Agents, Agency, and Teacher Education

Goodlad believed that teachers played a central role in schooling, which was a moral enterprise that shaped our changing democratic society. However, in visits to colleges and universities across the nation, Goodlad and his colleagues found that almost no teacher education programs included preparing teachers to be agents of change as part of their purpose. He lamented, “Somehow, the idea that we are our own best agents of change and the will to act have taken a second seat to quiescence” (p. 398). Perhaps times have not changed so much in terms of excoriating critiques of teacher education from both insiders and outsiders. But they have changed in terms of teacher education and agency. Today, many topics related to teacher agency are of central interest in teacher education research, practice, and policy, including conceptualizing teacher agency; preparing agentic educators across the lifespan; the role of teacher agency in curriculum change, social justice agendas, and school reform; and, teacher agency in the face of restrictive performativity and other policies.1 In this editorial, we consider three key ideas related to teacher agency that we think are especially important for teacher education.