The rhetoric and the reality: Exploring the dynamics of professional agency in the identity commitment of a Chinese female teacher

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lcsi

Full length article

The rhetoric and the reality: Exploring the dynamics of professional agency in the identity commitment of a Chinese female teacher

T

Xiaolei Ruana, , Xinmin Zhengb ⁎

a b

School of Foreign Studies, Anhui University, No.111, Jiulong Rd. Hefei, Anhui Province 230601, China Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Keywords: Professional agency Agency beliefs Agency competence Agency inclination Female teacher identity

This article reports an inquiry into the career development of a Chinese female teacher that assessed her professional agency to realize her female teacher identity and sustainable professional development. An analysis of the data collected from a timeline, metaphor, interviews, field observation, and netnographic observation reveals that the participant proactively enacted her agency in different professional tasks through the dynamic interplay of her agency beliefs, agency competence, and agency inclination. The participant negotiated to exercise her agency when role conflicts emerged due to her professional identity and gender identity, resorted to her own selfregulative and self-reflective strategies, and sought external support to deal with problematic situations. The findings of this case study may contribute to professional development not only as a model of personal reflection but also as a professional call to action.

1. Introduction Professional agency is needed to develop the work of teachers at and beyond the classroom level for professional learning and for renegotiating their professional identities in various educational practices (Eteläpelto, Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, & Paloniemi, 2013). The enactment of teacher agency is a dynamic process of how teachers establish positive conceptions of a specific situation and how they implement concrete actions to actualize their beliefs through a series of meaning-making efforts (Toom, Pyhältö, & Rust, 2015). However, examining relevant studies shows that much is known about teachers' articulated agency, i.e., how they narrate and enact their agency in their discourses; yet, studies on how teachers behave as agents in various professional tasks appear to be largely missing (van der Heijden, Geldens, Beijaard, & Popeijus, 2015). To this end, exploring both teachers' articulated agentic beliefs and their corresponding agentic actions becomes a necessity. Schools have widely been described as ‘feminized’ environments (Moreau, Osgood, & Halsall, 2007), where researchers are interested in investigating the relationship between female teachers' professional and family lives, and it was found that the rates of role conflicts were higher in women than in men (Cinamon & Rich, 2005; Greenglass, Pantony, & Burke, 1988). However, how teacher agency intermingles with professional tasks and how it is related to female teachers' identity commitment in work-life balance remain vague. In this qualitative case study, we attempt to achieve a nuanced understanding of how a female teacher in China exercises her professional agency to enhance her career development and how her agency negotiates with contextual influences to realize her identity commitment as a female teacher to foreground the phenomena of how female teachers as agents positively analyse challenging professional tasks, how they are actively engaged in the efforts to make decisions and exert controls on their professional

⁎

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (X. Ruan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.04.008 Received 8 May 2018; Received in revised form 17 April 2019; Accepted 22 April 2019 Available online 01 May 2019 2210-6561/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

routes, and how their professional agency interacts with their identity commitment, especially when there are role conflicts between work and life. 2. Theoretical framework 2.1. Defining human agency Human agency is extensively theorized by researchers from different perspectives, from which three tendencies of interpretations have been defined: agency as “being” (innate attributes or capacities, e.g., Bandura, 2001); agency as “doing” (a dynamic process of how agents act purposefully and reflectively, e.g., Eteläpelto et al., 2013); and agency as both “willingness” and “competences” (the combination of discourses and practice, e.g., Pyhältö, Pietarinen, & Soini, 2012). Meanwhile, Goller and Harteis (2017) built a comprehensive framework to illustrate the dimensions of agency, i.e., agency beliefs, agency competence, and agency personality: 1) Agency beliefs refer to an individual's subjective perception about whether she or he has the ability to exercise agency; 2) agency competence deals with the meaning-making efforts to take control over individuals' lives or the environment(s) through a series of actions, including goal-setting, creating feasible plans, implementing action strategies, and reflecting on behaviours; and 3) agency personality is defined as the stabilized and relatively context-independent initiatives as an antecedent of a variety of different agentic actions. Altogether, the above-mentioned three facets are claimed to explain why some people are more proactive than others in taking initiatives and making choices in their life course. 2.2. Theorizing teacher agency Teacher agency (used interchangeably with teachers' professional agency) is believed to be critical in sustaining teachers' professional development (Tao & Gao, 2017). Teachers as agents are found to have the intentions and skills to implement professional tasks (Pyhältö, Pietarinen, & Soini, 2015), to enhance the ability for life-long learning, and to actualize innovation in educational changes (Buchanan, 2015; Lasky, 2005). Further, researchers have emphasized that teacher agency is closely intertwined with teacher “self-realization” (Ketelaar, Beijaard, Boshuizen, & Den Brok, 2012); that is, teacher agency is seen to be the pivotal element to realize teacher identity in their career trajectories. As Johnson and Freeman (2001) state, the teaching context, such as schools and classrooms, is the sociocultural terrain in which the work of teaching is conceptualized, implemented, and evaluated. To construct and reconstruct teacher identity, teacher agency is understood to be an on-going and social process, where teachers enact agency through making choices about what to engage in and throughout taking action with different degrees of engagement to shape their own professional trajectory (Billett, 2006). Hence, teachers' professional agency is not a fixed disposition of an individual; rather, it is situationally constructed in relation to the current context and past personal experiences, as well as future orientations (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Given its dynamic nature as well as its necessary relationship to the environment, we propose a more open-ended construct—agency inclination (following agency beliefs and agency practices)—as the third indispensable component of teacher agency, which is operationalized as teachers' agentic attitudes and emotions. Researchers have proved that the effects of emotions and attitudes on teacher agency, for instance, positive emotions, such as joy, satisfaction, and self confidence, can serve as motivations for teachers' exercise of agency, yet negative emotions can also become constructive actions by activating professional agency in terms of influencing one's work (Vähäsantanen & Eteläpelto, 2011). Therefore, teachers' agency beliefs serve as the primary intention to make choices and exert control; teachers' agency competence is the efforts made to bridge the gap between the rhetoric and the reality; and teachers' agency inclination is the meaningful mediating force between their agentic beliefs and practices. 2.3. Gender identity, work-life balance, and female teacher agency Gender is a much discussed topic in contemporary society and consists of the meanings ascribed to male and female social categories within a culture (de Beauvoir, 1993). When people incorporate these cultural meanings into their own psyches, gender becomes part of their identity. Through these gender identities, individuals understand themselves in relation to the culturally feminine and masculine meanings attached to men and women and may think and act according to these gendered aspects of their selves (Rasmussen, 2009). According to the post-structuralist assumption, gendered identity is something individuals do or actively perform rather than some qualities they have (Davies, 1997). Perfomativity is a significant construct emphasizing that identity is enacted rather than prefiguring it, and it was stated by Archer (2000) that being human is to exercise one's agency, realize one's identity, and create conditions for the emergence of the self in its necessary relations with the environment. Work-life balance is conceptualized as “satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a minimum of role conflict” and is affected by various factors, for instance, job satisfaction, work performance, motivation, commitment, and turnover (Guest, 2002; Higgins, Duxbury, & Lyons, 2008). According to gender role expectations, women are responsible for the majority of childcare and household tasks (Greenberger & Goldberg, 1989); therefore, they are more inclined to experience role conflicts and to exercise their agency through “perfomativity”. Therefore, in our study, we believe that female teachers enact their agency to deal with worklife balance and construct their multiple identities (professional identity and gender identity) through active positioning and dynamic interactions with the environment. 349

