“What is the best we can give?” School leaders’ agency during emergency situations in Chile
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Date
2025
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Abstract
This article investigates the applicability of the concept of teacheragency to school leaders. The COVID-19 crisis and emergencyremote teaching (ERT) were selected as a study context due totheir ability to reveal multiple educational challenges which couldpotentially highlight school leaders’ agency and its influence onmanaging educational crises. The study involved a multiple casestudy in subsidized Chilean schools, where data was obtainedthrough semi-structured interviews using a protocol validated byexpert judges. The data was then analyzed using grounded theorytechniques, including inductive-deductive coding stages. The mainfindings reveal that the dimensions of teacher agency identified inthe literature could also apply initially to school leaders, aligningwith their conceptualization. Additionally, our data revealed thateducational crises can be influenced by agentical actions of schoolleaders. Finally, we propose that since agency is a phenomenonthat emerges from the material conditions in which educationalparticipants deploy their actions, each great challenge experiencedby agents in their material reality can probably give rise to newforms of agency