Vincent Greenier

There is a growing interest in the pedagogical and professional benefits of classroom leadership in language teaching, and while numerous studies have explored the various characteristics, competences, behaviours and practices of leadership, how to develop these skills through language teacher education and training has not been adequately addressed. This conceptual article examines the existing literature on classroombased leadership in language teaching, collates the myriad of traits and behaviours reported to encompass leadership qualities and offers a typology for leadership skills that could inform language teacher education and training courses and programmes. Based on the methodologically and theoretically diverse literature on leadership in the language teaching and learning context, two main categories of a guiding typology are proposed, teacher engagement, including reflective practice and differentiating instruction, and factors related to enhancing the learning environment for teachers and students, including teacher empowerment and relationship-building. After explicating the categories, recommendations are made for how language teacher education can constructively implement a greater focus on leadership competences and behaviours and devote more attention to instilling within teachers the skills and mindset needed to be effective teachers and committed leaders.

In Chinese primary EFL classrooms, translanguaging between English and Chinese is commonly used by teachers and students out of need for efficient communication, however, this practice has been and is still widely believed to hinder students’ English development. Although recent studies have revealed the benefits translanguaging offers for teaching and learning, little has been done to understand teachers’ perceptions and use of a translanguaging pedagogy in their formative assessment practices, which is expected to play a more important role than before in China’s primary education due to recent policy reform. To close this gap, this exploratory study conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 Chinese primary EFL teachers, who are varied in their geographical location and teaching experience. Adopting an abductive thematic analysis approach, data analysis aimed at understanding how translanguaging was used to facilitate the implementation of formative assessment. Through the lens of creativity, three essential types of translanguaging practices – translanguaging for meaning-making (through preparation and expansion), collaboration, and empowerment – were identified, which have the potential to facilitate different procedures of formative assessment by accelerating understanding and expression, stimulating critical thinking and exploration, maintaining interest and engagement, and promoting autonomy and peer learning.

For emerging researchers, communities of practice (CoPs) can be a much-needed source of knowledge and support, particularly during a global pandemic. Within this context, a virtual CoP (VCoP) project was initiated for novice researchers in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)/Applied Linguistics worldwide to exchange perspectives and academic knowledge. Guided by netnography, our study explores the social, cultural, and professional practices of VCoP through multiple digital sources, such as webinar recordings, Facebook group posts, reflective journal entries, and one-on-one interview. The triangulated data aims to examine the effects of virtual mentorship on the agency, engagement, and identity construction of an emerging researcher. Findings illustrate that a VCoP facilitates international networking, fosters the repositioning of ESOL researcher identity, and promotes agency through virtual mentoring. Specifically, netnography opens a viable avenue for remote data mining in Applied Linguistics research.

Despite some research attention given to expatriate native‐English‐speaking teachers' (NESTs) identities and the national educational ideologies that have led to their international recruitment, surprisingly little research has addressed their career trajectories as TESOL professionals. To address this gap, this case study explores the career of a long‐serving expatriate TESOL professional through the lens of Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), which was designed to understand how people develop interest in, make decisions about, and commit to a particular career. The methods are qualitative, involving a deductive analysis of interview data and a career timeline according to constructs from SCCT. Despite an initial reluctance to enter the profession, the participant's interest in language teaching began after teaching part‐time as a young adult. After this experience, he changed his career interests and continued his educational pursuits in Korea. His background contextua...

During my doctoral viva voce, my external examiner, Professor Phil Benson, asked if I could clarify my admittedly nebulous application of the term “learning environment,” and the ambiguously synonymous usage of others like “setting,” “context”, “atmosphere”, “learning space(s)”, and “classroom.” To simplify this entanglement for the purpose of passing my oral examination, I asserted that I just meant “classroom.” However, in the months that followed, I reflected more deeply on this question. I first began to think about language itself as being a type of “environment” with its own inextricable qualities of space and structure, and with language use (spoken and written) giving breath to these dimensional attributes. As this metaphor seemed decidedly structuralist, I turned my attention to what I felt was a more interesting extrapolation of a spatial theme embedded in the concept of environments: the complex interactions in specific spaces and how such interactions relate to learning....

To expand the line of research investigating individual teacher-related variables, the present research sought to test a structural model of teacher reflection, self-efficacy, burnout, and emotion regulation among Iranian EFL instructors. Moreover, a mediation model was examined, hypothesizing that emotion regulation would mediate the influences of teacher reflection and teacher self-efficacy on teacher burnout. Collecting data from a sample of 238 Iranian EFL teachers, a structural equation modeling (SEM) was embarked on to test the hypothesized relationships. The data of the study were gathered through the participants’ responses to the four questionnaires related to the four variables under investigation (i.e., teacher self-efficacy, reflection, burnout, and emotion regulation variables). The outcomes of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified the fitness of the used questionnaires and the structural model. Considering the centrality of teachers’ affective status in how the...

This study investigates how the model of Authentic Leadership applies to language teaching and its implications for future directions in teacher education programmes. Data was collected from 56 native-speaking English teachers through an online survey consisting of specific open-ended and short answer type questions. The results of the study suggest that currently the concept of classroom leadership is not at the forefront of teachers’ conscious thought, but is, to some extent, embedded in various teaching practices and characteristics. This could be attributed to the absence of explicit discussion of teacher leadership in teacher education programmes despite principles of leadership being strongly connected to the act of teaching itself. It is argued that a clear model of leadership would better help teachers face the unique challenges of EFL teaching and the model of Authentic Leadership provides an excellent framework for this context as the principles of self-awareness, relation...

Research on the influence of affective factors in language learning has grown in recent years largely due to the recognition of the role they play in second language (L2) acquisition (Henter, 2014). This study investigates two affective factors, confidence and anxiety, and how they impact young Finnish adults when using English in different formal and informal communicative situations. A multiple case study design is employed to gather different experiences and perceptions of young Finns’ willingness to use English in different situational contexts. To explore confidence and anxiety in specific speaking scenarios, the study used photo-elicitation interviews, in which a set of photographs was used as a stimulus with regular interview questions (Harper, 2002). Findings show that young Finnish adults attribute the lack of authentic oral communication in their comprehensive English education as being partially responsible for their apprehension in speaking English, and that fear of judg...