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

2.4. The present study With the aim of exploring how female teachers exercise their professional agency to construct and reconstruct their identity, the following two research questions are asked in the current study: 1) In what ways does the participant enact her professional agency for identity commitment? 2) How does the participant's professional agency negotiate with the contextual influences? Based on the previous illustrations, an analytical framework is utilized here to guide the data collection and analysis. First, we intend to analyse the participant teacher's professional agency from three core aspects—classroom instruction, academic research, and learning activities. Although there are studies specifically focusing on each single aspect, for instance, teachers' pedagogic agency (Soini, Pietarinen, & Pyhältö, 2016), teachers as researchers' agency (Hökkä, Eteläpelto, & Rasku-Puttonen, 2012), and teachers as learners agency (Lai, Li, & Gong, 2016), in our study, we include them as subcategories of teacher agency because teachers' professional tasks are multifaceted and multi-dimensional. Second, we believe that the participant's professional agency is manifested in her proactive beliefs about teaching, research, and learning; in the competence where knowledge and ability work to actively make plans, take concrete actions, and reflect regularly; and in her agency inclination that mediates between agentic beliefs and practices. Third, we assume that the enactment of teacher agency is a dynamic process of self-actualization and identity commitment. The enactment of agency is influenced by a multitude of factors at personal, interpersonal, and sociocultural levels, and in turn, teachers act as agents attempt to exert control and bring about changes (Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015) in response to the environment. 3. Method To address the dynamics of teacher agency and identity commitment, we adopt a qualitative case study realized by different sources of data collection methods that entails “thick-description” of the phenomenon. 3.1. Research setting This study took place in P. R. China, where English language learning and teaching have prevailed for a long time, especially after the promulgation of the “Open-door Policy” in 1978, which intended to connect the country with the outside world economically, politically, and culturally. Students are required by the MoE (Ministry of Education) to learn English as a compulsory subject from primary school to university education. EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers are supposed to be agents of change to ensure the quality of language teaching in an ever-changing pedagogical landscape (Wang, 2017). According to the statistics, there are far more female EFL teachers than males at the university level (Wen & Zhang, 2017). Although the majority of tertiary EFL teachers are female, the proportions of those holding senior professional titles (e.g., associate professors and full professors) are inconsistent with the large cohort of female EFL teachers (Jiang, 2011). Therefore, studies on female EFL teachers' professional development in China have become a practical concern. 3.2. Participant We adopted purposive sampling (Patton, 2002) and convenience sampling (Creswell, 2013) to identify our research participant. There are several criteria for participant selection: first, the participant should be a female teacher with at least five years of teaching experience, who is considered to have relatively more mature and stabilized understanding about the teaching profession (Huberman, 1989); second, the participant should be married and preferably with a child (children), in which case it would be possible to explore the interaction of their professional agency and gender identity; and third, there should be key events provided by the participant regarding teaching, research, and learning. Further, to ensure the accessibility of female teachers and efficiency of data collection, we decided to identify female teachers from universities located in the city of Shanghai, where the researchers study, work, and live. To achieve this, we first designed a narrative questionnaire (Barkhuizen & Wette, 2008) that covers female teachers' general viewpoints about career development, key events in professional history, and their intentional efforts to maintain a work-life balance (see the Appendix). The questionnaire was administered online to several university female teachers in Shanghai, and nine teachers responded to it. We finally solicited Zhou (pseudonym) as our participant for further interviews and classroom observations based on the following considerations: 1) Zhou demonstrated her proactive intention to reach new heights in her career development and described vividly major events in her work and life in the narrative questionnaire; 2) Zhou was found to be in a dilemma or sometimes even felt confused as to how to tackle with her dual commitments with family and work as an early-career university teacher; and 3) both willingness and accessibility were provided generously by Zhou for the follow-up data collection period. We believe that one suitable participant in a qualitative study is enough to generate insightful findings, as is claimed by Creswell (2013, p. 33), who states that a single individual or a small number of individuals in a case study provides “ample opportunities to identify themes”. Table 1 illustrates the biographical vignette of Zhou. 350

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

Table 1 Zhou's biographical vignette. Pseudonym

Biographical vignette

Zhou

• Zhou entered the teaching profession six years ago, and she is now an associate professor at a key university in Shanghai (henceforth, MU). • She was born into a family of intellectuals in the 1980s. She received her Bachelor's degree from a top university in China and received her Master's and doctoral education in the UK. After she earned her PhD, she had a one-year working experience in a British higher education bureau and then took a teaching position at her alma mater in China. • As an early-career teacher, she often found herself with role conflicts between her high professional aspirations, the teaching and teacher development conditions, and her commitment as a mother and wife at home. • Although there are conflicts and confrontations, she could often work her own way to deal with existing problems both in and out of classroom teaching for her career development.

