When authority is embedded in systems rather than exercised in dialogue, agency must be redefined. Students can no longer be understood as interpreters of meaning; they must instead become managers of alignment.
This post shows how student agency is reshaped under genre-based pedagogy — and how “voice” survives only as a regulated form of deviation within pre-approved bounds.
1. Agency before alignment
In a Hallidayan frame, agency resides in construal.
To mean is to select among semiotic possibilities in relation to context. Agency lies in:
choosing what to foreground,
configuring meanings for effect,
and taking responsibility for those choices.
Variation here is not error. It is the substance of meaning-making.
2. What alignment requires
Once pedagogy is organised around stages and checklists, agency must be made compatible with compliance.
Students are expected to:
follow prescribed sequences,
satisfy explicit criteria,
and demonstrate control over required features.
Agency cannot be eliminated, but it must be contained.
3. Voice as managed deviation
This containment is achieved through the concept of “voice”.
Voice is framed as:
personal expression,
stylistic flair,
or individual stance.
But crucially, voice is permitted only after structural requirements are met. It occupies the residual space left once stages and criteria have been satisfied.
Voice becomes deviation that does not threaten the system.
4. The paradox of permission
Students are told they may:
be creative,
take risks,
or experiment.
But only within bounds that are never fully negotiable.
Agency is no longer the capacity to construe meaning otherwise. It is the capacity to personalise a compliant text.
5. The redefinition of originality
Under these conditions, originality is reinterpreted.
It no longer refers to:
novel construals,
unexpected semantic work,
or reconfiguration of resources.
Instead, it refers to:
stylistic variation,
surface-level choices,
or affective tone.
Meaning remains fixed; expression may vary.
6. The student as self-manager
As agency is redefined, so too is the student.
The successful student becomes:
strategically compliant,
adept at reading criteria,
and skilled at inserting traces of individuality without violating structure.
This is not passive obedience. It is active self-regulation.
7. Who benefits
This model rewards students who:
quickly internalise system expectations,
treat writing as optimisation,
and suppress alternative construals.
Students who attempt to reconfigure meaning itself are disproportionately penalised — not for being wrong, but for being misaligned.
8. Looking ahead
Once agency is managed internally, surveillance no longer needs to be external.
The next post traces how students begin to monitor themselves — asking not whether their meanings work, but whether they have satisfied the required stages.
That is where we turn next.
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