How Education Leaders Can Harness Teacher Agency to Improve Student Outcomes

One of the most powerful yet often overlooked drivers of student success is teacher agency. When educators are empowered to take ownership of their teaching practices, receive actionable feedback for professional growth, and collaborate meaningfully with their peers, the entire school thrives.

This article explores how education leaders at the district and school level can actively harness the power of teacher agency. As teachers develop higher levels of agency, they in turn empower their students to take ownership of their academics and behavior and develop high agency skills.

We cover research-based strategies that leaders can use to create this ripple effect across their school and district, increasing teacher retention while also improving student achievement, engagement, and behavior.

The National Center for Education Statistics (2023) reported that 86% of K-12 public schools in the United States had difficulty filling teaching positions for the 2023-2024 school year. In 2024, 50% of public-school leaders reported that their schools were understaffed (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024).  

Some contributing factors to this shortage of teachers may be that perceptions of prestige and job satisfaction of the teaching profession are at the lowest level in 50 years (Kraft & Lyon, 2024). Although many factors influence this declining trend, there is strong evidence that a loss of agency is negatively affecting the willingness of people to enter or stay in teaching (Davis, 2024; Kraft & Lyon, 2024).  

Leadership practices play an important role in reversing teacher attrition and making the teaching profession more attractive to prospective educators. The key is knowing how to support teachers’ basic psychological needs and build teacher agency. 

At Instructional Empowerment’s Applied Research Center, we have analyzed the science behind how human motivations affect teaching practices, deeper student learning, and educational leadership.  

We have grounded our work with schools and districts in self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017). This theory states that all human beings have three basic psychological needs (BPN): the need for autonomy, the need for competence, and the need for relatedness. Understanding these three human needs is critical for creating learning environments that foster student and teacher agency. 

(1) Autonomy: Autonomy is volitional action towards a goal that people embrace as consistent with their sense of self and is integrated with their values and their sense of purpose (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2017, 2020). In other words, autonomy is choice and ownership. 

(2) Competence: Competence is the feeling of being capable, knowledgeable, and skilled (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2017, 2020). People who feel competent derive satisfaction from successful completion of activities that allow them to demonstrate their abilities (Di Domenico & Ryan, 2017). In other words, competence is confidence in one’s own abilities. 

(3) Relatedness: Relatedness is the sense of caring about others and being cared for by others (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2017, 2020). It provides a sense of security and belonging as a valued member of a group. In other words, relatedness is a sense of belonging. 

Leadership support of the three basic psychological needs (BPN) is essential to everyone at the school: students, teachers, and principals. 

When BPN Is Fulfilled 

The fulfillment of BPN is essential to developing student agency and resilience as learners (Reeve et al., 2020). Students who take responsibility for their learning, feel competent as learners, and who feel valued as part of a learning community (Gottfried et al., 2008) also:  

• Feel good about themselves 

• Have a positive attitude about their education 

• Persist in the face of challenges 

• Perform well academically  

When BPN Is Thwarted  

Students whose needs are thwarted by their experience of school do not experience volition in learning (Reeve et al., 2020). They lose motivation to learn and avoid tasks over which they have no opportunity to exercise choice or autonomy (Bartholomew et al., 2018). Students whose BPN are not fulfilled by their experience of school behave in maladaptive ways (Bartholomew et al., 2018; Collie et al., 2019; Filippello et al., 2017; Howard et al., 2021; Reeve, 2009; Ryan & Deci, 2017) such as:  

• Learned helplessness 

• Anxiety 

• Absenteeism 

• Oppositional behavior  

Such behaviors set students up for a cycle of failure that will negatively impact the rest of their lives, limiting or blocking their opportunities for success and upward mobility. Teachers have a direct influence on the degree to which their students’ BPN are met. Their words and actions can convey messages of attentiveness or indifference to students’ interests, confidence or a lack of confidence in students’ abilities, acceptance or rejection of their students as part of the classroom community.  

Teachers also have needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Basic need satisfaction explains both teacher job satisfaction and teacher commitment to professional learning (Jansen in de Wal et al., 2020).   

When BPN Is Fulfilled 

Teachers whose basic psychological needs are fulfilled (Ahn et al., 2021; Soenens et al., 2012; Basileo & Lyons 2024) are:  

• More likely to support the basic psychological needs of their students 

• More likely to successfully adopt innovations 

When BPN Is Thwarted 

When teachers’ BPN are not satisfied (Collie, 2021; Eyal & Roth, 2011), teachers experience:  

• Stress 

• Emotional exhaustion 

• Burnout  

Principal leadership is essential to fulfilling teachers’ BPN; however, principals also have the same needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as teachers and students.   

When BPN Is Fulfilled 

Satisfaction of principals’ needs (Ryan & Deci, 2017) and BPN support from their superintendents (Chang et al., 2015; Ryan & Deci, 2020) is associated with: 

• Work commitment  

• More affective commitment (emotional attachment) to their schools 

• Higher job satisfaction  

• Higher likelihood of supporting the BPN of teachers  

When BPN Is Thwarted 

For principals, frustration of their needs (Ryan & Deci, 2017) and lack of BPN support from their superintendents (Chang et al., 2015; Ryan & Deci, 2020) is associated with:  

• Exhaustion 

• Less affective commitment (emotional attachment) to their schools 

• Lower job satisfaction  

Agency is our ability to self-manage our thoughts and actions to make positive and meaningful changes in our lives and in the lives of others (Bandura, 2006). Students, teachers, and leaders all need to develop strong agency to perform at their highest levels. But agency will not flourish without the satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs (BPN). As discussed above, the fulfillment or thwarting of BPN has a drastic effect on student, teacher, and principal outcomes. Figure 1 depicts the relationship between BPN and agency. 

