Malaysian English Language Teachers’ Agency in Using Digital Technologies During the Pandemic: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

With the closure of schools due to imposed lockdowns in many parts of the world, teachers had to make a rapid transition from teaching in physical classrooms to online teaching, even though they had little to no experience teaching online prior to the pandemic. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, this study aimsto explore the factors that influence Malaysian English language teachers’ professional agency in adapting to online teaching. Data were collected via interviews with ten secondary school teachers from rural and urban schools. The findings show how factors such as teachers’ perceptions of the affordances of digital tools and existing support structures influence teachers’ enactment of agency in online teaching and learning. They also demonstrate teachers' agentic potential to adapt their lessons to suit their learners’ needs. These findings suggest the need for teacher professional development programs to recognize teacher agency in the design of future training modules. This involves providing a differentiated training curriculum that can support and sustain language teachers’ development organically by taking into consideration their existing technology skills, teaching experiences and work contexts.

Using Digital Tools in Teaching and Learning English: Delving into English Language Teachers’ Perspectives

“…On the contrary, challenges such as lack of time for teachers to develop digital literacy and technological difficulties could hinder their perception (Dhillon & Murray, 2021;Afrilyasanti et al, 2022;Meirovitz et al, 2022). Besides the aforementioned factors, other factors including gender, teaching experience and time availability (Al-Mubireek, 2020;Zainal & Zainuddin, 2021) had also been proven to influence teachers' perceptions of digital tools. Zainal & Zainuddin (2021) suggested that the affordances of digital tools and the availability of support structures were among the factors that contribute to teachers' perceptions.…”

“…Besides the aforementioned factors, other factors including gender, teaching experience and time availability (Al-Mubireek, 2020;Zainal & Zainuddin, 2021) had also been proven to influence teachers' perceptions of digital tools. Zainal & Zainuddin (2021) suggested that the affordances of digital tools and the availability of support structures were among the factors that contribute to teachers' perceptions.…”

Disposición del alumnado universitario español a conectar su cámara durante la pandemia generada por la covid-19

“…De este modo, mientras que el empleo de cámaras web en sistemas de videoconferencia podría plantearse como una solución óptima para favorecer la presencia social, así como la implicación y el interés en el acto educativo en situaciones como la provocada por la covid-19, tan solo una mínima parte del alumnado conectó de forma regular su cámara web durante la situación originada por la pandemia (Bedenlier et al, 2020), aduciendo motivos como fatiga, falta de privacidad (Kozar, 2016;Rajab y Soheib, 2021), timidez (Brunet y Schmidt, 2007), dificultades de conexión (Zainal y Zainuddin, 2021), o ausencia de necesidad percibida para su encendido (Nilsen et al, 2013), lo que dio lugar a distintos estudios para explicar este comportamiento.…”