Agency and Accountability: How Professional Relationships Shape Teacher Agency

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Lead Where You Are: Collaboration and Pedagogical Innovation in Context

Abstract

This study investigates how secondary mathematics teachers’ sense of agency is shaped by professional relationships within today’s era of heightened accountability in U.S. public schools. Working within the ecological model of teacher agency, this study uses survey data from 314 educators across 41 states to examine how teachers’ relationships with principals, PLCs, district administrators, students, and parents correlate with teacher agency. A multiple linear regression analysis revealed that relationships with building principals had the strongest positive correlation, while relationships with PLCs and district administrators were negatively correlated with teacher agency. These findings suggest that top-down accountability initiatives often undermine teacher agency, even within structures intended to support agency, and that teacher agency may be exercised in resistance to institutional pressures.

Author

• Christopher Carter, University of Kansas