3.3. Data collection To address the two research questions proposed, we applied a variety of data collection methods to trace Zhou's career paths, her professional agency enacted to sustain her career development, and the role of agency in her identity commitment as a female teacher. To be specific, we adopted timeline, metaphor, interviews, observation, and netnography to realize different research purposes during our data collection period from June 2017 to June 2018 (Table 2). Timelines, or living graphs, are used as a creative research method adapted from a strategy previously used in teaching history (Griffiths, Thompson, & Hryniewicz, 2014). In our study, we invited Zhou to draw a timeline that covered the major events in her career development. These important turning points and biographical events were presented from Zhou's own perspective. A graph was drawn to use her learning and professional histories as the horizontal axis and the accumulation of her personal experiences as the vertical axis. Zhou was asked to map her personal biography and professional development from different categories of professional tasks; namely, teaching, research, and teacher learning. The timeline graph was then used as the reference for the follow-up interviews and the overall data analysis. Metaphor is an artifice, a tool, for opening up possible conceptual territories for exploration, their connections, and dynamics in constructing knowledge (Yob, 2003, pp. 133–134). Seferoğlu, Korkmazgil, and Ölçü Dinçer (2009) claim that metaphors are “windows” through which humans' understanding about the reality in which they live and work may be viewed. To enhance our understanding of Zhou's perception of her roles and identities, we asked her to use a metaphor (captured in digital format) that best describes her as a female EFL teacher. Additionally, she was required to title the metaphorical image and produce short written abstracts for it. In doing so, we obtained a clear picture of who Zhou was and how in particular she perceived herself as a female teacher. Interview was selected as one of the major methods for data collection in this research in that it has the potential to elicit rich, thick and in-depth descriptions, and it can give researcher(s) an opportunity to clarify, verify, and exemplify statements and probe for

Table 2 Overview of the data collection period. Data source

Time span

Description

Data type

Timeline Metaphor Interviews

June 2017 June 2017 1st round; Sept. 2017–Oct. 2017 2nd round; Nov. 2017–Dec. 2017 3rd round; Jan. 2018–June. 2018 Classroom observation; 3 times, 6 teaching periods

Key events in career development Conceptions of female teacher identity Narration of personal history, agency beliefs and inclination about teaching, research, and learning Follow-up observations to confirm the discrepancies between beliefs and practices Negotiation of agency by contextual factors

Other activities observation; workshops, academic conferences and other activities Zhou attended

Agency competence in research and learning

June. 2017–June. 2018

Zhou's posts on social media; Chat group of Zhou and her students

Visual Visual Audio (approximately 2 h) Audio (approximately 4 h) Audio (approximately 3 h) Audio (approximately 4.5 h); Textual (field notes, approximately 20 pages) Audio (approximately 2.5 h); Textual (field notes, approximately 8 pages) Visual (17 screen-shots); Textual (field notes, approximately 3 pages)

Observation

Netnography

Agency competence in teaching

351

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

additional information (Kvale, 2007). There were three rounds of interviews (in Chinese) between the first author and Zhou. The first round interview was conducted to become familiarized with Zhou's personal biography based on the timeline provided (e.g., Can you describe your overseas study briefly? Does it influence your beliefs in teaching or research?); with her agentic beliefs about teaching, research, and teacher learning (e.g., How do you think of teaching English language at the tertiary level?); and with her perception of herself as a female teacher based on the metaphor provided (e.g., Why do you use this metaphor to refer to your own female teacher identity? Are there any concrete examples?). The second round interviews were conducted after each observation to investigate the possible gaps between her articulated beliefs and observed behaviours (You mentioned that you believe in a student-centred class; why then in your class did your explanations and illustrations of language points take a considerable amount of time?). The third round interview dealt with Zhou's negotiation of teacher agency to realize her female teacher identity in the sociocultural context (e.g., When your husband does not want you to do “extra work”, how do you deal with it?). Each interview lasted for about an hour and all of them were recorded with the permission of the participant. The distinctive feature of observation as a research process is that it offers an investigator the opportunity to gather ‘live’ data from naturally occurring social situations (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2013). In this study, observation was applied to identify how Zhou behaves in different professional tasks. For example, the first author of this study was allowed access to Zhou's classroom teaching, an academic conference she attended and a workshop she took part in during the one-year data collection process. The first author audio-recorded these activities instead of videotaping so as not to interfere the naturalistic development of these events. To flesh out these data, the first author kept detailed field notes about the environment, contents, major activities, and above all, Zhou's behaviour during the classroom teaching, academic conference, or learning program. Apart from the above-mentioned approaches, we also adopted netnographic methods (Kozinets, 2010) to analyse Zhou. For example, both the researchers and Zhou are subscribers to WeChat (a social media application in China), which served as the main mode of communication for setting up interview and observation dates. With her permission, we collected and analysed her WeChat posts to gain a more detailed understanding of her agency and identity commitment. Additionally, the first author was allowed access to the online chat group between Zhou and her students, from which their interactions could be observed. 3.4. Data analysis The first step of the data analysis is to transform different types of data to textual form. For the timeline diagram, we wrote down the time and events in Zhou's learning and professional history under the category of teaching, research and learning; for the metaphor, we solicited Zhou's description; for the interview, the first author transcribed it verbatim; for class observation, we selected 11 critical incidents (Tripp, 1993) which could reflect Zhou's intentional efforts based on the stimulated recall interview after each class, and then we transcribed them word for word; for other field observation, we used non-verbatim transcription to write down the major information for each event; and for netnography, we transformed the selected screen-shots into textual forms for later analysis. Excerpts of the different data sources were tagged in the format of “data-time (if there are many rounds of collection)” (e.g., Timl, Metp, Int1; Obv 2; Netno 3). After different texts entered the data set, a thematic analysis was applied for cording, sorting, synthesizing, and theorizing the data (Saldaña, 2009). Manual coding and computer assisted coding with the software “MAXQDA” (version Analytics Pro 2018) were conducted separately by the first author, and when inconsistencies were spotted, the first author consulted the second author until agreement was achieved. The process produced 37 open codes (e.g., student-centred teaching, adjustment, research direction,

