{Stith & Roth, 2006}, ²⁰¹⁰). ^{Eick, Ware, and Williams (2003}) also argue that coteaching provides shared experiences for student teaching supervisors, methods instructors, schoolteachers and novice teachers in order to engage in theoretical discussions and improve their practice in the classroom. Others have highlighted that the process makes merging the usually separate activities of professional development, supervision, evaluation and research viable (^{Roth &Tobin, 2001a}). In doing so, the process sets a pretense for ongoing evaluation in which the focus is placed on teaching with the intent of enhancing the learning of the students (^{Roth & Tobin, 2001})

Redesigning the curriculum through (coteaching | cogenerative dialogue)

Co-planning meetings is a model of (coteaching |cogenerative dialogue). They occurred once a week on Monday morning with the purpose of planning the classes for the week; adjustments in the planning of classes were made via e-mail interactions or informal meetings among coteachers. In such meetings, coteachers (a) discussed the purpose of the lesson in accordance with national guidelines and students’ feedback, (b) reflected upon lessons and the objectives and goals for teaching English and (c) decided on resources, strategies, time and issues regarding the development of the lesson. In these meetings, the cohort planned the English teaching curriculum as a whole along with all individual lessons. Our implementation of co-planning therefore coincides with the model employed by Scatlebury and collaborators in the sense that they provided the setting for another type of co-generative dialogue (^{Scantlebury, Gallo-Fox, & Wassel, 2008}). Distinctively, our implementation included the teacher educator in the co-planning meetings as I thought it would be an important site for sharing contribution.

Based on the needs identified while coteaching, the group felt the need to produce situated materials in order to deal with the (local) needs of ‘these’ students. The schoolteacher was a substantive proponent for this idea, emphasizing that the person “[w]ho produces is the one who knows more what it is about” (Schoolteacher, oral presentation) . The excerpt below is one example of how cohort members enacted ‘shared responsibility’ for the production of the curriculum during cogenerative dialogue meetings in which they planned lessons and produced materials to be used in the class. The excerpt below is also an example of what Aline defined as ‘coming together’ when preparing classes.

In this excerpt, Aline initiates asking about the objective of the class they are planning (turn 01). However, she not only poses a question about it but also suggests what it should be. Leandro is the one who answers her (turn 02) and Aline elaborates on her ideas as a way to help him understand what she meant. As Aline expands (turn 03), Leandro agrees with her (turn 04). Then, Mari and Leandro add another topic to be included in the objective of the class (turn 05 and 06). Aline then evaluates their utterance by stating, ‘done, its great’. Mari elicits explanation and Leandro provides her with this (turns 08 and 09). Aline questions them (turns 10), Mari disagrees, explaining it to her (turn 11) and Leandro offers a personal opinion (turn 12).

What this episode demonstrates is that a very common way of acting in co-planning is by (a) alternating leadership and (b) alternating the position of the competent peer. Here, Aline leads the meeting in which the objective was planning classes. In these meetings, power appeared more balanced even as participants move themselves in the position of leading and listening. We can see Aline dominating the scene, making her intentions for the lesson while at the same time inviting her co-teachers to contribute to the lesson. Aline places herself in the position of someone who poses questions with the expectation of receiving answers, indicating her position as being one with power (^{Young & Fitzgerald, 2007}). She also exerts her power even further by evaluating her coteachers (turn 07). She coordinates the discussion, elaborates on ideas, initiates dialogue and demonstrates willingness to participate. There is also an uneven distribution of questions and answers, if compared to Mari’s participation, but new ways of acting for Aline are evident when compared to the excerpts analyzed in the first section.

This is important for understanding Aline’s ways of acting and interacting because the symmetrical discussion is not only visible at the level of content. What is being taught-learned are the positions and dispositions of how participants place themselves in the discussion as well (they contribute, argue, disagree, agree, exemplify, etc.). These ways of acting have a neat fit with the subjectivities created and their ways of representing and being. This episode reveals an important way of acting because as teachers redesigned a new curriculum, they also redesigned their identities as accountable actors. That is, by acting, leading, coordinating, agreeing, disagreeing, controlling and also exerting power, Aline, specifically, creates her subjectivity as an accountable actor in this context. As the novice teachers are able to assume the position of authorship of the curriculum as a result of an activity system that empowers collective action, new possibilities become available for legitimate participation at the school. These spaces were a unique locus for decision making and conceiving a sense of authorship and freedom in the process and in the constructing the self, transforming the participants into accountable actors of teaching responsible not only for their own learning but also each other's. This is so because “[…] getting your ideas through and, especially, seeing them having practical implications, give the learner a true sense of authority and agency” (^{Niestz, 2010}, p. 816).

