Understanding Teacher Agency in Practice: An Ecological Approach

Abstract

This paper introduces concepts of teacher agency in the ecological approach which emphasized an interplay between teachers' capacity and their engagement with the professional environment. The ecological approach provides a model of understanding the ecological contexts of teachers' actions, how the agency is shaped and achieved. This is a timely matter as the agency has been conceptualized variedly in literature. Considering the heavy-pressured of the top-down policy in the Indonesian educational system, teachers as agents of change are expected to exercise their agentive role in educational improvement. The ecological approach enables an examination of not only the teaches' capacity but also their thorough ecological dimensions, thus it would better inform educational institutions and teacher educators about ways to support the achievement of teacher agency.