At a time of eroding trust in the profession (Müller and Cook, 2024), it is important that we start talking about trust.
Professional trust has been defined as “a teacher’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter is benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open” (Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 1999 p. 189).
At the organisational level, trusting relationships between teachers, and between teachers and school leaders, are important for teacher agency. But to understand why, we first need to define what we mean by teacher agency.
it is important that we start talking about trust
Teacher agency: an ecological perspective
Teacher agency is an important educational concept, but one that is also prone to being misunderstood and misused. The term is frequently used by practitioners, researchers and policymakers, but it is rarely defined. This is problematic because different definitions of agency are underpinned by different assumptions, and these assumptions have different consequences for the field of education.
That is not to say, as von Duyke and Kayumova (2016) argue, that it would be desirable to develop one “correct” definition of agency. But understanding how agency is understood and framed is important, because this may lead to different priorities when we consider how best to support and develop it.
For example, adopting an ecological perspective on teacher agency (Priestley et al., 2015) can help us to understand how the ecologies of teaching affect teacher decision-making and teacher actions. According to this perspective, teacher agency is not simply understood as a capacity of an individual, but it is contingent upon the quality and nature of an individual’s engagement with their environment. And it is here that professional trust comes into play.
Professional trust
Trust is an important, yet often neglected, part of the environment within which teachers operate. Our own research on offsite Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) demonstrates the importance of trust. In our research, leaders explained that one of the reasons why they choose to offer offsite PPA was a desire to demonstrate professional trust in their staff (Cook et al., 2025). Teachers working in schools that offered offsite PPA also told us that they valued the feeling that leaders trusted them to ‘get the job done’.
Of course, professional trust is just one feature of the environment within which teachers operate that can enable or constrain teacher agency. But if we want to consider how teacher agency can be developed, through both policy and school leadership, it’s time we started talking more about it.
References
Cook, V., Taylor, B., Muller, L-M., Burn, H., Anders, J. & Rubens, I. (2025). Offsite Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) Summary for school leaders. Education Endowment Foundation: London.
Hoy, W. K., & Tschannen-Moran, M. (2003). The conceptualization and measurement of faculty trust in schools: The Omnibus T-Scale. In W. K. Hoy & G. C. Miskel (Eds.), Studies in leading and organizing schools (pp. 181–208). Information Age.
Müller, L-M., & Cook, V. (2024). Revisiting the notion of teacher professionalism: A working paper. Chartered College of Teaching. https://chartered.college/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Professionalism-report_v.2_FINAL-FOR-PUBLICATION_2-May-1.pdf
Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency an ecological approach. London: Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474219426
von Duyke, K. & Kayumova, S. (2016). Mapping Concepts of Agency in Educational Contexts. Integrative psychological & behavioral science. 50. 420–446. 10.1007/s12124-015-9336-0.