Scoping review finds stronger evidence for democratic teacher practice than sustained institutional reform

A 2026 scoping review found that research on democratic teacher education provides comparatively direct evidence about teachers’ professional agency and classroom practice, but much less evidence that teacher education produces sustained institutional transformation. Across 34 eligible studies, 13 focused on teacher-level findings, 10 on classroom practice and 11 on institutional conditions. The imbalance was therefore not the number of studies at each level, but the directness and methodological basis of their findings.

The review, published in Discover Education, examined peer-reviewed articles published from 2020 through 2025 that explicitly addressed education for democracy in initial teacher training, teacher preparation or professional development. Searches were conducted independently in Scopus, Web of Science and ERIC. The researchers followed the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews, and their protocol was registered with the Open Science Framework. Of 92 records identified, 34 met the inclusion criteria. Three reviewers screened the records, and disagreements were resolved by consensus.

Studies were assigned to three theory-derived analytical levels: teacher, classroom and institution. Teacher-level studies addressed beliefs, competence, professional identity and reflective agency. Classroom-level studies concerned instructional practice, curriculum, deliberation and student participation, while institutional-level studies addressed governance, leadership, organizational culture, policy and structural decision-making. When a study covered more than one level, researchers selected the level meeting at least two of three criteria: it was the stated target of the study, most findings addressed it, or the discussion interpreted its implications for it.

Two reviewers independently and blindly coded all 34 studies, with a third adjudicating disagreements. Agreement was almost perfect for the primary analytical level, with a Cohen kappa of 0.96 and observed agreement of 97 per cent. Evidence type also had substantial agreement, with a kappa of 0.89 and 94 per cent observed agreement. Agreement was lower for subtopics, at a kappa of 0.74, and for the parent thematic axis, at a kappa of 0.48. A methodological-strength rating was piloted but excluded because agreement was low, with a kappa of 0.13.

Teacher- and classroom-level findings were predominantly qualitative and consistently described professional agency, democratic competence, participatory pedagogy, deliberation and student engagement. Teacher studies reported outcomes including critical agency, civic argumentation, professional positioning in civic debate and the appropriation of democratic and global citizenship values. Classroom studies examined participatory curriculum design, ideological openness, democratic classroom spaces and structured approaches to teaching democracy. These findings document recurring patterns in professional understanding and instructional practice, but the predominance of qualitative and context-specific designs limits conclusions about durability and transferability.

Institutional evidence was less direct despite numbering 11 studies. Most of these studies diagnosed leadership arrangements, governance culture, political constraints and organizational barriers, or examined contextual and cross-sectional associations. They did not trace sustained governance or policy reform resulting from a teacher-education intervention. The authors therefore found that institutional studies could identify conditions associated with democratization, but could not establish a causal sequence from teacher education to lasting organizational change. Overall, 22 of the 34 studies rested on direct empirical evidence, eight on contextual evidence and four on conceptual argument.

The corpus was dominated by qualitative research, which accounted for 21 studies, or 61.8 per cent. Mixed-methods and review-based work each represented 11.8 per cent, theoretical contributions 8.8 per cent and quantitative studies 5.9 per cent. The scarcity of longitudinal and experimental designs was a principal reason the authors described the synthesis as associative rather than causal. The studies were also geographically concentrated in Nordic and Western European settings, particularly Finland, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands, although the corpus also included Israel, Australia, the United States, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, South Africa and Zimbabwe. This concentration limits generalizability to other political and institutional settings.

Based on the mapped evidence, the authors proposed a multilevel mediation framework as a conceptual synthesis. In this model, the translation of professional agency and classroom practice into institutional change is conditional on alignment with leadership, governance, organizational culture and political context. The framework is intended to explain how democratic practices may remain concentrated in individual classrooms rather than becoming embedded in institutional decision-making. It is not an empirically demonstrated causal mechanism, and the review states that it requires testing through longitudinal, comparative and multilevel research with explicit measures of institutional participation and organizational change.

Several limitations qualify the findings. The search covered three databases and only English- and Spanish-language publications, potentially omitting relevant work indexed elsewhere, published in other languages or circulating as grey literature. The review mapped the literature but did not estimate effect sizes or formally appraise methodological quality. Its deliberate inclusion of empirical, theoretical, conceptual and review-based studies also created substantial heterogeneity, requiring the authors to distinguish direct empirical findings from contextual evidence and conceptual arguments. The review’s broader policy implication is normative rather than a demonstrated effect: investment in teacher preparation alone may be insufficient where governance, leadership and organizational culture do not support democratic participation.

Subject of Research: A scoping review of evidence linking democratic teacher education to classroom practice and institutional transformation

Article Title: A scoping review of democratic teacher education finds stronger evidence for classroom practice than for institutional transformation

Article References: Naranjo Navas, A. D., Mendoza Cahuana, M. A., Navas Labanda, A. C., & Naranjo Navas, B. J. (2026). A scoping review of democratic teacher education finds stronger evidence for classroom practice than for institutional transformation. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 887. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02099-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02099-0

Keywords: democratic teacher education, teacher agency, classroom practice, institutional transformation, participatory pedagogy, school governance, scoping review, evidence synthesis, scoping, review, democratic, teacher