Table 3 Sample of the data analysis protocol. Codes

Categories

Themes

“I assume language teaching should focus on cultivating students' comprehensive skills.” “Yes, research is an inseparable part of our career development.” “A teacher should never end his or her pursuit of learning.” Zhou was observed to deal with a previously identified pedagogical problem Zhou attempted to seek more opportunities with regard to writing for publications Zhou was observed to study in the university library during a holiday

Agency belief in teaching

Agency beliefs

Agency belief in research Agency belief in teacher learning Agency competence in teaching

Agency competence

“I told myself I could do it. I only need to be patient with my students” “It is really humiliating to me that I have failed to publish even one article in Chinese” “I need to find some time to learn. If I cannot regulate my own behaviour, who will help me?” “Since my middle school days, I can say that I am very independent” “He (my supervisor) influenced me in every aspect” “Society expects you to be a family-oriented wife instead of being agentic”

Theory

Agency competence in research Agency competence in teacher learning Agency inclination in teaching Agency inclination in research Agency inclination in teacher learning Micro factors Mezzo factors Macro factors

352

Research question 1 Agency inclination

Negotiation with the context

Research question 2

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

learning attitudes, self-regulation, reflective strategies, supervisor, department leader, man-chauvinism), which were subsumed under 6 broader themes (agency beliefs, agency competence, agency inclination, significant others, institution, society). We had a protocol to help us determine which category a certain code should be put into based on previous literature review and its connection with our study (Table 3). 3.5. Trustworthiness and ethical considerations Efforts were made to ensure the trustworthiness of the study. First, various data collection methods were applied to triangulate the data (Lincoln & Guba, 2000); second, although the first author was responsible for the majority of data analysis (which is part of her doctoral program), she consulted the second author if inconsistencies (between manual coding and software coding) emerged during the data analysis; and third, the transcription and the results of data analysis were sent back to the participant to ensure the faithfulness of interpretation (Creswell, 2013). Ethical issues were considered throughout our research (Taylor, 2001); for instance, Zhou signed an informant consent letter before the data collection session; pseudonyms were applied to the participant, other people, and institutions in relation when presenting the data; and Zhou's WeChat posts were captured and showcased in the form of a boxed chart with her permission. 4. Findings In this section, we present Zhou's personal history and her perception of being a female teacher based on the timeline, metaphor and her narrations; then, we discuss three episodes from Zhou's teaching, research and learning experiences to explore her enactment of agency in different professional tasks; and last, we paint a dynamic picture of how her agency was situated in her female teacher identity and in particular how she tackled role conflicts in the process of self-realization. 4.1. Zhou's learning and professional history Based on the timeline provided by Zhou and her narrations in the follow-up interview, we created a graph with important stages and events listed in her learning and professional history (Fig. 1). Zhou started to learn English at the age of two because her mother, also an English teacher at the tertiary level, thought early exposure to a foreign language would be of great help. Although these English vocabulary learning experiences in childhood were “fragmented”, as was commented by Zhou (Int 1), they were very helpful to her in forming a habit of learning and establishing confidence in her language aptitude. When Zhou entered middle school, both of her parents worked in other cities because of job transfers. It was during this time that Zhou learned to be independent and self-regulative in her academic study. Her efforts paid off and a key university in China recruited her. She had strong faith that as a foreign language major, it was very important to study

Fig. 1. Timeline of Zhou's learning and professional history.

353

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

Fig. 2. Metaphor indicating Zhou's female teacher identity.

overseas. She fulfilled her ambition and spent six years in the UK to earn her master's and doctoral degrees and then worked as fulltime staff in a British higher education bureau. According to her, these experiences gradually shaped her “way of living, attitudes towards life, visions about foreign language education, and skills and literacies to conduct research” (Int 1). She received a teaching position at MU as a “young and talented haigui (海归,overseas returnee)” (Int 1), yet she did not cease her attempts to fulfil her professional aspirations; for instance, she spent some time getting accustomed to the domestic teaching style and university students' learning needs and trying to improve the teaching efficacies; she positioned herself not only as a teacher but also a researcher, and therefore attempted to identify valuable and researchable topics and actively engaged herself in writing for publication, attending academic conferences and learning in the research community of MU; and she also paid a great deal of attention to improving herself through learning, when she intended to take some time out of her busy schedule for reading and learning. Five years after she began her job at MU she was promoted to an associate professor. However, she did not slow down her pace for selfimprovement because she still has “lots of things to achieve” (Int1). 4.2. Zhou's perception of her female teacher identity After becoming familiarized with her biographical history, we invited Zhou to present a metaphor suggesting her female teacher identity. As is shown in Fig. 2, she believed that “a spinning top” epitomizes her current status of being a female teacher. In her discourse, she articulated the similarities of her state and the spinning top, with emphasis on two attributes—“being busy”, yet sometime “easily getting confused”. I could not stop, even for a single minute. I have to be a qualified teacher, such as preparing for my lessons, engaging myself in teaching activities, conducting research; I have to look after the family, especially my young daughter… Sometimes, being occupied with different activities sends the message that I am active and motivated, and I have a sense of achievement. However, I can easily get confused. I hardly get a chance to pause and think about all this (Int 1). 4.3. Zhou's enactment of professional agency Our data collected suggests that Zhou actively engaged to promote her career development in teaching, research and learning, when her agentic beliefs, competence and inclination were intertwined to push her forward in her professional trajectories. 4.3.1. Episode 1: combining traditions and innovations in teaching As an overseas returnee, Zhou was eager to implement her innovative ideas in her classroom instruction at the inception stage of her career. She attempted to adopt a student-centred teaching mode. However, quite unexpectedly, her novel teaching style was not welcomed by her freshman English major students. I started to teach first year students' English reading class. In the very beginning, my ideal language teaching class was completely student centred, which was similar to the classes I experienced abroad. However, when I attempted to ask them to discuss in groups, they seemed to be very reluctant. The classroom atmosphere was not lively at all (Int 2). Zhou added that she became even more frustrated that one student in her class went to the dean's office to complain that “the teacher seldom explains some knowledge points to us”. After being disappointed for some time, she began to analyse the situation and then considered making changes to her teaching.

