Introduction
Modern authors reveal the essence of agency through the concepts of independence and proactivity manifested in activity. On this basis, methods for diagnosing agency are created, its connection with individual human characteristics and socio-environmental conditions is studied. There is a point of view suggesting the rejection of the concept of agency in favor of a more meaningfully accurate "subjectivity", i.e. the internal side of independence, which ensures the ability to oppose one's personality to external and internal conditions and influences, to initiate one's actions and manage them (Leontyev, 2024; Sorokin, Redko, 2024). Nevertheless, modern authors, especially foreign ones, use the concept of agency to denote the initiation and regulation of a person's own proactive activity most often. Professional agency makes a person a "director" in relation to the professional environment, their functional responsibilities, interaction with colleagues and other people (for example, clients, patients, students). Agency helps to overcome difficult life situations, including those related to work activities, when it is necessary to solve professional problems in conditions of uncertainty and/or threats to the mental and even physical health of the employee (Kusters et al., 2023). Professional agency is a type of group (collective) agency (Calcagni et al., 2023) and is traditionally studied using teachers as an example (Hökkä et al., 2025; Nagel, Guðmundsdóttir, Afdal, 2023). Taking this into account, we will focus on pedagogical agency. Considering the goal of the review to be the systematization of information on agency in general and pedagogical agency in particular (including in relation to difficult situations that a teacher may encounter in her work), we posed three research questions.
- What are the main approaches to understanding agency that have emerged to date?
- What are the characteristics of pedagogical agency and what is the current practice of its diagnostic assessment?
- What is known today about the relationship between agency and burnout in pedagogical activity?
Materials and methods
The purpose of the review involved referring to current publications on the problem of pedagogical agency. Particular attention was paid to data characterizing the manifestations of agency when difficulties arise in pedagogical activity, leading to the emergence of professional stress and burnout. Resources: https://www.sciencedirect.com/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/, https://www.elibrary.ru/defaultx.asp and https://scholar.google.com/. The search was carried out using the following keywords: “agency”, “professional agency”, “teacher agency”, “pedagogical agency”, “agency in teachers”, “difficult situations”, “burnout”, “emotional burnout”, “emotional burnout syndrome”, “burnout in teachers”, “burnout in teachers” (in Russian and English).
Results
Modern concepts of agency
The experience of empirical study of agency formed the basis of several approaches to understanding its essence. In the first of them, agency appears as a human property that colors in a special way his need-motivational and volitional spheres. It is realized in activity through initiative as a manifestation of freedom and self-regulation as a manifestation of responsibility. In the structure of initiative, the ability to make a choice and act independently is distinguished (Hökkä et al., 2025). Calcagni et al. (2023), following A. Bandura, defined agency as a set of four qualities, among which "intentionality" and the ability to predict ensure proactive self-manifestation in activity, and self-regulation and reflexivity perform a control function. The implementation of agency is preceded by the formation of strategic intentions centered around the idea of transforming the surrounding world (Gasinets, Kapuza, Dobryakova, 2022; Mironenko, 2024; Sorokin, Redko, 2024). Russian authors shift the focus from the socio-environmental conditions and manifestations of agency to its subjective beginning (Sorokin, Redko, 2024) and believe that it is revealed in the direction of the personality and "soft skills".
Understanding agency as a way of human interaction with the world is also quite common. Eteläpelto et al. (2013) define it simultaneously as a special type of deliberate, rational activity and as the embodiment of personality development in the socio-environmental context, and Kusters et al. (2023) - as the implementation of the idea of making a choice and influencing current activities and prospects. Adherents of this approach have developed a method for diagnosing agency through “iterations” as a person's actualization of past experience when solving new problems, a “practical assessment” of the current situation and a “projective” dimension implemented in the construction of the future (Kusters et al., 2023).
Proponents of this approach have developed a method for diagnosing agency through “iterations” as a person’s actualization of past experience when solving new problems, a “practical assessment” of the current situation, and a “projective” measurement implemented in constructing the future (Kusters et al., 2023). The idea of the approach is reflected in the PAM (Professional Agency Measurement Tool) and Short-PAM questionnaires, which include scales of influence at work, work participation, and professional identity. Here, agency appears as determined by a person’s individual qualities and the development of competencies (essentially, “soft skills”) that allow them to achieve new levels of mastery (Hökkä et al., 2025; Vähäsantanen et al., 2022).
