This special issue on teacher agency offers a landmark vehicle for documenting the agentive

spaces English language arts (ELA) teachers are able to forge, amid the constraints of current

education contexts. Our call for papers for this special issue invited literacy researchers and

practitioners to consider, among other provocations, the contextual factors that give rise to

different forms of agency in research; how sociocultural environments in which teachers work

mediate agentive action in theory; how teachers work agentively, in relation to specific

curriculum and discipline-related conditions, to establish an ethic of care and humanize

education in practice; and how specific educational policies around the world shape teacher

agency, identity, and culture in policy.