Teacher Agency Is Not a Personality Trait: What the Research Means for Early Childhood Systems
In an early childhood classroom, teacher agency appears in ordinary professional decisions - following children’s investigation rather than ending it, adjusting a transition for an overwhelmed child, or drawing on a family’s knowledge. We may call it flexibility, responsiveness, or simply good teaching.
Yet the system sends conflicting messages. Teachers are expected to be responsive, reflective, and culturally grounded while working within scripts, rigid schedules, compliance checklists, and policies they had little role in creating. A systematic review by Michelle Deschênes and Séverine Parent (2022) offers a useful lens for understanding that tension.
The Research in Brief
The authors reviewed 164 empirical studies from 41 countries. Most were small, qualitative studies centered on practicing teachers; few included administrators or policymakers. Definitions and research tools varied, so the evidence does not support a universal formula or score for agency.
Across the studies, agency was examined through teachers’ decisions, relationships, experiences, and environments. The authors interpret this pattern ecologically. Agency is not a fixed trait. It emerges through the interaction of intention, knowledge, judgment, relationships, resources, and working conditions.
The review mapped how agency was studied. It did not test whether agency improves quality, retention, or child outcomes, and it did not examine early childhood educators separately. The discussion below therefore applies the research to early childhood rather than presenting direct proof. Its central insight remains important: if context shapes agency, systems must examine their own conditions before asking teachers to show more initiative.
What This Means for Early Childhood Systems and Policy
The ecological interpretation gives early childhood a different starting point. When teachers appear hesitant, dependent on approval, or resistant to change, we should examine the conditions in which they are expected to act. Agency can be affected by staffing levels, compensation, schedules, curriculum requirements, licensing rules, access to materials, planning time, coaching, relationships with administrators, and the consequences attached to making a mistake. A teacher cannot meaningfully exercise professional judgment when every minute is prescribed, her classroom is chronically understaffed, or raising a concern is treated as insubordination. Telling her to “take initiative” does not change those conditions.
For policy, this means moving beyond a choice between regulation and freedom. Children need strong health, safety, staffing, and quality protections. But a policy can establish essential guardrails without dictating every professional decision. Good policy should be clear about required outcomes and protections while preserving appropriate space for educators to respond to children, families, cultures, and local contexts. Policy design should include educators before decisions are finalized. A listening session held after a requirement has been written is not shared decision-making. Teachers, family child care educators, coaches, directors, and families should help identify problems, test solutions, anticipate consequences, and evaluate implementation. Policymakers should report what they heard and what changed.
The study also exposes a research policy need. Because agency has been studied with inconsistent definitions and mostly small qualitative samples, policymakers should avoid adopting a universal “agency score” for accountability. They can fund early-childhood-specific, mixed-method, and longitudinal research across centers, family child care homes, Head Start, public prekindergarten, and schools. Studies should include people at multiple system levels and report methods transparently. Context is part of what produces agency.
What It Means for Teachers and Administrators
For teachers, agency does not mean ignoring standards or solving every program problem alone. It means acting purposefully: noticing what children and families need, drawing on knowledge and experience, making a reasoned decision, and examining what happened. It is also collective. Teachers exercise agency when they seek colleagues’ perspectives, request resources, question ineffective practices, or help design a better approach. Teachers can make this often-invisible thinking visible. Suppose a preschooler consistently withdraws during large-group time. Rather than labeling the child uncooperative or repeating the same routine, the teacher observes when the withdrawal occurs, talks with the family, adjusts the child’s entry into the group, and records what changes. She then shares the evidence with colleagues. The adaptation is not a random preference; it is professional judgment connected to observation, relationships, and reflection.
For administrators, the central responsibility is not to announce that teachers are “empowered.” It is to create the conditions in which responsible agency is possible. Leaders can clearly distinguish nonnegotiable requirements from areas where teachers have discretion. They can protect time for planning and collaborative reflection, provide access to materials and coaching, respond consistently when educators raise concerns, and include teachers in decisions that affect classroom practice. Administrators should also reconsider how they observe teaching. A checklist may show whether a practice occurred, but not why a teacher adapted the plan or how children responded. Observation, reflective conversation, child documentation, and attention to context provide a fuller picture. This mirrors the review’s use of multiple forms of evidence.
Agency must never become another name for abandonment. Giving teachers responsibility without authority, time, staffing, or resources merely transfers the system’s mental load to the classroom. Authentic agency pairs discretion with support and holds leaders accountable for removing unnecessary constraints.
Turning the Research Into Everyday Practice
Programs can apply this knowledge through a simple inquiry routine:
First, identify a decision teachers are expected to make.
Next, clarify the guardrails and the purpose behind them.
Then ask what knowledge, relationships, time, and resources teachers need to decide well.
Finally, document both the decision and the system conditions that helped or hindered it.
A staff meeting, for example, could examine a recurring transition problem. Instead of immediately prescribing a procedure, the director could ask teachers to bring observations, hear family perspectives, test an adjustment, and return with evidence. The administrator remains responsible for safety and expectations, while teachers help construct the solution. This builds judgment, shared accountability, and leadership capacity.
Leaders can begin with four questions:
Where do educators currently have meaningful decision-making space?
Where are they required to seek permission unnecessarily?
What happens when their professional judgment conflicts with a routine or script?
How does what they learn reach people who can change the system?
The most important lesson from this review is that teacher agency cannot be separated from the conditions in which teachers work. The evidence is not consistent enough to support simple formulas, and we should resist turning agency into a slogan, a personality test, or one more demand placed on already burdened educators.
Strong early childhood systems do not force us to choose between accountability and agency. They create accountable agency: clear protections, shared purpose, professional discretion, adequate support, thoughtful documentation, and feedback that can influence decisions at every level. Children live and learn in context. Teachers do, too.
If we want educators to exercise sound judgment, we must ASK better questions about the conditions surrounding their work, BUILD leaders who recognize and support professional thinking, and CREATE systems in which teacher knowledge can shape what happens next.
Reference
Deschênes, M., & Parent, S. (2022). Methodology to study teacher agency: A systematic review of the literature. European Journal of Educational Research, 11(4), 2459–2474. https://doi.org/10.12973/eu-jer.11.4.2459
About the Author
Victoria Long-Coleman, Ph.D., MBA is the Founder and Principal of Early Childhood Innovations. An early childhood educator, leadership, coach, author, speaker, she focuses on strengthening educators, developing leaders, and translating research into practical approaches that improve early childhood systems.
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