This study conducted literature review to investigate the challenges and implications of teacher
agency(hereafter, TA) for the existing literature on professional learning community(hereafter, PLC).
The study identified three characteristics and constraints of the PLC literature. They were 1) a lack
of longitudinal perspective; 2) an emphasis on teachers’ capacity independent of their contexts; 3) a
mainstream discourse on the collaborative ‘culture’ as a panacea for PLC. Accordingly, this study
examined TA (Priestly, Biesta & Robinson, 2015) as a conceptual model to compensate for the
limitations of PLC. Based on the concept of agency as ‘situated achievement’, it is argued that
achievement of agency is the outcomes of interplay between teachers’ capacity and its conditions in
the temporal process of the past, the present and the future. This way of conceptualization in TA
has three benefits for PLC. Firstly, TA can offer a longitudinal view for the studies on PLC.
Secondly, it provides a balanced perspective between contexts and teachers’ capacity. Thirdly, through
the analytical separation between culture and structure, TA has a stronger explanatory power in
explaining the teachers’ professional conditions in which they are positioned. Drawing on these
findings, this study concluded with the implications of TA for PLC in terms of theory, research and
practice.