Not all situations place the same demands on agency. For example, an employee needs a particularly high level of agency to implement innovative practices. Agentic competencies form the main tool for innovative behavior. The cultural and institutional factors of the latter are the most extensive, organizational factors occupy an intermediate position, and personal factors (for example, creativity, focus on teamwork, optimism) are local in nature (Ermolaeva, Lubovsky, Avdeeva, 2024).
Specificity and modern possibilities of diagnostics of teacher agency
The concept of professional agency is based on a proactive position of a person, realized in his/her influence on his/her own work activity. The internal context of such agency is represented by the value-motivational and ethical-legal foundations of the activity, competencies and experience, and the socio-environmental context is formed by working conditions, including material and technical equipment, corporate culture, relationships with management, etc. (Eteläpelto et al., 2013). The duality of professional agency is emphasized, which is simultaneously a special activity and an internal focus on the proactive transformation of the professional environment (Gasinets, Kapuza, Dobryakova, 2022; Nagel, Guðmundsdóttir, Afdal, 2023).
The distinctive features of teacher agency are determined by social and environmental conditions in the form of strict subordination and directiveness of management, traditional for the education system (Zakharova, Saralieva, Langman, 2025, etc.). Such conditions limit the teacher in making individual decisions and in coordinating actions with others, which makes it especially difficult to get out of difficult professional situations; for example, effective counteraction to bullying is impossible without the joint efforts of the teacher and the students themselves, their parents, other teachers, and the administration. Many teachers are not aware of the possibilities of influencing the organization of the educational process, and even with formal possession of such information, they do not always believe in themselves and their colleagues. More than half of the 4,000 teachers covered by a recent Russian study do not consider school determinants, including their contribution, as truly important for the academic and personal growth of students. It was also revealed that the main conditions for the implementation of agency in pedagogical activity are freedom of choice and self-efficacy (Gasinets, Kapuza, Dobryakova, 2022).
It is worth emphasizing the reflexivity and interactivity of modern tools for studying pedagogical agency. Without rejecting traditional questionnaires and questionnaires, researchers give preference to methods that involve in-depth analysis by teachers of their own experience of proactivity. The only question is how to help the teacher actualize and structure this experience. Norwegian researchers, for example, suggest building the process around a consistent discussion of six modalities of the agency space: “to want”, “to know”, “to be able”, “to have to”, “to feel” and “to have the opportunity” (Nagel, Guðmundsdóttir, Afdal, 2023).
Higher education teachers have the highest level of agency, and primary school teachers have the lowest (Hökkä et al., 2025; Nagel, Guðmundsdóttir, Afdal, 2023). However, even in higher education institutions, the dependence of pedagogical agency on administrative pressure is high, which was confirmed by a large-scale study involving university teachers from the Netherlands and Norway (Kusters et al., 2023). Managers have higher agency than ordinary teachers (Hökkä et al., 2025; Nagel, Guðmundsdóttir, Afdal, 2023). There is still no convincing evidence of gender differences, although male teachers usually occupy higher positions, which could be reflected in their agency. According to a study of primary school teachers in Sweden, Finland and Scotland, women are more democratic, active and perform more functions (Hökkä et al., 2025). In Russia, the overtime rate of female teachers exceeds the corresponding figure for any other profession, and women make up almost 90% of school teachers. In addition, the socio-cultural attitudes prevailing in our country suggest a positive connotation of high employment with insufficient value for an innovative approach to work and leisure, rest, physical and psychological recovery (Zakharova, Saralieva, Langman, 2025).
Teachers sometimes find it difficult to implement the “idealized practices” that abound in professional development programs. To successfully integrate the proposed practices into real conditions and to best take into account agent experience, the T-SEDA procedure (“technique for systematic analysis of educational dialogue”) was created. It involves teachers completing a number of reflective tasks: formulating requests, the development of which can improve the quality of the educational process, analyzing their professional experience using a special pattern coding system, etc. Particular attention is paid to difficult situations related, for example, to conflicts between students. The experience of international testing of T-SEDA has proven its positive impact on the value-semantic and reflexive characteristics of teachers, moderating the mutual influence of the environment and agency (Calcagni et al., 2023).
Such tools are also useful for assessing “tacit knowledge” (TC), or the totality of knowledge and experience,accumulated and empirically verified by a professional (van Houten, 2023). TS and “soft skills” are very individual, and their full transfer to another person requires the use of examples from professional practice, parables, metaphors. Programs that involve such an exchange of TS help individual and team growth in a pedagogical environment (van Houten, 2023).
