In recent years, teachers have been recognized as having the capacity to transform school environments (OECD, 2005; McKinsey & Co., 2007). Moreover, in several countries, they have been granted the role of "agents of change" and no longer only of curriculum implementers (Goodson, 2003; Priestley, 2011a; Nieveen, 2011). In this vein, the study of teacher agency is of particular interest.

Teacher agency was first viewed as the ability to produce innovation in school (Leander & Osborne, 2008). Later on, some scholars have provided an ecological explanatory model, developing Emirbayer and Mische's conceptualization. In this view, teacher agency does not reside in the individual but is a phenomenon that emerges in the interaction between subject and environment and has both a temporal and relational nature. In fact, individuals "act through the environment and not simply in the environment" and consequently "agency originates from the dialogic interaction between the individual efforts of actors, available resources, and contextual and structural factors that always intertwine in new and unique ways" (Biesta & Tedder, 2007, p.137). Agency is not a property of the individual: it is something that individuals do or, more accurately, achieve (Biesta & Tedder, 2006).

This model emphasizes the importance of teachers and context in the construction of agency. It admits the possibility that competent and capable teachers may not be able to give their agentic contribution if the context does not allow them to do so (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015).

In recent years, following the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2006) and the Education for All Movement (World Education Forum, 2000), the paradigm of inclusive education has gradually gained ground, requiring a thorough revision of school services and teaching practices in many countries. Teachers have been called upon to build more inclusive schools and this has led some scholars to explore the link between teacher agency and inclusive education (Pantic, 2015b).

Pantic (2015a) constructed a theoretical model of teacher agency for social justice, defined as a process in which teachers act strategically to transform the risks of exclusion and underachievement into inclusion and improved outcomes for all students in contexts of cultural and social diversity (Pantić, 2015a).

The author identifies 4 aspects of teacher agency: 1 purpose, which is teachers' perceptions of their moral role, professional identity, motivation, and ideas about social justice; 2 competence, the understanding of the factors that determine practices, the ability to collaborate with different actors in the school and operate in social and professional networks; 3 autonomy, which includes individual and collective sense of self-efficacy, individual power, school climate, decision-making processes; 4 reflexivity, that is the ability to critically reflect on and self-evaluate one's practices.

Pantić (2017) argues that agency is influenced by micro (personal factors, ideas, beliefs, etc.), meso (context-specific school cultures and practices) and macro (school policies, curriculum, etc.) factors. According to her, the most relevant factors seem to be those related to relational aspects, that is, those that are located at the meso level.

For Sibilio and Aiello (2018), empirical works on TA may provide insights into successful inclusion processes and help understand factors that still produce exclusions and inequalities in schools.

However, empirical research on inclusive teacher agency is still scarce. In this study, we tried to map the most recent scholarly contributions worldwide, exploring the conceptualization of TA in relation to inclusive education, the factors that hinder and facilitate it, and generally, how it is achieved in school. By doing so, we were able to produce a narrative synthesis of evidence found in the literature on inclusive teacher agency.

The aim of the study is to map the conceptualizations of teacher agency for inclusive education in the literature, while producing a narrative synthesis of the most relevant studies, in order to contribute to the body of knowledge on the topic. We chose to carry out a scoping review as it is more suitable to answer the following research questions: 1) How is TA conceptualized in relation to the education of pupils with disabilities in mainstream schools? 2) If any, what evidence emerges in the literature on TA for inclusive education? In fact, scoping studies are reviews that aim to map and summarize different research evidence (quantitative, qualitative) to illustrate the breadth and depth of a concept or phenomenon circumscribed by a disciplinary or professional field (Levac, Colquhoun, O'Brien, 2010). Colquhoun et al. (2014) define scoping review as a form of knowledge synthesis that addresses an exploratory review question with the goal of mapping key concepts, types of evidence, and gaps in a defined area by systematically searching, selecting and synthesizing what exists. To conduct the scoping review, we then followed a rigorous, step-by-step procedure (Arksey & O'Malley 2005; Daudt, van Mossel, & Scott, 2013) After completing a literature survey on the topic, we established the search protocol, defining 1) keywords, 2) number and type of databases to be searched, and 3) inclusion criteria. For the search strings, we used the combination of the term "teacher agency" with "disability", "disabl*""disabilit*""disabled". We used 3 databases: Eric, as the leading database for the educational field; Scopus and Web of Science as generalist databases. Querying the databases returned 507 results, which were reduced down to 457 after duplicates removal. Each study was then screened, by reading the title and abstract, on the basis of the following inclusion criteria: 1) only peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals are considered; 2) articles are in English or Italian; 3) results were published from 2001 to present. 4) they contain an explicit reference to teacher agency; 5) they are empirical studies with primary or secondary data; 6) the participants are subject and special education teachers working with students with disabilities in mainstream schools of any level. Application of the inclusion criteria resulted in 374 items being eliminated. A full-text reading of 83 articles was then conducted. Of these, 16 were positively evaluated in light of the inclusion criteria and therefore included in the present study.

The articles included in the study were published in peer-reviewed journals between 2014 and 2021 and investigate TA for inclusive education in 7 different countries. They are for the most part, qualitative studies and were conducted across different school levels. Participants include subject and special education teachers, alongside with other school personnel, parents, students and other professionals. The theoretical framework for conceptualizing teacher agency is rich: Emirbayer and Mische's approach, Priestley et al's (2015) ecological view, Bandura's (1986; 2001) socio-cognitive theory, Barad's (2007, 2008 and 2014) agentive realism, and Holland and Lave's (2001) theory of figured worlds. One study identifies agency with the activity of seeking support outside and inside the school. Finally, agency is also framed as either professional or moral agency. The exercise of TA is restricted by numerous barriers: the scarcity of structural resources including the lack of space, equipment and teaching materials, the ableism culture, the perception of inadequacy in the relationship with students, unequal status between subject and special education teachers, the absence of shared planning, the lack of adequate support from administrative staff and school principal. In this respect, the results of the current study are coherent with the literature (Li, & Rupper, 2020). Despite the scarcity of resources, some teachers seem to be equal to the task of including all students. Those teachers are resilient and exercise agency in 3 areas: planning, teaching, and student evaluation. Through personal and collective agency, it is possible to change practices in the school. However, different factors may restrict or facilitate agency at local institutions. Hence, agency is always acted upon locally. Ideas, beliefs and ethical principles play a big role and make teacher agency possible. Collaboration with different stakeholders, especially with colleagues, parents and other professionals and among schools, is also crucial.

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