354

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

Table 4 Zhou's teaching activities in a unit (Obv 1). Title of the unit: How to speak English in a polite way? Teaching activity

Time

Intention

Comments on students' compositions

10 min

Group work: Student A (as representative) to show their exploration about the topic “politeness in language” Q & A (the rest of the students raising questions and the target Group presenting answers) Text comprehension Teacher's instruction (language points, cultural information): 55 min Interactive activities (text comprehension, sentence-making, role playing): 45 min Exercises analysis Students' debate on “British English and American English, which one do you prefer?” Assigning homework and checking students' essay recitation

20 min

To comment on the categories of students' mistakes and errors in their composition homework Skills for material searching and public speaking

10 min

Competence of questioning and justifying

100 min

Skills for reading and writing in English To improve students' language proficiency and to arouse their awareness of culture, humanity and liberal arts

40 min 25 min

Vocabulary, grammar, translation skills Comprehensive skills: critical thinking, team work, justifying, questioning, public speaking, oral fluency, etc. To help student turn input into output and increase their oral fluency and accuracy of pronunciation through recitation

20 min

I thought about that for several days and talked to a senior teacher in the department. She told me the freshmen need a transitional period to gradually say goodbye to their teacher-centred and exam-oriented English class in secondary school. I realized the first thing is to arouse their interests and motivate them to speak (Int 2). Next, Zhou was determined to achieve an in-between state—to combine her instruction with student interaction. For one thing, she believed it was necessary for English majors to solidify their English proficiency; for another, she thought that students' talents would be activated and crafted during language learning. Based on a five consecutive teaching periods classroom observation and the follow-up interviews, we summarized the teaching activity, the time allocated to the session and Zhou's intentions of doing so. In these classes, students were asked to present their group work both in the beginning (warm-up and topic exploration) and the end of a unit (extended debate work); Zhou was seen to add cultural information in the text analysis session, to which the students were much attracted; the homework for the reading class was found to include composition (4 pieces in a semester, teachers were required by the faculty to correct at least 90% of students' mistakes in their compositions handed in) and essay recitation (students were asked to recite a selected part of an essay and Zhou was found to give guidance to students on how to pronounce certain words correctly) (Table 4). In this way, Zhou attempted to cultivate students' abilities of problem-solving and imbue them with knowledge not only from the textbook but also those related to social phenomenon, liberal arts, humanities, and so on. I think, after several rounds of teaching, we (the students and I) have found a relatively optimized way to interact in our reading class. I can put what I am good at into practice…every time I introduce something about the British life style and education system, they are very interested. After they listened to my illustrations, they became motivated to express their own ideas. However, we never ignore language competence, which is very important for English majors; that's why they are required to write compositions and recite classical works, for example, famous speeches from Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and so on (Int 2). Zhou also expressed that there are no fixed teaching methods, there will always be new problems and challenges emerging, and she is ready to reflect and try new things. 4.3.2. Episode 2: seeking and positioning in research activities Zhou believed that the academic training she had received during her doctoral study was of great significance for her becoming an independent researcher after graduation. She said that there were some teachers who rarely performed any research once they received teaching positions in universities, which according to her, is a waste of resources. In our (evaluation and promotion) system, teachers could not escape from conducting research if they had the intention to be promoted. Many teachers, as well trained as they were (in their previous study), due to various reasons, gradually stopped doing research. I think it is a pity because earning a PhD is just a starting point, not a destination, after all (Int 1). Although Zhou had clearly realized the significance of research, she did encounter some difficulties in positioning herself in a research direction. To remain faithful to the original research direction or to follow recent trends was a question lingering in her mind for a long time.

355

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

I actually joined a research community after I started (the job). During our discussion, the head of the community, an experienced researcher, told me: “Zhou, what you've done in your PhD is out-dated, you'd better find new options”. I was quite discouraged because I spent three years doing the single (doctoral) project, reading a large amount of literature and writing mountainous journals and reviews. If I quit, that would be a pity (Int 2). Zhou had to figure this out. Then, she realized that she had some advantages in research. For instance, her original research focus was applied linguistics; her experiences of learning, living and working in the UK made her competent in the area of British higher education and British culture; her academic literacy in rigorous research methods and article writing; and her sensitivity to identify researchable topics, were advantages that could certainly facilitate her academic work. I call it “walking on two legs”. On the one hand, I attempt to combine my original research with new trends. For example, the popular slogan “Chinese Dream” was used in one of my published articles. Then, I combine “teacher talk” (my previous research) with curriculum reforms in English departments. These are meaningful attempts. Now I realize the essentiality is the same; the only difference is that you interpret it from different angles (Int 2). Zhou was also observed giving a keynote speech at an academic conference, which was about using CiteSpace (software to visualize patterns and trend in scientific literature) to analyse SSCI articles in the realm of “teacher talk”. Being asked the reason for researching this, she attributed this to her doctoral supervisor's encouragement. I often talked with him over Skype. A couple of days ago, I expressed my confusion that I could not find the right direction and I said to him that it was humiliating that I failed to publish any CSSCI (Chinese Social Science Citation Index) articles. Then, he suggested that I pick up “teacher talk” again by reading the recent articles published internationally and performing some analyses to see if there was anything I could do…then, I came up with the idea of learning to use CiteSpace to analyse the target articles (Int 2). Zhou said her short-term plan is to publish in a CSSCI journal. Although she seemed to be more adept at writing in English and MU also recognizes English articles published in international journals in evaluations, she still wished to achieve this as a proof of her academic competence and attitude. 4.3.3. Episode 3: “steal” and squeeze some time for learning As was illustrated in Zhou's metaphor, one of the most prominent features for her career status is “being highly occupied”. The reasons are two-fold: on the one hand, she always had high expectations for herself; on the other hand, her commitment as a wife and mother occupied much of her time that she had intended to invest in her learning. Many friends persuade me that I don't need to push myself so hard, especially because I am already an associate professor. Probably it is because of my habit of learning since childhood. If a teacher failed to find time for improvement, then he or she did not deserve to be called a “teacher” (Int 2). Zhou attempted to improve herself through various ways of learning; for instance, taking part in a workshop to facilitate teachers at MU making micro lessons in the form of clipped videos; being a contestant in the National College English Teaching Contest; reading English novels on the school bus or subway; joining in the discussions of a teacher learning community. These intentional efforts were made to improve her content knowledge (about the English language), pedagogical knowledge (how to implement classroom teaching more efficiently) and technological knowledge (how to utilize technology in instruction). Zhou said there were no shortcuts or secrets as to how she was able to do this other than to “steal” some time from her tight schedule. There is a saying that goes like this: the best way to lengthen our days is to steal some hours from the night. Although I really do not want to improve myself at the cost of my health, sometimes it is only at midnight when my husband and daughter are asleep that I can concentrate on my own business (Int 2). Some of Zhou's WeChat posts reveal that she is a woman of strong self-discipline and perseverance. The boxed chart below (Fig. 3) is the transcription of one of the WeChat posts, narrating her experience of going to the campus library to read and learn despite the intense heat of summer in Shanghai. It is quite evident that Zhou not only had the strong willingness to learn as an EFL teacher, she was also able to realize her intention by her active, persistent and reflective learning activities both in and out of school settings. 4.4. Zhou's agency and female teacher identity According to Zhou, she had to be extraordinarily hardworking to fulfil her commitment as a qualified and competent university teacher, and as a considerate wife and a caring mother at the same time. I don't want to say that men do not have dual identities between work and life. However, in our society, women are supposed to be “equally hardworking both in families and at work”. That's not fair, but true (Int 3).

