Self-directed learning as a resource for beginner teacher agency in South African schools

Background: Beginner teachers enter classrooms where learner behaviour, inclusive education, parent involvement and resource limitations can challenge their readiness and ability to take purposeful action. Aim: The study explored how beginner teachers used self-directed learning (SDL) to exercise professional agency in the shift from formal teacher preparation to classroom practice and how school contexts facilitated or hindered this process. Setting: The study was conducted with beginner teachers in selected public schools in one education district in the North West province in South Africa, of which 94.1% were employed in township or rural schools. Methods: An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was used. Sixty-eight teachers completed the SDL Instrument and an adapted first-year teaching preparedness and professional development questionnaire. Quantitative patterns informed semi-structured interviews with 15 volunteers from the survey sample. Results: Participants reported high SDL scores across four dimensions. Preparedness was comparatively lower for discipline, behavioural and physical support needs, parent engagement and work–life balance than for content teaching and assessment. Interviews showed agency through goal-setting, reflection, digital resource use and collegial consultation, while overcrowding, inaccessible infrastructure and uneven support restricted what teachers could enact. Conclusion: Self-directed learning was one professional learning resource through which beginner teachers enacted agency; it was not equivalent to agency and could not substitute for induction, mentoring or equitable resourcing. Contribution: The article distinguishes SDL from teacher agency and proposes an empirically grounded ecological framework that links diagnosis, goal-setting, resource mobilisation, action, monitoring and reflection to enabling institutional conditions.