“I Have Grown Accustomed to Being Rejected”: EFL Academics’ Responses Toward Power Relations in Research Practice

Abstract

While there has been an increasing interest in English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ research engagement and researcher identity construction, scant attention has been paid to tensions caused by the issue of power relations in their research practice. This study draws on data from semi-structured interviews complemented with data from narrative frames and document analysis to examine the influence of power relations on the research practice of six EFL academics and their coping strategies at a Chinese university. The data analysis reveals that for the participants in the study, even though they were driven to be engaged in research practice by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, they found that their research endeavors were undermined by the marginalized status of EFL researchers from non-elite universities, as imposed by the Chinese academic circle. Nevertheless, in the face of potential bias against their peripheral academic status, they exerted their agency with micropolitical literacy and tried to seek a way out of the unfavorable academic culture. As EFL teachers at regular universities are increasingly expected to be more research-active and research-productive, more attention and support are needed to facilitate their professional development and researcher identity construction.

Chinese EFL Academics’ Experiences of Aligning Researcher Identity (Re)-Construction with University Policy Practices of a National Research Policy

“…T1 and T3 were solely motivated by a desire to be influential scholars in their academic identity reconstruction, whereas T2 wished to reclaim his identity as an active researcher after a period of inactivity. This study accords with the argument made by various scholars (e.g., Lu & Yoon, 2022;Nguyen & Ngo, 2023;Teng, 2020;Yuan, 2017) that EFL academics' exercising of teacher agency could play a critical role in their researcher identity construction despite contextual constraints. Senior academics' intrinsic research motivations aided them in becoming agentive and active researchers with fruitful research achievements, inadvertently meeting the external institutional research requirements.…”

‘Making it possible’: the complex dynamics of university foreign language teacher agency for research in funding applications

“…Teachers, as researchers, are expected to be involved in ongoing systematic inquiries as a key element of their work (Hökkä et al 2012). Existing literature has revealed teachers' identity commitment in their research practice -there are challenges and complexities in the language teacher educator's identity construction as a researcher (Yuan 2017); power relations entail tensions in EFL teachers' research practice and researcher identity construction (Lu and Yoon 2022); and domestic visiting study programs and professional learning groups play a role in facilitating teachers becoming researchers (Bao and Feng 2022;Zeivots et al 2022). While the findings of these studies have generated important insights into the construction of teachers' identities as researchers, how teacher agency affects change in their funding application experiences is rarely investigated.…”