In the episode above, she also acts as a curriculum maker. Along with this, by being involved in the redesign of the curriculum, teachers had the opportunity for development beyond their institutionalized positions, which means novice teachers, schoolteachers and teacher educators alternated the position of the competent peer, and therefore, all the participants enacted the role of teachers and learners (^{Roth & Radford, 2010}) in praxis. The episode below - extracted from a co-planning meeting in which we were using social networks to teach English - exemplifies that through the process of promoting collective curriculum leadership, Alice, Aline and I also learned from novice teachers. Here, Aline displays a way of acting that differs from the previous episode in which she coordinates the discussion. Here, she alternates the position of the competent peer: she listens while Evelyn leads the discussion on how to use Facebook.

Here, Evelyn assumes the role of the competent peer and teaches Alice, myself (turns 02, 04, 08 and 10) and Aline (turns 05 and 11) how to use Facebook because at that time, we were not yet members. In this episode, Evelyn is in the know and guides the development of the construction of the lesson as she dominates the topic of social networks (turns 01, 02, 06, 07, 09 and 12). Although her institutional position is of a novice teacher, here, she assumes her role in the collective responsibility and contributes to the design of the curriculum in ways that neither the schoolteacher nor the teacher educator were able to in this situation. Here, Evelyn exerted leadership: she controls the turns and Aline assumes a more passive role in this interaction, accepting the shared power. What is possible to argue here is that because of the repositioning of roles - everybody teaching - there is a higher probability of symmetry in the relations, which means power is thus, shared. Therefore, if knowledge is power (^{Fairclough, 2003}), in these situations in which knowledge is distributed as a result of the confluence of institutional positions, there is a higher probability of shared power.

Both excerpts analyzed here exhibit how (a) different novice teachers act, assuming the role of the competent peer by developing authorship through active participation and (b) how Aline also developed shared responsibility for the curriculum production knowing how and when to participate by either leading or listening.

In this section, I attempted to delineate on how teachers not only engaged in co-planning meetings when producing new curriculum and acted as accountable actors but also how institutionalized positions of power were altered and all participants became teachers and learners simultaneously. These, and similar episodes in the database, demonstrate and exemplify participants’ ways of acting. It is an example of how horizontal relations in teacher education programs can emerge (rather than hierarchical, ‘ruling’ relations of power) and how ways of acting shaped Aline’s representations and identities. The ways of acting displayed thus far appear crucial aspects with regard to Aline’s ways or representing and being. In arriving at this particular point, Aline began to express herself publicly, and, in so doing, sustained and constituted further transformation. For example, when Aline spoke in front of others during mini-conferences, she not only exhibited empowerment but also increased her sense of empowerment by her engagement in the activity.

Acting as accountable actors and curriculum makers thus appears to be important ways of acting for the crafting of teachers' identities. It ultimately seems to be the case here that by acting as curricular makers, teachers were able to develop new forms of representing and being. ^{Jordão and Buhrer (2013}) discussing the teaching practicum in general, stress that when teaching practicum is organized as a ‘enunciation locus’ which positions novice teachers in a place of ‘hybridization’, it offers opportunities for subjects to exercise agency in this stage of their education.

Evaluating the enactement of the curriculum and the participation in school collective meetings: teachers attitudes towards the experience

Teachers’ confidence in the redesigned curriculum steadily increased until the end of the second year. Although tensions and contradictions permeated the whole process of construction and enactment of a new curriculum, teachers involved considered it a positive experience and demonstrated a great deal of satisfaction.

Paula’s writing in her final research paper exhibit this feeling of ‘getting proof’ that that they could actually transform the curriculum in a public school in ways they initially thought impossible. She writes:

These doubts were only lessened after 2 years teaching, when we had the opportunity to confirm that our objectives and activities done in class were exactly what’ the national exam for high school (ENEM) asked for. (Paula, final research paper).

