Teacher Identity Formation and Bounded Agency in Marginalized Philippine Educational Contexts

Teacher agency is often discussed as an ecological and relational accomplishment, yet less is known about how it is formed and enacted in marginalized educational contexts and across the developmental transition from internship to early-career teaching. This study examined teacher identity formation and teacher agency in marginalized Philippine contexts. Using a qualitative design, the study drew on key informant interviews with pre-service teacher interns, novice teachers, cooperating teachers, and school administrators. Findings show that teacher identity in marginalized contexts develops from aspirational and service-oriented conceptions among interns toward broader, burdened, and responsibility-laden enactments among novice teachers. Teacher identity is shaped by moral positioning, negotiated belonging, and fragile resilience under conditions of hardship. The study further shows that teacher preparation and early-career practice are structured by interlocking material, geographic, cultural-linguistic, learner-related, and institutional constraints, including a strong preparation–reality mismatch. Within these conditions, teacher agency emerges as bounded and context-responsive action expressed through adaptive, relational, advocacy-oriented, resource-mobilizing, and strategically negotiated practices. The study advances an Ecological–Developmental Recursive Model of Bounded Teacher Agency, arguing that marginalization is not merely a setting in which teachers act but a constitutive ecology that shapes identity formation, structures professional interpretation, and delimits the forms, scale, and cost of agency. The study contributes to theory by linking teacher identity, constraint, and agency within a single recursive account and contributes to practice by highlighting the need for context-responsive teacher education, stronger practicum mentoring, and targeted induction support for teachers in marginalized settings.