An Inquiry into Teacher Agency and Professional Development: The Introduction of the Early Career Framework in England

Focusing on teacher agency has a great deal of potential in elucidating the professional development of teachers and the processes by which this development is supported, conditioned, and restricted. Yet there remain both theoretical and practical issues in bringing agency to bear on practice. This chapter therefore engages with both the theoretical definition of agency, and its practical application as a focus of research. Theoretically, we draw on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to evaluate the utility of framing agency “as event,” considering how this furthers existing models in the literature. We then take this framing of agency into an inquiry involving the empirical findings of a pilot evaluation, ahead of a major policy shift in England. Motivated by issues of consistency during induction and the retention of teachers, the Early Career Framework was introduced to codify what all teachers should know, and to underpin programs of support for the first 2 years of a teacher’s career. We evaluated 3 pilot programs to support the rollout of this framework, across 98 schools. As we reengage with the findings of the evaluation, we demonstrate how focusing on agency provides a powerful lens for research and yields insights into the professional development of new teachers and their mentors. From these insights we argue that framing teacher agency has the potential to reconnect the professional development of teachers with the project of education, informing how teachers develop themselves, each other, and engage with issues in the contemporary world