Here, she represents through relational processes, which represent states of mind or states of being, how she evaluates the experience: exhibit that the doubts were in a relation of being diminishing as new teachers were able to confirm that the ‘objective and activities done’ were in a relation of being in accordance or similar to the requirements of National guidelines:

These doubts were’ (intensive relational process) only lessened (state of being) after 2 years teaching (circumstance)” and “[…] our objectives and activities done in class were (intensive relational process) exactly (state of being) what ENEM asked for […] (Paula, final research paper)

Constructing together a list of criteria to analyze their own curriculum was also important to the emergent sense of achievement. The coteachers felt responsible for the curriculum and its evaluation, as Mari stated during a public discussion:

‘We are evaluating what we have done’. ‘We also discuss’ a lot our own practices, what has worked or not. ‘We implemented’ the curriculum, that was ‘ours, we created and implemented’ at school and each class had a curriculum that fit their needs (Mari, in a teaching conference) .

The sense of responsibility and engagement as new ways of acting and interacting at school is visible in this excerpt of Mari’s speech in a teaching conference. The great amount of repetition of the social actor ‘we’, activated through material processes (evaluate, do, implement, create) and verbalization process (discuss) positions teachers as the Actors of the actions in which the Goal is the curriculum, demonstrating she believes in their power to enact and transform the curriculum.

The sense of being evaluating the curriculum produced constructed by the group is explicit in the utterance “We (sayer) also discuss (verbalization process) a lot (circumstance) our own practices, what has worked or not” (Mari, in a teaching conference). The circumstance ‘a lot’ and the lexical choice ‘our own’ and ‘has worked or not’ contribute to this interpretation.

Despite obvious engagement, however, the group did not indulge in feelings of success. The group members identified existing contradictions and insufficiencies that our curriculum was not addressing. For example, there was evidence that the high school students were not developing oral skills in English to the desired levels. They were uncertain about whether they sufficiently encouraged the amount of English spoken in the class. This characterized another way of acting: generally, teachers were reflecting and criticizing the very work they were doing.

However, the same acknowledge of the gap found in the curriculum (lack of oral skills) contributed to new teachers understanding the power teachers have in redesign the curriculum: teachers have the power to choose and redesign curriculum according to students needs, national guidelines and their own believes. By doing that, new teachers become aware of the responsibility of making locally and situated decisions to teach English.

Evidence of transformation regarding the relation was available in the wider school community. In my journal, an episode described exemplifies the new kind of relations that arose from the 2-year teaching practicum:

Today, in staff room, the school supervisor came to talk to me and said that the new teachers are great. She said they were responsible and committed with school, that they distinguished themselves from the other groups of new teachers […] they felt to be “the teachers” of the class because [students] even go after them to solve issues, besides participating actively on the Student Evaluation Board and other schools meetings. She said she was surprised because they even know the students and call them by their names (Author’s journal, April 7^th 2011).

this excerpt, it is visible my representation on the school coordinator. She is the social actor included in my representation through material and verbal processes: “Today, in staff room, (circunstances) the school supervisor (actor) came (material process) to talk (verbalization process) to me and said (verbalization process) that […]” . The fact that I reported the episode in the journal and represented the coordinator as the Actor and the Sayer of the processes positions her as someone with power in the context to act and to say. My utterance is then constructed through an indirect speech (‘She said’ - used three times) in which she is positioned as the one who has the power to evaluate new teachers relations to school and with the students. This interpretation is possible because representations are ways to attribute meaning, and such as one, it is linked to power relations because who has the power to represent has the power to define identity (^{Silva, 2004}).

The circumstances ‘today’ and in the ‘staff room’ - although it is a linguistic feature typical of journals - also allow us to imply this was something considered by me as noteworthy in the journal. The circumstance ‘Today’ here, means something ‘new’ or ‘noteworthy’ occurred, something that was not usual. The fact that in the sentence ‘she was (intensive relational process) surprised (attribute)’ I represent the coordinator, in relation to the intensive relational process, as the ‘carrier’ of the attribute ‘surprised’ contributes to this interpretation that the ways of being and acting at school was seen as not usual: being surprised means “[…] to strike or occur to with a sudden feeling of wonder or astonishment, as through unexpectedness […]⁴”, that is, she did not expect new teachers to act and be like she was describing.

