Collective TESOL Teacher Educator Agency

Abstract

TESOL teacher educators across different countries play a pivotal role in preparing and training English language teachers in diverse contexts. Teacher educators also navigate the sociocultural and sociopolitical factors that mediate their teaching as they strive to achieve their pedagogical goals and support other teachers. The complexity of their work has become more evident in recent years with a call for innovation and the rise of new opportunities with technology, including generative artificial intelligence and its impact on English language teaching and learning. From mitigating the unique challenges of multilingual contexts to driving equitable innovation, collective agency is the key to sustaining effective TESOL practice. With the goal of increasing the effectiveness of TESOL teacher education programs and teacher educators’ work, we propose collective TESOL teacher educator agency that focuses on the collective decision-making process through mediating sociocultural factors and across relational aspects to achieve the goals of exploring new practices and research agendas in the field. Collective TESOL teacher educator agency is characterized by the complex, intricate, and dynamic nature of the network among TESOL teacher educators. Through the network of relations, collective TESOL teacher educator agency can expand and strengthen while also promoting the professional well-being of teacher educators. Our model of collective TESOL teacher educator agency is characterized by four key dimensions: (a) research and teaching, (b) glocalization, (c) advocacy, and (d) professional development. Future directions for research include collaborative projects to systematically analyze and reflect on teacher educator practices.

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