Exploring Agency for Equity in Teacher and Leadership Education Programs: A Self-study Approach

In a social-justice-centered graduate education program, three faculty researchers studied and synthesized their personal ideas of social justice and their impact on students. Utilizing ideas from Rios'(2018) conscious engagement framework for teacher agency, data was collected on notions of identity as teachers of social justice as well as student perceptions on the development of their individual and collective agency as a result of being in their classrooms. Preliminary results indicate that personal cross-cultural, interfaith, and cross-linguistic experiences of the faculty had great impact on the evolutionary progress of both individual student agency and collective classroom movement.