The importance of the role of the coordinator in my representation is constructed through the indirect speech in which is possible to depict the representation of the school coordinator regarding the new teachers. The transitivity analysis demonstrates that New teachers are social actors included through funcionalization (new teachers) and also by the pronoun ‘they’. They are first represented as being the ‘carrier’ of the attributes of the intensive relational process: “new teachers (carrier) are (intensive relational attribute) great (depicted attribute)” and “they (carrier) were (intensive relational attribute) responsible (depicted attribute) and committed (depicted attribute) with school”. As the use of the relational process establishes a relation between two entities (^{Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004}) that is, between the carrier and the attribute related to it,and the conceitualization of this type of process is irreversible, either entities can be used to identify the other (^{Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004}). In this sense, new teachers are represented through positive attributes: they are ‘great’, ‘responsible’ and ‘commited’. Attributing qualities to new teachers through relational process, that is, making strong truth claims about the state of being of others as has done the coordinator also ascribes to her a position which displays a kind of power which has an uneven social distribution (^{Fairclough, 2003}). That is, she is the one with the power to evaluate and attribute new teachers with such qualities, which is seen as noteworthy by me as an example that the school staff started to value the presence of the new teachers as they recognized the engagement of the latter with and commitment to the school.

New Teachers’ ways of being were also constructed through the representation of themselves as Actors. Besides being represented through relational process, in this excerpt, new teachers are also activated through material processes: “[…] besides [they] participating (material process) actively on the Student Evaluation Board and other schools meetings […]” and “[…] they (actor) even know (material) the students and call them [the students] by their names” . Their identities are represented by me based on the coordinators evaluation. Through the use of the discourse markers ‘besides’ new teachers’ identities are represented as more than being responsible and commitment: they ‘participate actively’. Such identity is reinforced by the use of the discoursive marker ‘even’ “[…] to suggest that something mentioned as a possibility constitutes an extreme case or an unlikely instance […]”⁵: “[…] they even call students by their name […]” and “[…] students (actor) even go after (material process) them (goal) to solve issues” . Calling students by their names seem to be an indicator of commitment to the students and/or an act of personalizing students, implying the recognition that new teachers were responsible for students’ development.

Interesting to notice is that the new teachers identities crafted in this representation is constructed through material process associated to experienced professionals. That is, it is possible to notice that the aspects mentioned by me through the indirect speech to report the coordinator’s representations related to what the coordinator acknowledge as being ways of acting of ‘teachers’ : teachers-in-service are the ones who generally ‘know the students’, ‘participate actively in school meetings’ , ‘call students by their names’ and ‘solve students issues’. Such construction is reinforced through the adjectives ‘responsible, great, committed’, all attributes expected from professionals. This interpretation is in keeping with the representation that new teachers ‘felt to be ‘the teachers’’.

The reframing of new teacher’s ways of acting and beings seem to occur in the representation of the coordinator’s saying in my journal. It is possible to notice the valorization and acknowledge of the school in the proposal performed by the group. Through her representation, tough, is also possible to notice how the activities which has permeated the relationship between university-school, in fact, has been characterized by episodical moments (^{Ortenzi, 2007}) and how surprised she was with new ways of acting. Such new ways of acting represents new ways of being in the representation.

However, these new ways of being are also being crafted by explicitly differentiating the new teacher from another similar group, creating a difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (^{Van Leeuwen, 2008}) ^{Woodward, 2011}). I report in the journal that one of the representations of the new teachers reported by the coordinator is that they distinguished themselves from the other groups of new teachers. The linguistically materialization of ‘they’ and the ‘other groups’ allow us to argue that new teachers’ identities are crafter here through ‘border demarcation’ (^{Silva, 2004}), a representational process of classification and elaboration of similarities and differences (^{Fairclough, 2003}). This is significant for new teachers ways of being because the way social actors are represented in texts indicate positions regarding them and their activities (^{Rezende, 2012}). That is, by positioning⁶ someone, as the coordinator did with new teachers, affects the repertoire of acts one has access to and the parameters of identity positions assigned define what is expected of and socially possible for an actor (^{Reeves, 2009}). In another words, this discoursive construction is only possible through the ongoing engagement with others as individuals participate in their day-to-day activities. New teachers, therefore, are represented as being the Actors of the process and the carrier of positive attributes due to their new ways of acting and daily engagement with students and school staff. Such ways of representing position new teachers with emphasized agency and allow us to discuss the process of identifications and social relations in these interactions.

