This second edition of Teacher Agency brings new perspectives on teachers as agents of change and development within their professional ecosystems. Centred around an ecological theory of agency, it critically surveys the work that has emerged in this field in the decade since its first edition and how international trends in curriculum policy and teacher development have shaped that landscape.

As well as updating the research that formed the core of its original study, this second edition now includes an extensive literature review spanning the theory and conceptualization of teacher agency, and the critical issues that now affect it.

Drawing this research together with the authors’ international experiences and perspectives, Teacher Agency grapples with theoretical and practical issues of international significance – how should agency be understood? How does it relate to individual teachers’ capacity? What does this mean for the cultures and structures at the heart of teaching?

Mark Priestley is Professor of Education at the University of Stirling and the Director of the Stirling Centre for Research into Curriculum Making.

Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education at the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy at Maynooth University, Ireland; NIVOZ Professor for Education at the University of Humanistic Studies, The Netherlands; and Professorial Fellow for Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, UK.

Sarah Robinson is Associate Professor Sarah Robinson in Curriculum Development at Centre for Educational Development, Aarhus University, Denmark.