Honing innovative language teaching through teaching competitions: The role of teacher agency

This qualitative case study contributes to the limited research on teacher agency in teaching competitions. Underpinned by the ecological perspective of teacher agency, we have unraveled how three foreign language teachers enacted their agency in a teaching competition at a Chinese university and examined the factors mediating the enactment of their agency. Drawing upon multiple sets of data such as semi-structured interviews and documents and a reflexive thematic analysis of the data, the findings reveal that their agency was manifested in the temporal achievements of the past, present, and future. A number of contextual factors have been found to account for and shape their agency. This study underscores the need to examine the time and context attributes of teacher agency and concludes with implications for research on teacher agency and their professional development.