Depending on the teacher's orientation towards maintaining/regulating existing work processes or towards developing fundamentally new processes, there are models of adaptive functioning and professional development. When faced with difficulties, teachers working within the first model limit themselves to feasible adaptation to changed conditions due to functioning reserves (for example, activity style, set of knowledge). Those who focus on professional development are able to find proactive and creative ways out of difficult situations, rising to a new level of problem solving with reliance not on reserves, but on resources (Mitina, 2024). They are characterized by high involvement, which is expressed in commitment to a professional mission, immersion in work, and the ability to interest students in their subject (Mitina, Mitin, Anisimova, 2025). It should be noted that the concepts of agency and involvement are similar in content, since the latter implies a high degree of initiative, focus on the future, combined with the ability to take responsibility.
Agency and emotional burnout in pedagogical activity
A teacher who has not only a “margin of safety” for adaptation, but also the potential for proactivity, will experience professional difficulties as eustress, but not as distress. The cumulation of professional distress leads to the formation of emotional burnout syndrome. Agency deficit may also be one of the consequences of burnout; then, as more pronounced manifestations of burnout form, the teacher will progressively lose agent potential. Most likely, burnout and agency have a complex mutual influence.
Burnout not only reduces the level of performance, cognitive and regulatory capabilities of a person, but also devalues professional activity in his eyes. These mechanisms psychologically distance, abstract the burnout from the professional mission, specific work tasks and communication necessary to solve the latter (Orel, 2014). Initially playing a compensatory role, over time burnout depletes a person's reserves and resources and can lead not only to psychological maladjustment, but also to mental health disorders (Stress, burnout and coping..., 2021).
Dynamic and structural approaches to the psychological diagnosis of emotional burnout syndrome can be distinguished. The first involves determining the burnout phase, and the second - measuring indicators corresponding to the structural components of the syndrome. The dynamic approach is not perfect, because numerous studies have proven the non-linearity of transitions from one burnout phase to another. The disadvantage of the second approach is the lack of a clear picture of the composition, comparative significance and mutual subordination of the burnout components. Unfortunately, attempts to construct a comprehensive picture of the structure and dynamics of burnout remain rare (Gorblyansky et al., 2020; Ilyukhin, 2021; Kukhtenko, 2021; Platonov, 2018; Stress, burnout and coping..., 2021).
Abroad, the structural approach is dominant, implemented using the Maslach-Jackson MBI, BBI-15, OLBI and CBI questionnaires (Bezymyanny, Mingazov, Mingazova, 2024; Pihlaja et al., 2022). Adapting the MBI to identify clinically significant burnout, the Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization scales under one name or another are retained, and the Reduction of Professional (in other translations - personal, private) Achievements scale is replaced by indicators of emotional and cognitive impairments. This is how the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) is constructed, for example, the data from which correlate with various individual characteristics of employees and organizational working conditions (Jalili et al., 2021; Mazzetti, 2022; Schaufeli et al., 2023). It is also possible to assess secondary symptoms of clinically significant burnout, such as psychosomatic complaints, using the BAT-S questionnaire (Basińska, Gruszczyńska, Schaufeli, 2023).
Among the tools used in our country, the dynamic methods include the questionnaire by V.V. Boyko, and the structural ones include the MBI and the questionnaire by V.E. Orel. Let us consider their items, taking into account that agency implies the presence of initiative and self-regulation, and its manifestations in activity are ensured by “soft skills” and TS.
The questionnaire by V.V. Boyko is based on the concept of three burnout phases, which include tension, resistance and exhaustion. Among the items of the questionnaire describing the symptoms of all three phases, there are those corresponding to the concept of “soft skills” and TS (for example, “I am often upset that I cannot properly provide my partner with support, service, assistance, including professional help”). The items reflecting the initiation of agent activity correspond to the phases of tension (“Successes in work/study inspire me”) and exhaustion (“I have lost interest in everything (almost everything) that happens at work/study, a lively feeling”). The items that are content-wise close to the regulatory aspect of agency are most often found among those related to the phases of resistance and exhaustion (“I always manage to prevent the influence of a bad mood on contacts, including business ones,” “My nerves often let me down when communicating with people, including at work/study”).
