Teacher Agency in Implementing Inclusive Education Policy: A Mixed-Methods Study of Private Schools Under India's Right to Education Act

• In Event: From policy to practice: Trust, risk, inclusion, and teacher agency in education

Proposal

Introduction
Teachers are increasingly positioned as agents of educational transformation, expected to implement structural reforms and catalyze inclusive practices (Pantić & Carr, 2017). Yet, this framing assumes that teachers inherently possess the necessary agency, while overlooking how their actions are constrained by institutional culture and policy design (Priestley et al., 2015). India’s Right to Education Act, enacted in 2010, represents one of the world’s largest efforts to address inequality through mandated inclusion, requiring private-schools to reserve 25% of seats for children from economically weaker sections (EWS) and disadvantaged groups, bringing over 22 million marginalised students into mainstream education (Dongre et al., 2022; PTI, 2023). Implementation, however, falls to teachers, who must navigate resource gaps, academic heterogeneity, and cultural differences without systematic support in the policy framework. Despite the large scope of impact, research on how teachers experience top-down inclusion mandates in private-schools remains scarce and largely concentrated in Western contexts, with little attention to Global South settings (Chaaban et al., 2021). Against this backdrop, the study asks: What shapes teacher agency in the implementation of RTE Act Section 12(1)(c) in private-schools in India? Two sub-questions guide this inquiry: (1) How do teachers’ attributes and demographics influence their agency with marginalized students? and (2) What factors do teachers identify as supporting or constraining their agency in these contexts?

Theoretical-Framework
The study employs an integrated ecological framework combining Pantić’s (2015) model of teacher agency for social justice with Peña and De Costa’s (2021) ecological model of agency. This four-layered structure examines the individual (teacher beliefs, values, identities), micro (classroom dynamics), meso (school culture and leadership), and macro (policy and structural forces) levels. Conceiving teacher agency as emerging from the interaction of dispositions, resources, and contextual conditions (Biesta et al., 2015), the framework is especially relevant where teachers must balance inclusion mandates with multiple on-ground challenges.

Methodology
This concurrent embedded mixed-methods study (Creswell & Clark, 2023) surveyed 125 teachers (95% response rate) from two Delhi private-schools charging ₹125,000–165,000 annually. Data were collected through a 21-item teacher agency scale adapted from Hull and Uematsu (2020) for Indian private-schools serving marginalized students, with 10-point Likert responses (11 general agency items, 10 EWS-specific, 4 open-ended). Quantitative analysis used multiple and simple linear regressions to test demographic predictors (gender, degree, grade taught, experience, tenure) and principal/institutional support against three composite scores. Qualitative analysis of open-ended responses employed inductive thematic coding and the constant comparative method (Glaser, 1965), with codes organized through the four-layered ecological framework to identify supports and constraints.

Findings
Quantitatively, demographic factors were largely nonsignificant, as gender, teaching experience, subject, grade level, and tenure showed no effects or only trivial pairwise differences. In contrast, qualifications displayed a counterintuitive pattern: undergraduate teachers reported higher agency than postgraduate across all outcomes (General Agency F(2,122)=4.34, p=.015; EWS-Specific F(2,122)=5.52, p=.005; Overall F(2,122)=4.82, p=.010; d=.51–.61), contradicting assumptions about advanced degrees.Principal and institutional support was the dominant predictor, explaining 19.7%–32.1% of variance (General F(1,123)=52.42, p<.001, R²=.299; EWS F(1,123)=30.08, p<.001, R²=.197; Overall F(1,123)=58.26, p<.001, R²=.321) compared to 7.6%–11.8% for demographic models. Combined models increased explained variance to 27.6%–39.6% (General adj. R²=.340; EWS adj. R²=.276; Overall adj. R²=.396), with it remaining the strongest predictor (B=.24–.32, all p<.001) even after controlling for gender, degree, grade, experience, and tenure.
Qualitative analysis identified nine constraint themes. The most frequently cited was time limitations (n=66), with teachers noting that “remedial classes only once a week…3-4 times a month [were] insufficient,” pointing to systemic scheduling issues. Beyond time, perceptions of EWS student behavioral and communication challenges (n=41) emerged as a factor with teachers stating “[EWS students] readiness, desire to learn took (lot of) time” or “language issues, did not understand (what I was saying) or what to say to his (peers).” Parental engagement issues emerged as the third most frequent (n=31) reflecting both perceived disengagement: “sometimes, parents don’t want to participate in their child’s work and broader socioeconomic constraints such as “parents…not that literate and have to work a lot…so no help at home.” Conversely, supporting factors comprised seven themes. The most prominent was school management and principal support (n=55), with teachers noting that “management…helped me to keep the student engaged and supported me ” Similarly, peer collaboration (n=54) was frequently cited, described as support from “colleagues and seniors” and “collegial support in planning.” Finally, countering the constraints, positive parent engagement (n=26) was highlighted as an enabler with teachers stating instances like “helps when parents helped me”.

Discussion
This study challenges the common assumption that school systems can “hire” their way out of policy challenges. Despite widespread beliefs that recruiting “qualified” teachers can solve equity problems, demographic characteristics proved largely irrelevant to teacher agency when serving marginalized students. The counterintuitive finding that undergraduate teachers outperformed postgraduate ones dismantles meritocratic hiring assumptions, indicating more complex dynamics shaping inclusive practice. Additionally, the dominance of principal support and peer collaboration over individual credentials demonstrates that sustainable inclusion requires systemic transformation rather than individual solutions. When teachers identified multilayered constraints spanning time limitations, resource gaps, and institutional barriers while simultaneously citing school-leadership and collegial relationships as critical enablers, they revealed the ecological nature of agency that operates across stakeholder levels.
This evidence exposes the futility of placing equity burdens solely on teachers and instead points toward the need for coordinated stakeholder engagement that restructures relationships between principals, teachers, parents, and communities to create institutional conditions where inclusive practice can flourish. Rather than relying on traditional teacher-training or professional development to fix individual deficits, effective inclusion demands collective responsibility that addresses the systemic factors enabling or constraining teacher agency, ultimately demonstrating that fostering inclusion through education requires moving beyond individual accountability toward comprehensive ecological transformation for bridging societal divisions.

Author

• Tarang Tripathi, University of California, San Diego