[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…