Teacher Agency and Policy Response in English Language Teaching

1. Introduction

2. English language teaching in China: teacher agency in response to curricular innovations
[Sarina Chugani Molina]

3. Acceptance and adaption: teacher agency during the introduction of English activities in Japanese elementary schools 
[Justin Harris]

4. Monolingual education in policy discourse and classroom practice: a look into Japanese junior high school EFL classrooms
[Jeremie Bouchard ]

5. Teacher agency, the native/nonnative dichotomy, and “English Classes in English” in Japanese high Schools
[Gregory Paul Glasgow]

6. Teacher-designed high stakes English language testing: washback and impact
[Daniel Xerri and Patricia Vella Briffa]

7. ESOL teacher advocacy: a response to teacher education standards
[Heather A. Linville]

8. Teacher agency and policy response in the Australian adult ESL literacy classroom: a multi-site case study
[Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns ]

9. Incorporating academic skills into EFL curriculum: teacher agency in response to global mobility challenge
[Ekaterina Talalakina and Denis Stukal ]

10. Navigating Change: Kazakhstani English language teachers’ response to multi-scalar education reforms
[Sara Osman and Elise S. Ahn]

11. A call for English teachers in Morocco to practice agency through action research
[Manar Dahbi]

12. Sociocultural factors affecting teacher agency in English-medium instruction in Japan
[Patrick Ng Chin Leong]

13. Introducing curricular change in ESL composition: an action research perspective
[Brian Rugen]

14. A primary school English teacher’s response to language policy: teacher agency and autonomy in rural Vietnam
[Ha Hoang and Le Bach Truong]

Biography

Patrick C. L. Ng holds an EdD in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (University of Leicester, UK) and is currently a professor at the University of Niigata Prefecture in Japan. His research focuses on language planning and policy, sociolinguistics, language education, bilingualism, multilingualism, English as a lingua franca and Chinese language studies.

Esther F. Boucher-Yip is an assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA. She holds an EdD in Applied Linguistics and TESOL from University of Leicester, UK. She is the author of the book Language Maintenance and Shift Among the Semai in Malaysia: A Study of Indigenous Language Use and the co-editor of Local Contextual Influences on Teaching: Narrative Insights from ESL and EFL Professionals.  

Teacher agency in TESOL – should we be pessimistic or optimistic? This book provides much needed data and analysis across a diverse range of international sites. Now we can begin to answer the question based on more than just pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. -- Graham Crookes, University of Hawai’i

 

Many new policies for the teaching of English give the distinct impression of being introduced, not so much because they are based on sound research and evidence of their success, but because of ‘common-sense’ assumptions about how languages are learned and how they should be taught. Into this equation, in recent decades, has entered a kind of universal anxiety on the part of educational policy makers that without English, their nations will be left behind politically, economically and socially. ... Readers of this volume will find in these pages an intriguing compilation of classroom scenarios, instructional contingencies, and policy responses, at the heart of which is the agency of the language teacher. In response to the currently limited scope of research on micro-level language education policy, the editors have found a niche that is richly filled by the accounts that follow. -- Anne Burns, Foreword