Speaker
Description
The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into higher education has fundamentally reshaped English language teaching, yet how teachers exercise agency within AI-mediated environments remains underexplored. Drawing on an ecological theoretical framework, this study investigates teacher agency as a situated, dynamic construct shaped by the interplay between individual disposition and broader institutional and technological environments.
This qualitative multiple case study examines three tertiary EFL lecturers at a Vietnamese university navigating GenAI integration in their classroom practices. Two research questions guide the inquiry: (1) How do tertiary EFL teachers enact teacher agency in their use of GenAI for classroom practices? and (2) What ecological factors influence tertiary EFL teachers' agency in using GenAI for classroom practices?
Data were collected through screening interviews, semi-structured interviews, and teaching artifacts and documents, followed by within-case and cross-case analysis.
Findings reveal that teachers enacted agency through three distinct orientations: adaptive adoption, critical appropriation, and selective resistance, reflecting varying alignments between personal pedagogical beliefs and institutional expectations. Ecologically, influential factors operated across multiple levels: individual identity and prior technological experience at the micro level; peer collaboration and departmental norms at the meso level; and national education policy and broader GenAI discourse at the macro level. These factors interact dynamically, producing context-specific agentic responses.
This study offers an original contribution by applying an ecological lens to teacher agency in GenAI-integrated EFL contexts in Vietnam, with implications for professional development, institutional AI policy, and ecologically responsive teaching environments.
Keywords: teacher agency, generative AI, EFL, ecological approach, qualitative case study, AI-integrated teaching
Biography
Nguyen Le Ngoc Ngan is an EFL lecturer at FPT Polytechnic Can Tho, Vietnam, where she has been teaching English for over eight years. She holds a Master of Arts in TESOL from Can Tho University. Her research interests span two areas: language education, with a particular focus on experimental approaches to enhancing learners' speaking skills, and teacher education, exploring how teachers develop professionally within evolving pedagogical contexts. She can be reached at ngannln@fpt.edu.vn.
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