356

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

Fig. 3. A boxed chart to display one of Zhou's social media posts (Netno 15).

Zhou described that her role conflicts between her work and life come from her husband's prejudices and from the situation when her little daughter needed to be looked after. My husband has a science background. He is well educated and holds a respected job in a research-oriented university. He's so busy with his experiments, and he values what he's doing. He often doubts what I am doing could be called research, anyway. He always claims that he does not see value from my research. That is a typical misunderstanding and discrimination that natural scientists hold about social scientists. What's worse, he did not want me to do any “extra work” beyond my 12 periods of class teaching every week. It is kind of a brainwashing process. After he nagged me so many times, sometimes I even felt guilty when I really did some “EXTRA WORK” (Int 3). As a young mother, I am inexperienced. However, taking good care of Linda (my daughter) is my responsibility that I can never quit. I call being a mother for a kid before he or she goes to a kindergarten a “7×24” hours work, for which you get no salary, but you have to do wholeheartedly (Int 3). Whenever Zhou felt frustrated and depressed with her role conflicts between career pursuits and family commitments, she attempted to conquer this with external supports and her own intentional efforts. I am so fortunate to have female role models in my life. My mother's pursuing a Master's degree and a teaching job at a higherlevel university demonstrates what a positive woman should be like…there are also many excellent females I know, some of whom are my colleagues. For example, the vice dean of our faculty is so hardworking. Although she has administrative affairs to deal with every day, she never gives up her own research. Therefore, every time I doubt myself, I think of these role models, and sometimes, I talk with them, and I receive propelling power and encouragement (Int 3). Actually, as many colleagues of mine said, “In work, we forget our gender”. That is mainly because we are a female-dominated department. Therefore, we do not experience as much bias or prejudice at the institutional level. Our dean is a very considerate leader. Although he is a male, he tries to stand in our (female teachers') shoes to analyse and make decisions (Int 3). After Zhou turned to external supports to deal with role conflicts, she was able to transform it into self-confirmation and then applied concrete strategies to solve her problems, many of which are time-management, self-regulation and reflectivity. Making use of spare time is a good way to solve role conflicts. For example, I read students' compositions on the school bus; I often do something instead of idling away when my daughter takes a nap in the afternoon... Then, self-regulation is another way. I made a to-do-list every day to be goal-oriented; if I did not tick off all the items on it, I would feel uncomfortable. Then, I need to reflect regularly to see if anything could be improved in the future (Int 3). Overall, it is evident that, in common with many other female teachers, Zhou experienced role conflicts between work and life. The situation gets even worse when her strong career ambition clashed with her husband's prejudice and male chauvinism and when her willingness to learn and improve is incongruent with the time she needs to spend with her daughter. It was her seeking for external help and her own internal efforts that served to enact her agency and ease the conflicts. 5. Discussion This brief report has explicated the dynamics of a Chinese female teacher's professional agency as well as the interaction between her agency and female teacher identity commitment. The findings regarding the foci were presented in the previous section and this part discusses the findings synthesized from the data analysis, illuminates how the participant's agentic beliefs, competence, and inclination intermingle to enact her professional agency manifested in her teaching, research, and teacher learning; elaborates the interplay between her agency and role conflicts generated by her female teacher identity; explores the contextual influences contributing to her enactment of agency; and presents a theoretical framework to demonstrate the interactive relationship between female teacher agency, female teacher identity, and the social context. First, our findings suggest that the participant teacher enacted her professional agency in different professional tasks to achieve “self-realization” in professional development (Ketelaar et al., 2012). In Zhou's case, it is apparent that she held positive beliefs about

