Introduction

Adopting an agentic perspective amongst teachers gives a powerful positive emphasis for school change that supports confidence in learning and self-efficacy in leadership amongst children and young people. The teachers’ portraits were set within the complex and changing landscapes of two schools with contrasting circumstances and cultures, enabling critical consideration of how the symbiotic relationships between individuals and organisations may be locally influenced. Teachers have important questions to ask about the purposes and processes of education: their experiences, concerns, views and voices are therefore vital in school improvement. Intelligent, innovative and relentlessly demanding advocacy on the part of teachers, headteachers and systems leaders ensures that the interests of children and young people are championed, working with generic criteria while pushing for the right kinds of change. Human agency needs an explicit place in both teachers’ and students’ identity and it should be advocated as both an aim and a means for professional development.