Giving Teachers Their Voices Back! An Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Study on Teacher Agency within Instruction

This dissertation investigated teacher agency in a rural elementary school. Agency is a construct of understanding how individuals become connected or disconnected with their environment, which influences their interactions with other people, places, and things (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). At this time, agency is important to study because it is in a fragile state, which could be a reason for high rates of teacher attrition (Bartell et al., 2019; Sloan, 2006). This study explored teacher agency through the lens of ecological agency. The theory of ecological agency theorizes that teachers make decisions based upon environmental elements present in schools (Biesta et al., 2015). Environmental elements can include teacher education prep, professional discourse, cultural or social conditions, administration, recent educational policy, professional development, collaboration, or PLCs. These elements can impact agency in positive or negative ways. The study utilized a mixed methods approach. For the quantitative data collection, participants responded to the Teacher Ecological Agency questionnaire (Ghamoushi et al., 2022). These responses were followed up with the ten semi-structured interview sessions and document collection. The quantitative data analysis revealed little variation in the data spread. Qualitative data analysis found the following areas of significance: collaboration, autonomy, administration's influence on instruction, and past educational experiences. An integration of the quantitative and qualitative data sets found convergence regarding autonomy and collaboration. However, areas of divergence were found regarding administration's influence on instruction and past educational experiences. The discussion section of the paper examined the impact of career-stage, teacher identity, self-efficacy, and teacher autonomy on agency. Implications for teachers at all career-stages and for administration were explored. Limitations of the study include a small sample size and number of interview participants as well as a limited time to devote to data collection and analysis. Strengths of the study include a questionnaire response rate of 87%. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]