357

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

language teaching, research, and teacher learning. For instance, she had faith in cultivating her English major students' language competence and comprehensive abilities; she thought that teachers should do research not only for career development but also for valuing the research work they had done in previous learning experiences; and she was convinced of the significance of “life-long learning” and continuous self-improvement. These proactive beliefs actually serve as the internalized power that propels teacher(s) into initiatives and efforts, as suggested by Goller and Harteis (2017) as “an individual's subjective perception about whether she or he has the abilities to exercise agency” (p. 92). Further, Zhou was found to exhibit capacities to transform her positive intentions into actions, including her efforts in combining both traditions and innovations in her reading class, exploring research topics relevant to both her original direction and some newly emerged topics in the academic circle, and making efficient use of her time for learning and self-improvement. The attributes Zhou demonstrated in these activities include goal-setting, self-regulation, reflection, and taskmanagement, which concur with the previous claim as “a process of self-regulation by coming up with goals, making decisions, translating these decisions and goals into feasible action plans, constantly evaluating their own progress, and persisting in the face of challenges and obstacles” (Goller & Harteis, 2017, p. 106). As demonstrated in our theoretical framework, we believe the third inseparable dimension of teacher agency is their agency inclination instead of agency personality. Zhou's agentic inclination included positive attitudes and emotions, such as self-efficacy, self-confidence, and goal-orientedness, among others. It is worth noting that positive emotions have motivated Zhou to act, yet negative emotions such as self-doubts, dissatisfaction, and confusion can sometimes lead to her repositioning of self and new rounds of meaning-making efforts, which actually confirms Vähäsantanen and Eteläpelto (2011)’s assertion. Overall, it is revealed from Zhou's case that when there were gaps or inconsistencies between what she intended to achieve and what she could reach, she often resorted to her agency inclination as the mediating force. Second, it is reported that female teacher agency is dynamically situated in the realization of female teacher professional identity (Lasky, 2005), which in itself is an intricate entity compromise of professional identity and gender identity (Rasmussen, 2009). Zhou's case supports the previous claims that role conflicts often exist between female teachers' professional aspirations and family commitments (Cinamon & Rich, 2005) and that to experience a minimum amount of role-conflict, they tend to achieve “work-life balance” (Guest, 2002) through “performativity” (Archer, 2000). Interestingly, the data also reveal that Zhou exhibited genderneutral features concerning her professional tasks, as she articulated “In work, we often forget our gender”. Nevertheless, since identity itself is an open and dynamic entity when different sub-identities or roles intermingle and interact with each other (Billett, 2006), Zhou's gender-neutral professional identity was prone to be influenced and shaped by her gender identity as a wife, a mother,

Female teacher identity

Professional identity

Gender identity Hindrances (role conflicts, self-doubts, bias and prejudices,etc.)

Supports (role models, institutions, collegiality, etc.) Female teacher agency

Agency beliefs

Agency inclination

Agency competence

Fig. 4. Clusters of female teacher agency, identity commitment and context: A data-driven model.

358

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

and an agentic professional woman. It should be noted that Zhou's role conflicts were to a large extent influenced by her family, instead of the mezzo context (the working unit) or the macro context (the society). This suggests that as females constitute the major portion of the EFL teaching force in China, they have the privilege to be respected and understood at the institutional level. In a broader terrain, Zhou seldom encountered prejudices or bias from society, partly because the city where she lived and worked is Shanghai–the most modernized mega city in China, where the vision and idea of gender equity has been promoted for a long time. Her sense of frustration and depression were largely due to the role conflicts between her own positioning for career development and her husband's patriarchalism in expecting his wife to be a family-oriented woman, as well as her commitment to look after and accompany her daughter. Zhou turned to external supports and inner mechanisms to deal with these conflicts, in which the positive influence of role models was found as a significant factor for her enactment of agency. This corresponds with the claim of Priestley et al. (2015) that teachers, as agents, tend to exert control on the environment. Our findings in this respect corroborates the findings of Tao and Gao (2017) that “identity commitment plays a crucial role in the production of agentic actions to direct one's career path” and further investigates the effectiveness of agency for female teachers to cope with role conflicts between family and life. Third, based on the discussion above, we present a figurative conceptualization of female teachers' professional agency and identity commitment, in which we schematize possible factors contributing to this dynamic entity (Fig. 4). Female teachers enact their agency in different professional tasks, in which their agentic beliefs, competence, and inclination are manifested and intertwined. However, during a female teachers' course of realizing their identity commitment, they constantly enact their agency to deal with the conflicts between their professional identity and gender identity, which is influenced by both facilitative (e.g., role models, significant others, institutional support, collegiality) and impeditive conditions (role conflicts, self-doubts, bias and prejudices in and out of families). 6. Conclusions Zhou's story illustrates the dynamics of an early-career female teacher's professional agency. Her experiences demonstrated that her agency, manifested in her proactive beliefs, competence, and inclination, is not static but fluid, which is negotiated and constantly shifting according to the sociocultural context. It is also found that the three dimensions of professional agency are closely related to one another, in which agency beliefs serve as the motive or intention to affect change, agency competence functions as the critical ability to transform beliefs into practices, and agency inclination mediates between beliefs and competence. The findings of the current study foreground the phenomena of a female teacher's multiple identities, her role conflicts and negotiation between professional identity and gender identity and her proactive efforts to exercise agency in making choices and taking initiatives. Theoretically, our inquiry contributes to the existing body of knowledge on teacher agency; explicates the dynamic interplay of agency beliefs, agency competence, and agency inclination; and thus covers new ground in the realm of teacher agency by describing a female practitioner's active positioning and engagement in her career circle. Methodologically, we adopt multifarious approaches to address the research questions; in particular, we not only examine what the participant perceives and articulates as her agentic beliefs, we also trace the actualization of her agency competence and inclination exhibited in different professional tasks. Empirically, we provide evidence as supports and impediments for the participant's professional agency and career development, based upon which we argue that it is imperative that joint efforts should be made to facilitate female teachers' professional wellbeing. For female teachers themselves, it is suggested that they enhance their professional competence through continuous learning, establish positive attitudes towards work-life balance, and seek timely help from their colleagues and role models when there are crises about their identity positioning; we also suggest policy makers, institutions, female teachers' spouses, and other family members scaffold female teachers' decision-making and express their understanding of and empathy for female teachers; and we call for the provision of equal opportunities for female teachers' career progression and ample resources for teachers' self-improvement and self-realization. It should be noted that there is a limit to the generalization and representativeness that a single case study can provide. The participant teacher is from a key university located in the city of Shanghai; female teachers from other universities or other cities may manifest their professional agency and construct their female teacher identity in different ways. Further, given that the exercise of agency is a dynamic process, more longitudinal and mixed methods designs are needed to address this issue in future research. Funding Supported by MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 19YJCZH071). Acknowledgement We appreciate the participant's generous time and unremitting support for this qualitative study and we express our sincere thanks to the editors as well as the anonymous reviewers of this article.

