Teachers are frontline actors in actualising educational innovations. In some contexts, teachers’ professional agency is undervalued. This study investigated teachers’ agency and its related workplace affordances in Hong Kong, which features a centralised-decentralisation education governance system, and a hierarchical work culture. The study was based on 21 semi-structured interviews with teachers, and employed a deductive thematic analysis. Agency enactment was categorised into 1) pedagogical agency within classrooms, and 2) relational agency in the professional community. The factors contributing to workplace affordances were grouped as pertaining to 1) the collegial community, 2) school leadership, 3) access to resources, and 4) availability of time, space, and job stability. Agency-supportive leadership and a favourable collegial environment significantly facilitated teachers’ agentic actions. Teachers did not explicitly resist but implemented emotionally meaningless order in a ‘work-to-rule’ manner. The study contributes to professional agency research as applied to a particular political, regional, and socio-cultural context. Copyright ©2024 Routledge .

Teachers are frontline actors in actualising educational innovations. In some contexts, teachers' professional agency is undervalued. This study investigated teachers' agency and its related workplace affordances in Hong Kong, which features a centralised-decentralisation education governance system, and a hierarchical work culture. The study was based on 21 semi-structured interviews with teachers, and employed a deductive thematic analysis. Agency enactment was categorised into 1) pedagogical agency within classrooms, and 2) relational agency in the professional community. The factors contributing to workplace affordances were grouped as pertaining to 1) the collegial community, 2) school leadership, 3) access to resources, and 4) availability of time, space, and job stability. Agency-supportive leadership and a favourable collegial environment significantly facilitated teachers' agentic actions. Teachers did not explicitly resist but implemented emotionally meaningless order in a 'work-to-rule' manner. The study contributes to professional agency research as applied to a particular political, regional, and socio-cultural context. Copyright ©2024 Routledge .

To transform existing education practices in tackling different challenges and future uncertainties, it is essential to engage teachers as active agents in students' learning, collegial collaboration, school development and societal issues throughout the career. This study investigates the change and continuity of teacher professional agency associated with the individual position and socio-cultural factors in Hong Kong. Data from semi-structured interviews were collected with 14 teachers over a two-year period in 2018 and 2020, and narrative analysis was utilized to examine teacher agency. The changes and continuity were categorized into four types: 1) expanding, 2) strategic, 3) exploring, and 4) withering agencies. The way teachers took and made work-related actions and decisions on their career trajectories could be associated with the changes in individual positions, the organizational culture, and the leadership style in the socio-cultural context. This study contributes to the existing understanding of the temporal development and enactment of professional agency. Despite the strong hierarchical structure embedded in the school managerial practices, a trusting management and collaborative work community that allow channels to receive bottom-up suggestions and spaces to enable individual learning could support positive changes and the continuity of professional agency. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.