Instructional Empowerment’s social mission is to end generational poverty and eliminate racial achievement gaps through redesigned rigorous Tier 1 instruction. Student agency is the key to achieving this mission. 

People experiencing generational poverty are deprived of basic capabilities to live a life free of illness, undernourishment, and illiteracy and to access opportunities to live a full and meaningful life that provides for their needs and the needs of their families. To break the cycle of generational poverty, they must be free to develop agency to bring about change in their lives (Sen, 1999).  

This agency development must begin in the first system that children encounter in their lives as they enter the world outside their own families – the educational system. Education is the means for students to attain freedom to purposefully use all their capabilities, express their true nature, and attain happiness (Ryan & Niemiec, 2009). It is only possible when students exercise agency as learners.  

Through education, all students can develop the individual and collective agency they need to bring meaningful, positive change to their lives and the lives of others and to achieve upward mobility and career success.

Teachers develop student agency by supporting students’ BPN (Figure 2). They can support student autonomy by providing roles and responsibilities for learning, build student competence through feedback and clear learning goals, and foster relatedness by creating a collaborative classroom learning culture.  

• Establish roles and responsibilities for learning: Teachers provide learning opportunities with structured roles and responsibilities for students that progressively develop individual and collective skills of self-management and allow students to exercise greater control over their own learning.  

• Provide feedback and clear learning goals: Teachers encourage students’ sense of competence by giving informational feedback and providing learning tasks with clear goals against which students can track their own progress and adapt their strategies to improve learning. 

• Create a collaborative classroom learning culture: Teachers foster students’ feeling of relatedness by building a safe and collaborative culture in their classrooms where students work in teams to support each other’s growth as learners.  

Agency in teaching consists of the capacity to make informed decisions, using professional judgement and skill (Davis, 2024). Without agency, teachers can neither develop the level of professional expertise they need to continuously improve the quality of education that their students receive, nor support the BPN and agency of their students.

School leaders must support the agency of teachers. As shown in Figure 3, teachers develop agency when their leaders use agency supportive practices and structures to empower teachers’ professional practice (autonomy), provide growth producing feedback (competence), and foster collaboration with peer teams (relatedness).  

• Empower professional practice: The leader ensures that teachers have time and resources to learn, practice, and deepen the professional knowledge and skills they need to provide rigorous, deeper learning experiences for all students.

• Provide growth producing feedback: The leader allocates daily time to observing classroom instruction, providing feedback, and engaging with teachers about instruction. The leader also creates systems through which teachers can regularly monitor progress of their professional skills development and identify instructional practices requiring additional training or coaching support. 

• Foster collaboration with peer teams: The leader provides guidelines and support for teacher teams, as well as time and resources to ensure that teacher teams become more effective over time, improving the quality of teaching and learning.  

Instructional improvement is the leader’s primary focus. This requires the development of professionalism of leaders and teachers through continuous learning, modeling and practice to develop expertise, and reciprocity of accountability (Elmore, 2008). Professionalism arises from the principal’s strong sense of agency as a leader.

To develop agency in school leaders, principal supervisors must support principals’ BPN, as shown in Figure 4. Principal supervisors can support principal autonomy by distributing authority, building principal competence through coaching and professional growth opportunities, and fostering principals’ sense of relatedness by affording opportunities for principals to participate in a leadership community of practice.  

• Distribute authority: The principal supervisor gives principals authority to make decisions regarding personnel, curriculum, discipline, budgets, and personnel evaluations (Chang et al., 2015). 

• Provide coaching and professional growth opportunities: The principal supervisor bolsters principals’ competence through coaching conversations that convey confidence in principals’ leadership abilities and encourage the pursuit of opportunities to build leadership expertise (Chang et al., 2015). 

• Provide for a leadership community of practice: The principal supervisor ensures that principals can participate in an active community of practice that deepens professional expertise while it connects principals to collegial support as they face the unique challenges of school leadership. 

Student agency is critical to the development of knowledge and skills students need for social mobility and success in future careers, education, and civic life. The development of agency depends upon the satisfaction of students’ basic psychological needs (BPN) for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. For teachers to support the BPN of students, teachers need agency. Teacher agency depends upon leadership support for their BPN. But for principals to support teachers’ BPN, they too must have agency. School leader agency depends upon principal supervisors’ support for principals’ BPN. 

(1) If you are a principal supervisor, do your leadership practices support the agency of principals?

(2) If you are a principal, do your leadership practices support the agency of teachers? 

(3) Which particular leadership practices support teacher agency? Which do not?  

(4) What other factors might make school leaders more or less supportive of teacher agency? 

(5) What other factors might affect the development of school leader agency?

Consider scheduling a meeting with our expert educators to discuss how you can harness teacher agency to improve student outcomes. Become the leader who creates high-quality educational experiences for ALL students. 

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