The MBI questionnaire operationalizes such components of the emotional burnout syndrome as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduction of professional achievements. A more comprehensive questionnaire by V.E. Orel has a similar second scale, and the names of the first and third are formulated, respectively, as “Psycho-emotional exhaustion” and “Self-assessment of professional effectiveness.” A high score on the “Emotional exhaustion” scale (“Psycho-emotional exhaustion” according to V.E. Orel) indicates a lack of activity, interest in the surrounding world and people. On the contrary, a low value indicates the presence of good energy potential and involvement in what is happening, which is necessary to go beyond simple adaptation and initiate agentic activity. The theme of the employee's interest and initiative is reflected, for example, in the following items: "I feel indifference and loss of interest in many things that made me happy in my work", "Discussions on professional topics often seem uninteresting and useless to me" (here and below, the first example of a statement is taken from the MBI, and the second - from the questionnaire of V.E. Orel). The items of the "Depersonalization" scale reflect manifestations of cynicism in the communication of the subject with different people when solving professional problems, which means that it can be correlated with "soft skills" and TS ("I feel that I communicate with some subordinates and colleagues as with objects (without warmth and disposition towards them)", "I can listen to my client (patient) for a long time about his problems and do not feel irritated"). Finally, "Reduction of professional achievements" in the MBI and the opposite "Self-assessment of professional effectiveness" in the questionnaire of V.E. Orel reveal the degree of a person’s satisfaction with their professionalism and contribution to work. The items of these scales correspond in content to the ability to initiate agent activity (“I have many plans for the future, and I believe in their implementation”, “The expression “Initiative is punishable” seems completely fair to me”) on the one hand, and TS (“I can find the right solution in conflict situations that arise when communicating with colleagues”, “I believe that I am quite competent in solving my professional issues”) on the other.
It can be assumed that the indicators of the questionnaires of V.E. Orel and MBI will directly correlate with the ability to initiate agent activity and the development of “soft skills” and TS. As for the ability to regulate one’s own proactivity, there are almost no comparable items in the named questionnaires. The data presented confirm the importance of further studying agency in connection with the problem of burnout.
Discussion
The presented data indicate a wide variety of views on agency. It is interpreted as a characteristic of a person, a way of his/her interaction with the world or a dual phenomenon implemented in a special type of activity based on specific qualities. In practice-oriented studies, agency is considered in the context of the need to solve problems of a certain type - for example, professional ones. Initiation of proactive actions and their regulation are operationally ensured by TS, recording agent experience in the internal psychological space, and "soft skills", bringing this experience outward at a new stage of professional formation and development. It is, of course, possible to assume the existence of other tools for implementing agency in activities.
As for pedagogical agency, its specificity is determined by the socio-environmental context of the teacher's professional activity. Researchers from different countries point out the significance of excessive organizational rigidity characteristic of the education system. Russian authors add to this the factor of the positive connotation of high labor employment with the devaluation of leisure and the employee's innovative approach to work in the public consciousness.
The reflexive approach, which is currently developing in foreign practice of diagnosing pedagogical agency, seems promising. Its advantages include the depth, versatility of the data obtained, their direct connection with the individual process of professionalization of the subject and the high environmental friendliness of the diagnostic procedure itself.
Difficult work-related situations and conditions of professional stress are a serious test of agency. The variety of methods for diagnosing burnout provides the opportunity to study in detail the relationships between the components of the emotional burnout syndrome and agency, as well as, in the long term, the mutual influence of these phenomena. In practical terms, it is important to take into account the focus of a particular method on assessing the structure and / or dynamics of burnout. A preliminary analysis of burnout questionnaires used in our country, in light of ideas about agency, suggests that the items of these questionnaires can be attributed to an adaptive rather than an innovative (proactive, agentic) model of professionalization (Mitina, 2024; Mitina, Mitin, Anisimova, 2025).
Conclusions
Summarizing the above, we can distinguish three main approaches to understanding agency. From the point of view of some authors, agency is a special systemic property of a person, while others consider it a way of human interaction with the world, and in studies of professional agency, a tendency has emerged to combine these positions.
Professional agency is usually studied using the example of communication professions, and teachers make up the main array of subjects. Modern researchers generally agree on the socio-environmental nature of the factorsdefining the specificity of pedagogical agency.
Abroad, there is a tendency to assess pedagogical agency using procedures that involve deep reflection and a specially organized verbalization of the subject's own professional experience. Adaptation of such tools in Russia could illuminate new aspects of teacher agency and indirectly increase the detectability of burnout.
The relationship between agency and burnout requires further study. Burnout is both a process and a result of responding to professional stress, for overcoming which the employee does not have the necessary external and internal resources, including those related to agency (and then stress becomes distress). However, burnout that has reached a certain level or acquired a certain structure can in itself act as a factor in the loss of agency. Identifying the nature and degree of influence of agency on burnout and, conversely, burnout on agency seems to be another promising area of research. The solution to the relevant issues will require overcoming methodological difficulties associated with the heterogeneity of the operationalization of burnout in the three main methods used to assess it in our country, as well as the lack of Russian-language versions of foreign methods for diagnosing agency.