ABSTRACT
In an increasingly fragile professional world, the teacher’s role in relation to school change is championed with varying emphases. An alternative is advocacy for teacher leadership, where ‘good’ teachers are understood to cultivate their own sense of agency, initiative and self-belief. In 2003, a ‘new professionalism’ was defined by the English government as concerned with professional standards, performance management, professional development and induction. An internal, reflexive conversation enables people to monitor themselves such that they are ‘ontologically distinct’ from their context, rather than understanding themselves to be part of the organisational mechanism and are consequently able to exercise their own agency in relation to the structures around them. Personal experience and individual professionality have to be managed in relation to living with contradictions and tensions while ensuring individual effectiveness to fulfil contractual requirements. The concept of agency can be particularly ambiguous for practitioners themselves.
