Agency at the margins: How pre-service teachers navigate poverty, care, and community leadership
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This study examines how pre-service teachers enact professional and civic responsibilities in poverty-affected and remote schooling contexts in Southern Philippines. Guided by an ecological perspective on teacher agency, the study investigates (1) how pre-service teachers conceptualize their professional roles, (2) the strategies they employ to respond to poverty-related constraints, (3) how teacher education programs shape social responsiveness and agency, and (4) the structural barriers and enabling opportunities that condition advocacy and community leadership. Drawing on qualitative data from student interns and cooperating teachers, the analysis reveals that pre-service teachers enact a form of bounded civic professionalism, wherein teaching integrates instruction, care, relational bridging, and micro-advocacy under conditions of scarcity. Their agency is shown to be ecologically achieved through immersion, ethical judgment, and contextual adaptation, rather than exercised as individual autonomy. While pre-service teachers deploy a repertoire of equity-oriented practices such as pedagogical differentiation, material support, attendance inquiry, psychosocial care, community engagement, and hope-building, their leadership remains constrained by structural poverty, geographic isolation, family labor demands, and preparation gaps. The findings highlight both the promise and fragility of poverty-responsive teaching and underscore the need for institutional scaffolding across teacher education, partner schools, and education systems. The study contributes to scholarship on teacher agency and equity by reframing pre-service teachers not as heroic compensators of poverty, but as emerging civic professionals whose effectiveness depends on ecologically aligned supports.
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,180
OpenAlex ID: W7166325912