Primary School EFL Teachers’ Professional Agency in South China: An Ecological Perspective

Teacher agency has emerged as an important research field during the past decades, yet it remains a great challenge for primary school EFL teachers in China to appropriately enact their professional agency. Based upon a semester-long observation of the English classes in a primary school in Southern China, semi-structured interviews with the expert EFL teachers, documents such as the participating students’ reflective journals, this qualitative study aims to explore how EFL teachers in Southern China enact their agency in the professional contexts in an ecological perspective. Findings show that the expert EFL teachers have complicated agentic reactions towards different interplays with different microsystems in the ecological system of their working environment. Implications for further teacher professional development are discussed concerning how to enhance teachers’ agency in internship and in-service training.