Teacher agency for inclusive education: an international scoping review

Inclusive education is contextualised within local systems and represents a continuous struggle to ensure access to meaningful and equitable education. The purpose of this scoping review was to examine international empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals from 1999 to 2019 focused on teacher agency for inclusive education for students with disabilities in grades K-12. The conceptual framework used for this research identified teacher agency for inclusive schooling as requiring a disruption of traditional special educator identities, particularly pertaining to segregated schooling practices and deficit notions of disability. Eleven articles met the inclusion criteria. The results revealed varied conceptualizations of how teacher agency promotes inclusive education. We identified the following themes related to teachers’ agentic actions towards inclusive education: (a) instructional strategies, (b) collaboration, (c) family-school-community connections, and (d) other agentic moves. Implications for future research are discussed.