A psychosocial reading of teacher agency

The concept of teacher agency has become increasingly prominent in academic, policy and media debates. In rethinking the concept, we are particularly interested in the tension between discourses presenting teachers as heroic agents of individual emancipation and social transformation, such as those found in recruitment campaigns and Hollywood films, and the erosion of spaces for agency brought about by the dominance of discourses and practices of standards and accountability. In this conceptual paper we explore these tensions, building on previous work advocating ecological perspectives on teacher agency. We draw on the conceptual resources of psychosocial theory, including Lacanian discourse theory and recent work in this field articulating agency as manifesting in multiple modalities. Our psychosocial reading of teacher agency makes a number of contributions. First, it provides a more expansive conceptual vocabulary, allowing us to talk about agency in broader, more nuanced ways. Second, it recognises that teacher agency is not always necessarily in pursuit of social good. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it enables us to see the ways in which some modes of teacher agency, rather than manifesting as scenes of heroic possibility, are in fact subordinated forms of agency illustrating the cruel optimism of contemporary neoliberalised education.