Supporting epistemic justice through institutional student agency: district leaders’ conceptions of shared power
type: CreativeWork
description: This study explored the possibility that supporting institutional student agency beyond the classroom setting can lead to authentic power sharing and build more equitable systems, particularly for historically marginalized students in K-12 public education. This study sought to understand the potential for and barriers to enacting district-level policy and practice aimed at supporting epistemic justice through building institutional student agency. The notion of supporting epistemic justice through institutional student agency bridges educational equity and definitions of agency because it calls for a systemic approach to ensure people who are excluded from power have agency over decisions that impact them the most (Fricker, 2007, 2013; Radoilska, 2020). This qualitative study used a conceptual framework of institutional student agency that operationalizes necessary conditions for sustained epistemic justice through policy and practice to analyze the role of district leadership in creating and implementing policy in public secondary schools. To address the final research question, it applied the tenets of Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) to the policies discussed by participants. Analysis revealed district leaders had a strong conceptual understanding of institutional student agency and a sense of critical responsibility to implement but most examples of existing practices and no policy examples met the full definition of institutional student agency. The findings indicate the conceptual framework offers a powerful lens for identifying policy language and implementation practices to strengthen existing practices into institutional student agency.
abstract: This study explored the possibility that supporting institutional student agency beyond the classroom setting can lead to authentic power sharing and build more equitable systems, particularly for historically marginalized students in K-12 public education. This study sought to understand the potential for and barriers to enacting district-level policy and practice aimed at supporting epistemic justice through building institutional student agency. The notion of supporting epistemic justice through institutional student agency bridges educational equity and definitions of agency because it calls for a systemic approach to ensure people who are excluded from power have agency over decisions that impact them the most (Fricker, 2007, 2013; Radoilska, 2020). This qualitative study used a conceptual framework of institutional student agency that operationalizes necessary conditions for sustained epistemic justice through policy and practice to analyze the role of district leadership in creating and implementing policy in public secondary schools. To address the final research question, it applied the tenets of Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) to the policies discussed by participants. Analysis revealed district leaders had a strong conceptual understanding of institutional student agency and a sense of critical responsibility to implement but most examples of existing practices and no policy examples met the full definition of institutional student agency. The findings indicate the conceptual framework offers a powerful lens for identifying policy language and implementation practices to strengthen existing practices into institutional student agency.
author: Hougard, Megan
language: en
keywords: Epistemic justice, student agency
date published: 2025-12
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:07Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132530