“Nothing Lasts Forever”: Stories of Teacher Agency and Identity Construction in a TEFL Setting during a Time of Crisis

Abstract

Previous studies on teacher agency have largely overlooked its manifestation in professional practices and its connection to professional identity construction, specifically how they are at play during crises. A narrative inquiry was conducted to address this gap and understand teacher agency as manifested in a female teacher’s English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction and how it played roles in constructing her professional identity during the times of crisis, i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing the design allowed for the construction of stories about her, which was made possible by doing a narrative analysis of data gathered through observations of remote instruction, reflective journals, in-depth interviews, and the examinations of relevant instructional documents. The stories portray the interplay of inquisitive, deliberative, responsive, moral, and recognitive agency in her day-to-day pedagogical practices. A new facet was recognized and thus incorporated into the stories, i.e., numinous agency, which means having and displaying a deep spiritual connection, on which the teacher participant based most of her pedagogical decisions and professional identity work. Evidence of her numinous agency is her “nothing lasts forever” stance toward the pandemic and seeing it as momentum for cultivating her professional capital to serve her students better. The stories suggest that teacher education programs and professional learning incorporate topics on professional identity construction, teacher agency, and its facets, including numinous agency. We invite future researchers to investigate whether numinous agency also manifests in teachers’ pedagogical practices and identity construction work in different educational and cultural contexts.