Are Teachers Boundedly Rational? How Beliefs and Context Affect Decision-Making

ABSTRACT

There has been a dramatic shift in how teachers are understood in teacher cognition and educational research (from trained technicians to rational decision-makers). Likewise, there has been a change in how the teaching paradigm is understood (from the banking model to the constructivist model). This article uses the bounded rationality concept and draws on teachers’ beliefs and contextual factors to explore minority language education policy in a Global South setting. It shows that preexisting biases and institutional constraints limit teachers’ capacity to self-reflect and make optimal rational decisions that may be in students’ best interests and responsive to their needs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.