In recent years, digital technologies for creating, curating, selling, and buying teaching materials have become a valuable part of many teachers' lives within and outside schools. Rather than apply textbook contents imposed from above, researchers and tech-pioneers have promoted digital teacher-to-teacher services as pathways to increase teacher…

This article examines the sociocultural shaping of "teacher agency" by focusing on how various conditions "mediate" teachers' perceived professional space. Agency is understood from a "sociocultural" perspective as the mediated capacity to act, which is achieved and exercised "in" a professional space, and,…

This reflection on the eight papers in this special issue examines the theoretical stances and methodological resources to be found in them. It offers a definition of agency which emphasises commitment, responsibility, strong judgements, self-evaluation, connection to the common good and attention to what people do. Having examined how the papers…

Teacher professional agency refers to the ability of teachers to control their work within structural constraints. In this paper, we show how teacher activist organizations can assist in the development of professional agency. We focus on a teacher activist organization in a large urban district in the United States and identify three…

This study investigated novice teachers' perceptions of their professional agency during the initial years of their work in schools. The research questions were: (i) How do novice teachers perceive their professional agency within their work, and what do they see as the main restrictions and resources affecting that agency? (ii) How do novice…

There is an ongoing tension within educational policy worldwide between countries that seek to reduce the opportunities for teachers to exert judgement and control over their own work, and those who seek to promote it. Some see teacher agency as a weakness within the operation of schools and seek to replace it with evidence-based and data-driven…

This study explores Finnish first-year primary teacher students' (N = 244) sense of professional agency in the classroom. In addition, the interrelation between student teachers' sense of professional agency and the perceptions of teacher education as a learning environment is explored. The sense of professional agency in the classroom…

This study used semi-structured in-depth interviews to explore empowerment patterns among teachers who hold leadership positions in school. Our qualitative analysis presents a hierarchical ladder with three types of empowerment amongst these teachers, ranging from limited empowerment through rewarding empowerment to change-enhancing empowerment.…

The aim of this study was to examine teacher learning in terms of teachers' professional agency in the professional community of the school. Altogether 2310 Finnish comprehensive school teachers completed a survey. Results showed that teachers' active efforts to learn in the professional community and to promote school development cannot be…

Internationally teachers are called upon to act as agents of change. However, there is little clarity about the kind of change teachers are expected to contribute to and even less empirical evidence about the ways teacher agency operates in schools and beyond. Empirical analyses of teacher agency require a clear articulation of the purpose and…

This paper examines recent education and teacher education reforms in the USA and Namibia and analyzes two tensions that have been a central part of debates about teacher quality and teacher education in many parts of the world: whether we should prepare teachers as technicians or as reflective practitioners; and whether we should prepare teachers…

This article examines contemporary research and debates about pedagogies of engagement that challenge the traditional assumptions and understandings of engagement. Three contesting epistemological constructions of student engagement are identified and examined through the contesting and resisting voices of teachers and students. The article's…