Uncovering prospective teachers’ sense of moral agency within a multi-layered framework: an integrative grounded theory approach

ABSTRACTUsing an integrative grounded theory design, this study investigated prospective teachers’ moral perceptions, emotions, behavioral intentions, and reasons for their moral behavioral intentions concerning their future teaching to uncover whether prospective teachers’ sense of moral agency would be explained within a multi-layered framework. The data were collected through semi-structured focus-group interviews with 40 conveniently sampled prospective teachers. The results revealed that prospective teachers’ sense of moral agency encompassed perceptual (i.e. moral perceptions, emotions, behavioral intentions, and reasons for moral behavioral intentions), regulatory (i.e. prescriptive and proscriptive moral regulation systems), and contextual layers (i.e. personal, interpersonal, and social contexts). Theoretical and practical implications were also discussed in the study.KEYWORDS: Moral agencymoral emotionbehavioral intentionmoral perceptionmoral regulation Disclosure statementThe authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could be perceived as influencing the work reported in this paper.Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2023.2261578Notes1 The data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.