HOW INDONESIAN NOVICE EFL TEACHERS BUILD AGENCY: INSIGHTS FROM A CASE STUDY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26618/6s2nee48Keywords:
Case Study, EFL, Novice Teacher, Teacher AgencyAbstract
Teacher agency has become an essential focus in understanding how teachers navigate instructional demands and professional challenges. This study investigates the agency of Indonesian novice English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers by examining four core properties of human agency as proposed by Bandura: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness. Employing a qualitative case study design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and scenario-based vignettes involving three novice English teachers in Banyumas. The data were analyzed using Miles, Huberman, and Saldana’s (2014) interactive model, which involved data condensation, display, and conclusion drawing. These findings demonstrate that Indonesian novice EFL teachers exhibit all four core agency properties, intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness, which are reflected in their classroom practices in varying degrees. While all participants expressed strong intentionality, their enactments of the other properties were predominantly reactive, shaped by immediate classroom challenges such as limited resources and low students’ motivation. The findings contribute to developing contextually informed teacher education by highlighting the complex interaction between personal goals and external demands in shaping agency. The study highlights the need for structured support and professional mentoring to help novice teachers strengthen their agency and transition toward more proactive and sustainable teaching practices.
References
Acker, S. (1994). Gender and education: Into the 1990s. Journal of Education Policy, 9(1), 85–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093940090106
Albert Bandura. (2001). Bandura Social Cognitive Theory : An Agentic Perspective. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 52, 1–26.
Banegas, D. L., Budzenski, M., & Yang, F. (2024). Enhancing pre-service teachers’ projective agency for diverse and multilingual classrooms through a course on curriculum development.
International Multilingual Research Journal, 18(3), 274–289. https://doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2024.2318967
Caspersen, J., & Raaen, F. D. (2014). Novice teachers and how they cope. Teachers and Teaching, 20(2), 189–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2013.848570
Cong-Lem, N. (2024). Teacher Agency for Change and Development in Higher Education: A Scoping Literature Review. International Journal of Educational Reform. https://doi.org/10.1177/10567879231224744
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH.
Eteläpelto, A., Vähäsantanen, K., Hökkä, P., & Paloniemi, S. (2014). Identity and Agency in Professional Learning (pp. 645–672). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8902-8_24
Feryok, A. (2012). Activity Theory and Language Teacher Agency. The Modern Language Journal, 96(1), 95–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2012.01279.x
Galea, K. (2018). Teachers’ narratives of resilience: Responding effectively to challenging behaviour. Resilience in Education: Concepts, Contexts and Connections, 147–166. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76690-4_9
González, C. V., & Calle-Díaz, L. (2023). Teachers’ Agency Development When Adapting the Colombian English Suggested Curriculum for High School. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 25(2), 201–216.
https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v25n2.104627
Itzik, L., & Walsh, S. D. (2023). Giving Them a Choice: Qualitative Research Participants Chosen Pseudonyms as a Reflection of Self-Identity. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 54(6–7), 705–721. https://doi.org/10.1177/00220221231193146
Jenkins, G. (2020). Teacher agency: the effects of active and passive responses to curriculum change. Australian Educational Researcher, 47(1), 167–181. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-019-00334-2
Keiler, L. S. (2018). Teachers’ roles and identities in student-centered classrooms. International Journal of STEM Education, 5(1), 34. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-018-0131-6
Mohammad Nezhad, P., & Stolz, S. A. (2024). Unveiling teachers’ professional agency and decision-making in professional learning: the illusion of choice. Professional Development in Education, 00(00), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2024.2349058
Muna Aljohani. (2017). Principles of “Constructivism” in Foreign Language Teaching. Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2017.01.013
Skrypnyk, O., Joksimovic, S., Kovanovic, V., Gas, D., Dawson, S., Paper, W., Dron, J., Ashwin, P., Wang, Y., Baker, R., Unit, T., Innovation, L., Clarà, M., Barberà, E., Osberg, D., Biesta, G., Cilliers, P., Emirbayer, M., & Mische, a. (2008). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 1–40. http://proxygw.wrlc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=88070625&site=ehost-live%5Cnhttp://www.continuumbooks.com/Books/detail.aspx?ReturnURL=/Search/default.aspx&CountryID=1&ImprintID=2&BookID=126458
Ulvik, M., Smith, K., & Helleve, I. (2009). Novice in secondary school – the coin has two sides. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(6), 835–842. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.01.003
Vasquez, K., Oswald, D. L., Hammer, A., Vasquez, K., Oswald, D. L., Being, A. H., Vasquez, K., Oswald, D. L., & Hammer, A. (2019). Being dishonest about our prejudices : moral dissonance and self-justification Being dishonest about our prejudices : moral dissonance and. Ethics & Behavior, 00(00), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2019.1568877
Whittington, R. (2015). Giddens, structuration theory and strategy as practice. Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice, Second Edition, January, 145–164. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCO9781139681032.009
Zheng, R. (2021). Moral Criticism and Structural Injustice. 130(April). https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzaa098
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 EXPOSURE : JURNAL PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
In order to assure the highest standards for published articles, a peer review policy is applied. In pursue of the compliance with academic standards, all parties involved in the publishing process (the authors, the editors and the editorial board and the reviewers) agree to meet the responsibilities stated below in accordance to the Journal publication ethics and malpractice statement.
Duties of Authors:
- The author(s) warrant that the submitted article is an original work, which has not been previously published, and that they have obtained an agreement from any co-author(s) prior to the manuscript’s submission;
- The author(s) should not submit articles describing essentially the same research to more than one journal;
- The authors(s) make certain that the manuscript meets the terms of the Manuscript Submission Guideline regarding appropriate academic citation and that no copyright infringement occurs;
- The authors(s) should inform the editors about any conflict of interests and report any errors they subsequently, discover in their manuscript.
Duties of Editors and the Editorial Board:
- The editors, together with the editorial board, are responsible for deciding upon the publication or rejection of the submitted manuscripts based only on their originality, significance, and relevance to the domains of the journal;
- The editors evaluate the manuscripts compliance with academic criteria, the domains of the journal and the guidelines;
- The editors must at all times respect the confidentiality of any information pertaining to the submitted manuscripts;
- The editors assign the review of each manuscript to two reviewers chosen according to their domains of expertise. The editors must take into account any conflict of interest reported by the authors and the reviewers.
- The editors must ensure that the comments and recommendations of the reviewers are sent to the author(s) in due time and that the manuscripts are returned to the editors, who take the final decision to publish them or not.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
