Teacher agency has attracted growing attention in the field of educational management and leadership due to its positive outcomes for schools. This study investigated how and under what conditions school principals empowering leadership beneficial to teacher agency using data collected from 756 public secondary school teachers in Turkey. This…

Inclusive education is a priority in policy and programmes in most countries, irrespective of the numerous challenges in its implementation. This article aims to explore how teacher agency functions to implement inclusive education in mainstream schools in Nepal so that it provides a positive participatory experience for students with…

State-level governments across Australia have made a commitment via public announcements to ensuring that all schools are teaching reading using 'consistent', 'compulsory', 'common practice'. Through a mixed-methods questionnaire with 51 schoolteachers from four states across Australia, this paper examines practitioner experiences of teacher…

Teachers are necessarily free. The present article discusses the dual meaning of this necessity. The first meaning relates to freedom as an inevitable aspect of the actual reality in the classroom (the "is"); the second to teachers' freedom as the ideal condition, or a prerequisite for optimal teaching (the "ought").…

This paper interrogates and elaborates on the fabrication of teachers' subjectivity who work in school contexts governed by neoliberal policies. Theoretically, the conceptual metaphor of "bonsai pedagogy" is proposed to understand teachers' processes of subjectivation enacted by neoliberal discourses, policies, and practices. The article…

The aim of this study was to investigate student teachers' agency in their identity negotiations as first-year students on a path towards becoming teachers. A narrative inquiry approach was employed in the analysis of the interviews conducted with 16 Finnish student teachers. One master narrative and two counter-narratives were identified in which…

International recognition of Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCos) as agents of change for students with special educational needs calls for a deeper understanding of SENCo agency. However, literature on teacher agency for inclusion has paid little attention to SENCos. Taking a sociocultural view of agency, this qualitative case study…

The articulation of school autonomy into practice nationally, regionally and locally is highly situated in terms of what it enables or impedes with regard to the professional autonomy of principals and teachers. Principal autonomy does not necessarily mean greater teacher professional autonomy. In this paper, we draw on a three-year qualitative…

There has been a recent increase in attention toward the proper targets of evaluation in science funding policy. Specifically, some claim that we should 'fund people, not projects' to allow for increased autonomy for researchers. Critics argue that this movement unduly opens room for biases against several marginalized groups of scientists. In…

This article focuses on Nordic school leaders and how rural principals experience autonomy and control in current governance regimes using a sample of principals in the very north of Norway and Sweden as a case. An analysis instrument constituting four different schooling domains (educational; social; developmental; administrative) and the ways in…

The 21st century has been characterized by digital innovation that has reached every sector of functioning society, including education. In many instances this innovation has led to breakthroughs of great scientific discovery, yet on the contrary, this limitless innovation presents evolving aspirations particularly among policy makers and industry…

Rising levels of external research funding represent not only an asset but also a challenge for universities. Academic leaders play a central role in managing the finances of their institutions, yet little is known about how they respond to the growing importance of external research funding. Through the lens of resource dependency theory, we…

The aim of this study was to analyze the alignment of visions, missions, and goals for school improvement in an Estonian context. Since school leaders have high levels of autonomy in Estonia, school improvement is strongly influenced by direction setting. In this study, we analyzed 56 school improvement plans to examine the variability of topics…

This qualitative case study explores how rural teachers in the Colombian periphery perceive and appropriate national bilingual policies. I drew theoretically on coloniality/decoloniality, bilingualism, and teacher agency and collected data through questionnaires and in-depth interviews from four self-contained rural elementary school teachers.…

While prior research often depicts a dire scenario for postdoctoral scholar employment and career trajectory, we offer evidence of postdocs' agency despite challenging circumstances. Through interviews with 30 postdocs employed full-time in the United States, thematic analysis illustrated postdocs' demonstration of agency as an asset they bring…