It has been a decade since the publication of ‘Teacher Agency: An Ecological Approach’ (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015). This book, along with parallel work in Finland (e.g. Pyhältö et al., 2012, 2014), heralded the start of an explosion of interest in the concept of teacher [professional] agency. At the core of the Priestley, Biesta, and Robinson book is an ecological understanding of agency. This views agency as not something that people have intrinsically, but instead as something that is achieved. Agency, in this view, is an emergent phenomenon, something that occurs through an always unique interplay of individual capacity and the cultural, structural, discursive, and material conditions by means of which people act.
In this presentation, Professor Mark Pristley will reflect upon the development of thinking about teacher agency since the publication of the book. He will start with an overview of the tenets of the ecological approach. He then will draw upon 10 years of literature that uses the concept of teacher agency substantively, considering how scholars have conceptualised teacher agency and how agency has been theorised to explore educational issues. Finally, he will reflect upon implications for the field of teacher research and teacher education.
Mark Priestley is Professor of Education at the University of Stirling. His research interests lie in the school curriculum – theory, policy, and practice – and especially the processes of curriculum making across different layers of education systems. Mark is the Director of the Stirling Centre for Research into Curriculum Making, a member of the Scottish Government’s key education advisory committees, the Scottish Education Council and the Curriculum and Assessment Board, and a Co-Convener of the EERA network 3, Curriculum. His publications include 'Teacher Agency: An Ecological Approach' and 'Curriculum making in Europe: policy and practice within and across diverse contexts'.