[Webinar] Language Teacher Agency: What is it, Why it matters and how it works?

This talk is based on a joint publication with the related title at Cambridge Elements Series (with Dr. Jian Tao). In the talk, I present the notion of language teacher agency as a key construct for us to understand language teachers’ professional practice and development. I will answer the ‘what’ question, offering major conceptualisations of agency and explaining how they shape the way that language teacher agency can be approached. Then I continue with the ‘why’ question and elaborate on the different reasons that language teacher agency matters at multiple levels of a given context. I also discuss how it intersects with such concepts as teacher identity, emotion, belief and knowledge. I conclude the talk with suggestions on how to promote teacher agency through making changes to contexts and/or actors.

Xuesong (Andy) Gao is a language teacher educator at the School of Education, University of New South Wales, Australia. He has been involved in language teacher education in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan. His research interests include language learner autonomy, language education policy, and language teacher education. He is a co-editor of System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics (Elsevier), International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (De Gruyter), and Senior Associate Editor of The Asia Pacific Education Researcher (Springer). He also coedits the English Language Education book series for Springer.