The reframing of the ways of representing the school staff was also product of the new relations. Mariana also reports in her diary how she changed her mind and constructed new relations to the school as she participated on the school Student Evaluation Board. She commented on the professional development week in her journal:

I did not imagine that the school (supervisor, coordinator, director) really got involved so much in student’s development. They even know their names. […] I really liked the freedom teachers have to expose their opinion. It shows the school is open to changes (Mari’s journal).

In this excerpt, Mari represents herself as a social actor included and activated through the cognitive Mental process (imagine) to exhibit her representation of the ‘school community: “I (Senser) did not imagine (cognitive mental process) that the school (supervisor, coordinator, director) (Actors) really got involved (material process) so much (circumstance) in student’s development” . The school community is here represented through ‘functionalization’, that is, when social actors are referred to in terms of an activity or in terms of something they do, like an occupation or a role (^{Van Leeuween, 2008}): ‘supervisor, coordinator, director’. They are the actor of the material process ‘got involved’. The same sense of surprised exhibited in the coordinator’s representation is exhibited here, in Mari’s representation of the school staff: the linguistic realization ‘I did not imagine’ and the use of ‘even’ in the sentence ‘They even know (mental process) their names’ also suggest she represents the involvement as an unlikely instance. ‘Know their names’ seem to appear in the analysis as being a criteria for both school staff and new teachers to indicate engagement and responsibility towards students’ development.

Then, Mari evaluates the relations the school keep with the teachers as being desirable ‘and’ positions teachers as the Sayers of the verbalization process ‘I really liked the freedom teachers have to expose (verbalization process) their opinion’ . Such experience also allows Mari to represent the school through relational process ([…] the school (carrier) is (intensive relational process) open (depicted attributed) to changes […]) which positions the school as being the ‘carrier’ of the attribute ‘open’. Such representation is significant because it can relatively determinate Mari’s future actions as a teacher: representing the school as open to changes implies in the belief teachers are also agents of transformation.

Final considerations

This paper reported an experience of the development of pedagogical capacity through a co-planning. Having had the opportunity to interact in co-plannings and redesigning the curriculum, new attitudes emerged. Participating in more democratic spaces and being able to redesign their own curricula during teaching practicum had effects on how novice teachers perceive the participation of high school students.

Ways of acting and interacting, that is, participatory positions framed and constructed by and for each individual, are made visible not only through the students' power to act but also through the interactions and actions between members. This also occurs through the kinds of opportunities to which he or she has access, their orientations to which they hold, what each other is accountable for, how they respond to each other, and how they engage in their ongoing interactions (^{Niestz, 2010}). Based on this experience, I strongly believe that preparation periods concurrent to those of their schoolteachers and teacher educators are crucial for more horizontal relationships in classes and, as a result, more effectively cotaught classes.

Teachers’ confidence in the redesigned curriculum steadily increased until the end of the second year. Although tensions and contradictions permeated the whole process of construction and enactment of a new curriculum, teachers involved considered it a positive experience and demonstrated a great deal of satisfaction. This sense of achievement is grounded in (a) the feedback of students, (b) the prove that they could actually transform the curriculum in a public school in ways they initially thought impossible, (c) evaluating and criticizing themselves the curriculum produced and (d) the ways in which this cohort started to be perceived by others.

This result coincides with others regarding that fact that an accountable actor identity is fostered by the creation of interactional spaces in which novice teachers are not only positioned as contributors whose inputs are recognized and credited (^{Niestz, 2010}) but also have the possibility to problematize and resolve noteworthy issues (^{Greeno, 2006}). It means fostering spaces in which novice teachers are able to propose and evaluate ideas and are treated as if one can do something of one’s own volition by having experiences that exercise agency (^{Edwards & D’arcy, 2004}). Here, the group appears to experience these ways of acting: a sense of agency and autonomy that allows them to see themselves as responsible, capable, and a relevant actors in the educational system. ^{Greeno (2006}) and ^{Engle and Faux, (2006}) and ^{Niestz (2010}), for example, argue that one important aspect of developing agency is having the opportunity to participate and contribute in interactions where one is framed and positioned as an accountable author who is in charge of one’s actions. This is important because developing teachers' pedagogical capacity for curriculum design may influence the degree to which teachers engage in a principled, reform-oriented analysis when creating learning opportunities for students (^{Beyer & Davis, 2012}).