Teachers’ agency: Do their values make a difference?

Abstract

This research explored antecedents and outcomes of teachers’ agency. Study 1 (n = 767) tested whether teachers’ values relate to an agentic capacity. Study 2 (n = 430) tested the relations between teachers’ values, their agentic capacity and their agentic behaviours. The findings show that attributing importance to promoting the self and being open to new experiences, whilst maintaining self‐independence, is positively related to agentic capacity. Further, agentic capacity mediates the relations between values and agentic behaviour. These findings start to explain the broad motivations for teachers’ agency and its translation into behaviour.

Reflective Practice: A Method to Improve Teachers’ Well-Being. A Longitudinal Training in Early Childhood Education and Care Centers

“…In particular, teachers with agentic capacity feel that they have an active role within their community/work group and that they are able to participate in organizational decision-making (Wilson and Deaney, 2010;Priestley et al, 2013;Sanglim and Sungeun, 2016;Hadar and Benish-Weisman, 2019).…”

“…The perceived agency refers to the perception by teachers of the possibility to participate in organizational decision-making (Sanglim and Sungeun, 2016) and to have an active role within the school system, a role that is recognized by the whole group of colleagues (Wilson and Deaney, 2010;Priestley et al, 2013;Hadar and Benish-Weisman, 2019). Specifically, the agentic capacity refers to the concept that teachers do not simply repeat given practices, rather, they have a capacity for pro-active and autonomous actions, that favor important transformations and changes both in themselves and in the whole workplace environment (Hadar and Benish-Weisman, 2019). For Wilson and Deaney (2010), agency can be considered a combination of intention and action that influences experience.…”

“…For Wilson and Deaney (2010), agency can be considered a combination of intention and action that influences experience. Several studies have investigated the relationship between the teachers' perceived agency and the perception of their well-being within the workplace, highlighting interesting connections (Helgeson, 1994;Buchanan and Bardi, 2015;Hadar and Benish-Weisman, 2019).…”

“…In all these studies, the authors emphasized the need to orient future research toward teachers' well-being in a more ecological direction, favoring qualitative, situational, and longitudinal methodologies, which allow us to analyze the processual and interactive dimensions of teachers' well-being. These indications address the research toward studies focused on specific situations considered particularly challenging from the point of view of the school system; in this sense, the case studies seem to be a suitable method (Critchley and Gibbs, 2012;Roffey, 2012;Cook et al, 2016;Hadar and Benish-Weisman, 2019;Heyeres et al, 2019). In accordance with this perspective, the present researchintervention was designed to study the well-being of preschooler teachers, conceptualized, not so much as a construct in general, but rather as well-being perceived in a specific situation considered critical and problematic from the teachers' point of view.…”

“…Specifically, encouraged by the results of some previous studies (Karademas, 2006;Critchley and Gibbs, 2012;Zinsser and Zinsser, 2016;Venturelli and Cigala, 2017), we have identified an important research question: there are some relationships between the systematic reflective practice on some critical aspects of daily education strategies in class and some dimensions of teachers' perceived well-being. These include: the sense of belonging (Roffey, 2012), self-efficacy (Critchley and Gibbs, 2012), and agency (Hadar and Benish-Weisman, 2019). This specific relationship finds significance in the fact that the reflective practice adopted by a work group in a systematic and continuous way allows the teachers, on the one hand, to feel more actively involved with respect to work processes in recognizing their specific role, and on the other hand, the reflection within the group allows the teachers not to perceive themselves as isolated individuals facing difficulties, but rather as a "thinking group" that guarantees protection and safety.…”