EAL teachers’ identity and agency: The impact of participant positioning through in-service professional development

Abstract

It is commonly believed that opportunities for in-service professional development (PD) contribute to teachers' professional growth and identities, which in turn result in improved practice and longevity in the profession. Despite this potential, in-service professional development also has the propensity to limit and disempower teachers' identity, actions, and agency in the classroom through different re-articulations of these within institutional values and through participant positioning (Anderson, 2009). Using post-participation reflections of in-service PD activities by two practicing teachers of English as an Additional Language (EAL) in tertiary settings in Queensland, Australia, we explored the potential that in-service PD opportunities had towards re-articulation of teacher identity, actions, and agency within tertiary settings. All in-service PD sessions reflected upon by the two participants had been delivered in a traditional format with a specified curricular focus and were run at participants' institutions of employment. In the case of the two participants in this study, the findings indicated that the institutionally endorsed in-service PD activities that they had undertaken had undesired consequences. We discuss these findings with implications for EAL teachers' identity and agency with a particular emphasis on the design and delivery of institutional offerings of professional development activities specific to the growing and dynamic field of EAL teaching and teacher development.