How much agency do you have as a teacher? And how much does this matter to you?
According to Dr Mark Hardman, an associate professor at the Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research at UCL’s Institute of Education, the answer to both of these questions should be “a lot”.
In this week’s episode of Tes Podagogy, Hardman explains that teacher agency is the key to retention: when teachers have agency, they are more fulfilled and therefore more likely to stay in the profession.
But what does having agency really mean in practice? Perhaps a good place to start is to define what exactly we mean by “agency”. This, Hardman says, is easier said than done.
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“Broadly, agency can be defined as a capacity to make a change,” Hardman explains.
“The reason it’s hard to define, though, is because it is not just to do with an individual: agency is also to do with the environment and working collectively.
“So a teacher is best placed to make a change if they have the knowledge and confidence to do so, but also if they have the resources and colleagues and policy landscape which supports innovation.”
This agency is important for both teachers and students: teachers need to have agency in developing the best curriculum and pedagogy possible, and as part of that they also need agency in their own development over time. In addition to this, Hardman believes that teachers should have agency in relation to pressing issues in the world, like the climate emergency, issues of social justice, misinformation and war.
“Teachers need to have knowledge about these issues, they need to feel confident that they can bring those into the classroom, they need to be able to innovate, instead of just getting bogged down in delivering a curriculum that’s dead to the world.”
Hardman is adamant that teacher agency supports retention. However, he warns that the government’s drive to improve standards, by specifying exactly what teachers do in the classroom, has “displaced the capacity” for teachers to have agency.
But he warns that it would be lazy to blame centralised policy alone for this reduction: it’s also about teacher mindset, and expectations about a teacher’s role.
“The national curriculum in England does leave space for teachers to determine what the young people in each school need to learn. Teachers can determine how they themselves support each other and how they innovate in their teaching,” he explains.
For Hardman, agency is important at every stage of a teacher’s career, but especially at the beginning. The Early Career Framework (ECF), which was introduced in schools in September 2021, clearly has a role to play in this.
In the podcast, Hardman explains his analysis of the ECF, how teacher agency is supported, conditioned and restricted within it, and then, crucially, what needs to change.
Listen to the interview in full on Tes Podagogy:
