Global trends of increasing inequalities, decreasing citizen participation, pandemics, climate or technological change all have a profound impact on education. At the same time education is a critical site for change-making that can empower citizens to shape their future, but also those of communities and societies. Educational literature and policies increasingly suggest that teachers can act as ‘agents of change’ for addressing the challenges, such as increasing diversity of student populations that result from migration flows, or those related to the spread of artificial intelligence.

The idea that teachers can be key actors for leading and responding to change has reflected in the increasing number of empirical studies of teacher agency in relation to inclusion and social justice (Li & Ruppar, 2020; Pantić, 2017), school transformations (Reinius et al., 2022), climate change (Andrzejewski, 2016) and responses to pandemic (Ehren et al., 2021). These and other studies have started to show how teachers exercise agency for different purposes, pointing to the importance of relationships and collaboration, accounting for diversity of perspectives, opportunities for reflection. However, teachers’ capacity to act as agents of change is still under-researched, especially with regards to their impact on change and its mechanisms amidst other powerful influences. How do they make a difference that really matters to their students, professional and wider communities? And how can they be prepared and empowered to exercise agency to enact, shape or at times challenge change? 

Agency is often described as a slippery concept. Different philosophical, sociological, psychological and educational theories emphasise differently individual and social aspects of agency. Questions about the nature and purposes of change are at the heart of understanding teachers’ roles and ways of responding to various, often external, agendas. Studies begin to show how educators’ own understanding of change might position them as both agents of change and of continuity. For example, they might embrace or resist technological change depending on its impact on their practice and availability of support to develop relevant skills. Teacher agency is highly contextualised and dependant on other actors in complex institutional, political and cultural dynamics (Berliner, 2002; Vongalis-Macrow, 2007).

Taking into account its relational and contextual nature, this symposium considers manifestations of teachers’ agency for different purposes and across different contexts, and its implications for teacher education and development, as follows:  

1)    The first paper considers interaction between teachers’ relational agency and structural conditions in three schools in Scotland, focusing on the patterns of teachers’ collaboration around support for migrant students.  

2)    The second paper considers the impact of the accessibility of artificial intelligence on Italian teachers’ agency focusing on their own beliefs, expectations, and fears.

3)    The third paper highlights the importance of collaborative learning for development of teacher agency in Collaborative Action Research (CAR) programmes in six schools in Serbia.

4)    The fourth paper considers the internationalisation of teacher education programmes in Sweden as a way of broadening student teachers’ perspectives that can make a difference towards addressing global challenges, such as diversity and inclusion.

Together these papers aim to unpack the concept of teacher agency for change in relation to the different areas of change and relative to the specific opportunities and constrains afforded by different school and country contexts. Central to these considerations is the role of schools and educators in shaping rather than simply responding to and coping with change. The symposium also considers opportunities for teacher education and development to collectively, together with learners and other actors, shape the kind of education that reflects the needs of their communities and for learning across different school and policy contexts.

Li, L., & Ruppar, A. (2020). Conceptualizing teacher agency for inclusive education: A systematic and international review. Teacher Education and Special Education, 44(1), 42-59. doi:10.1177/0888406420926976 Pantić, N. (2017). An exploratory study of teacher agency for social justice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 66, 219–230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.04.008 Ehren, M., Madrid, R., Romiti, S., Armstrong, P. W., Fisher, P., & McWhorter, D. L. (2021). Teaching in the COVID-19 era: Understanding the opportunities and barriers for teacher agency. Perspectives in Education, 39(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593X/pie.v39.i1.5 Reinius, H., Kaukinen, I., Korhonen, T., Juuti, K., & Hakkarainen, K. (2022). Teachers as transformative agents in changing school culture. Teaching and Teacher Education, 120, 103888. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103888