359

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

Appendix A. A narrative questionnaire to explore university female teachers' career development (for identifying suitable participants)

360

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 348–361

X. Ruan and X. Zheng

References Archer, M. S. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 1–26. Barkhuizen, G., & Wette, R. (2008). Narrative frames for investigating the experiences of language teachers. System, 36(3), 372–387. Billett, S. (2006). Work, subjectivity and learning. In S. Billett, T. Fenwick, & M. Somerville (Eds.). Work, subjectivity and learning: Understanding learning through working life (pp. 1–20). Dordrecht: Springer. Buchanan, R. (2015). Teacher identity and agency in an era of accountability. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 700–716. Cinamon, R. G., & Rich, Y. (2005). Work-family conflict among female teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(4), 365–378. Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2013). Research methods in education (7th ed.). London; New York: Routledge. Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications. Davies, B. (1997). The subject of post-structuralism: A reply to Alison Jones. Gender and Education, 9, 271–283. de Beauvoir, S. (1993). The second sex (H. M. Parshley, Trans.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ((Original published 1949)). Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency. American Journal of Sociology, 103, 962–1023. Eteläpelto, A., Vähäsantanen, K., Hökkä, P., & Paloniemi, S. (2013). What is agency? Conceptualizing professional agency at work. Educational Research Review, 10, 45–65. Goller, M., & Harteis, C. (2017). Human agency at work: Towards a clarification and operationalization of the concept. In M. Goller, & S. Paloniemi (Eds.). Agency at work: An agentic perspective on professional learning and development (pp. 85–103). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Greenberger, E., & Goldberg, W. A. (1989). Contributions of a supportive work environment to parents' well-being and orientation to work. American Journal of Community Psychology, 17(6), 755–780. Greenglass, E. R., Pantony, K. L., & Burke, R. J. (1988). A gender-role perspective on role conflict, work stress and social support. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 3(4), 317–328. Griffiths, V., Thompson, S., & Hryniewicz, L. (2014). Landmarks in the professional and academic development of mid-career teacher educators. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), 74–90. Guest, D. E. (2002). Perspectives on the study of work-life balance. Social Science Information, 41(2), 255–279. Higgins, C. A., Duxbury, L. E., & Lyons, S. (2008). Reducing work-life conflict: What works? What doesn't? Health Canada. Hökkä, P., Eteläpelto, A., & Rasku-Puttonen, H. (2012). The professional agency of teacher educators amid academic discourses. Journal of Education for Teaching, 38(1), 83–102. Huberman, M. (1989). On teachers' careers: Once over lightly, with a broad brush. International Journal of Educational Research, 13(4), 347–362. Jiang, Y. (2011). Career development for college English teachers. Nanjing University (Doctoral Dissertation). Johnson, K. E., & Freeman, D. (2001). Teacher learning in second language teacher education: A socially-situated perspective. Revista Brasileira De Linguística Aplicada, 1(1), 53–69. Ketelaar, E., Beijaard, D., Boshuizen, H. P., & Den Brok, P. J. (2012). Teachers' positioning towards an educational innovation in the light of ownership, sensemaking and agency. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(2), 273–282. Kozinets, R. V. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kvale, S. (2007). Doing interviews. London: Sage Publications. Lai, C., Li, Z., & Gong, Y. (2016). Teacher agency and professional learning in cross-cultural teaching contexts: Accounts of Chinese teachers from international schools in Hong Kong. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 12–21. Lasky, S. (2005). A sociocultural approach to understanding teacher identity, agency and professional vulnerability in a context of secondary school reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 899–916. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (2000). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences. In N. Denzin, & Y. Lincoln (Eds.). Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 97–128). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Moreau, M. P., Osgood, J., & Halsall, A. (2007). Making sense of the glass ceiling in schools: An exploration of women teachers' discourses. Gender and Education, 19(2), 237–253. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Priestley, M., Biesta, G. J. J., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Pyhältö, K., Pietarinen, J., & Soini, T. (2012). Do comprehensive school teachers perceive themselves as active professional agents in school reforms? Journal of Educational Change, 13, 95–116. Pyhältö, K., Pietarinen, J., & Soini, T. (2015). Teachers' professional agency and learning – From adaption to active modification in teacher community. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 7(21), 811–830. Rasmussen, M. L. (2009). Beyond gender identity? Gender and Education, 21(4), 431–447. Saldaña, J. (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Seferoğlu, G., Korkmazgil, Z., & Ölçü Dinçer, Z. (2009). Gaining insights into teachers' ways of thinking via metaphors. Educational Studies, 35(3), 323–335. Soini, T., Pietarinen, J., & Pyhältö, K. (2016). What if teacher learns in the classroom? Teacher Development, 20(3), 380–397. Tao, J., & Gao, X. (2017). Teacher agency and identity commitment in curricular reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63, 346–355. Taylor, S. (2001). Locating and conducting discourse analytic research. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. Yates (Eds.). Discourse as data: A guide for analysis (pp. 5–48). London: Sage Publications. Toom, A., Pyhältö, K., & Rust, F. O. C. (2015). Teachers' professional agency in contradictory times. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 615–623. Tripp, D. (1993). Critical incidents in teaching: Developing professional judgement. London: Routledge Falmer. Vähäsantanen, K., & Eteläpelto, A. (2011). Vocational teachers' pathways in the course of a curriculum reform. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(3), 291–312. van der Heijden, H. R. M. A., Geldens, J. J. M., Beijaard, D., & Popeijus, H. L. (2015). Characteristics of teachers as change agents. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 681–699. Wang, S. (2017). On ways of facilitating university foreign language faculty development. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice, 2, 1–15. Wen, Q., & Zhang, H. (2017). Listening to young EFL teachers at universities: A qualitative approach. Foreign Language Education, 38(1), 67–72. Yob, I. M. (2003). Thinking constructively with metaphors. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 22, 127–138.

361