Exploring teacher agency through an ecological lens: a case study of an Atayal Indigenous experimental school

This study investigates how teacher agency is generated and enacted during the transformation of an Indigenous experimental school, using Taiwan’s first Atayal Indigenous experimental elementary school as a case. Integrating ecological systems theory with a temporally embedded model of teacher agency, the study examines how agency develops within Indigenous experimental education. A qualitative case study design was adopted, drawing on interview and document analysis. The findings show that teacher agency is not a static individual attribute but a dynamic professional capacity emerging through cross-level interactions over time. At the macro level, policy deregulation enabled institutional transformation; at the exosystem level, community collaboration supported curriculum co-construction; at the mesosystem level, leadership and collegial culture fostered collective action; and at the microsystem level, teachers’ identity reflection reshaped professional meanings. Overall, teacher agency emerged through the interaction of past experiences, present contextual judgments, and future-oriented imagination. Teachers shifted from policy implementers to cultural agents and curriculum co-creators, demonstrating a collective and generative form of agency embedded in cultural, ecological, and historical contexts. The study contributes empirical and conceptual insights to Indigenous education reform and teacher agency research.