Exploring agency as a bridge between teacher and school context in times of change

Research on teachers’ responses to educational innovations is often focussed on either contextual factors or individual teacher features and activities. How these two interact and what happens on the interface between teacher and context is still largely unknown. In this study we aim to bridge this gap between teacher and school context by exploring teachers’ responses to an educational innovation from an agency perspective. We see teacher agency as feeling in control of the choices one makes within one’s work, based upon one’s own goals, interests and motivations (Vähäsantanen et al., 2008). To be able to make their own choices, however, teachers need to experience a certain amount of autonomy and room for negotiation within their school (Coldron & Smith, 1999; Vähäsantanen et al., 2008). Teacher agency is therefore shaped by both the individual teacher and the school context (Lasky, 2005). Although it is often stated that it is important for teachers to experience agency in their work, especially with respect to educational innovations, this was actually rarely the object of investigation (cf. Ketelaar et al., 2012). To contribute to this point, in this study agency was explored with a specific focus on the interface between the individual teacher and the school context. An in-depth case study approach was use