Teacher Agency for Social Justice in Rural China: A Study in the Field of Critical Applied Linguistics

尽管教师越来越多地被要求充当实现更大正义的“变革推动者”，但关于教师如何制定和发展这种以正义为导向的机构，几乎没有什么明朗的东西。借鉴教师代理的生态模型(Priestley，Biesta和Robinson，2015)，普通教育中的一些初步研究(如Pantic，2017)探索了不同类型的面向正义的代理行为，并确定了这些行为的各种负担和限制。拟议的研究将以三种方式扩展这一新兴文献：-它将通过调查这种机构随着时间的发展而扩展先前关于制定面向司法的教师机构的研究。-它将侧重于英语教师的代理行为，因为他们可能面临其他与司法有关的问题(例如，英语在全球资本主义生产中的地位)。-将在中国农村进行，尽管关于多重不平等的定量统计数据有很好的记录(国家统计局中国，2019年)，但关于人们与这些不平等进行谈判的经验证据很少。研究问题-英语教师如何在农村制定社会公平代理中国？教师感知的社会公平代理的负担和约束是什么？-教师社会公平代理是如何随着时间的推移而演变的？研究方法采用定性案例研究设计。来自中国农村的五到八名英语教师将被调查，每个人都构成一个独立的案例。这些教师将在一个致力于支持中国农村司法教师的非政府组织的帮助下招聘。将采用批判性传播方法论(Go‘mez、Puigvert和Flecha，2011)，因为它具有同时研究和促进社会正义的潜力。CCM的一个重要特征是“平等对话”，在这种对话中，研究人员积极贡献学术知识，与参与者共同构建具有变革潜力的知识。在这项研究中，这些对话将被嵌入：a)交流性数据收集将进行一次交流性生活故事访谈，以构建参与者过去的传记、现在的正义导向做法和中介因素以及未来愿景的批判性反思叙事。将使用照片驱动(Wang，1999)和视频驱动(Erickson，2011)访谈，参与者将使用摄影和视频来记录与他们日常制定社会正义机构有关的行为和文物。研究人员和参与者将在一个学年的时间里共同构建在线微信小组中的视觉数据解读。将与参与者在线举行双周交流焦点小组，讨论他们在日常参与微信小组中出现的关键问题。B)交际性数据分析数据分析将遵循诱导性方法(Tavory和Timmermann，2014)。参与者将参与数据解释，以确保调查结果的变革潜力，并建立可信度。C)咨询委员会会议将成立一个咨询委员会，由非政府组织的研究人员和非学术研究受益者组成。将在整个研究过程中举行会议，讨论研究目的，调整数据收集工具，解释数据，并确定传播研究结果和公众参与的适当方式。意义拟议研究的潜在贡献包括但不限于：-产生见解，可能建立和完善关于教师社会正义机构的新兴理论知识-为未来的CCM研究铺平道路-创造民主空间，教师参与者可以在其中发展代理能力，以减少农村中国的不平等-产生有用的知识，可能改变非政府组织的政策和实践

Although teachers are increasingly being called upon to act as 'agents of change' towards greater justice, there is little clarity about how teachers enact and develop such justice-oriented agency. Drawing upon the ecological model of teacher agency (Priestley, Biesta and Robinson, 2015), some initial research in general education (e.g., Pantic, 2017) has explored different types of justice-oriented agentic actions and identified various affordances and constraints of these actions. The proposed study will extend this emerging line of literature in three ways:-It will extend previous research on the enactment of justice-oriented teacher agency by investigating the development of such agency over time. -It will focus on the agentic actions of EFL teachers, as they may face additional justice-related issues (e.g., the status of English in global capitalist production). -It will be conducted in rural China where, though quantitative statistics of multiple inequalities are well-documented (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2019), little empirical evidence on people's negotiations with these inequalities exists. Research questions -How do EFL teachers enact agency for social justice in rural China? -What are the teacher-perceived affordances and constraints of agency for social justice? -How does teacher agency for social justice evolve over time? Methodology A qualitative case study design will be employed. Five to eight EFL teachers from rural China will be investigated, each constituting an individual case. These teachers will be recruited with the help of a non-governmental organisation committed to supporting justice-oriented teachers in rural China. Critical communicative methodology (CCM) (Go'mez, Puigvert and Flecha, 2011) will be adopted because of its potential for simultaneously researching and promoting social justice. A key feature of CCM is 'egalitarian dialogues', where the researcher actively contributes academic knowledge and co-constructs knowledge that has transformative potential with participants. In this study these dialogues will be embedded in:a) Communicative data collectionOne communicative life story interview will be conducted to construct critical reflective narratives of participants' past biographies, present justice-oriented practices and mediating factors, and future visions. Photo-driven (Wang, 1999) and video-driven (Erickson, 2011) interviews will be used, whereby participants will use photography and videos to record behaviours and artefacts related to their daily enactment of agency for social justice. The researcher and participants will co-construct interpretations of visual data in an online WeChat group over an academic year.Bi-weekly communicative focus groups will be held with participants online to discuss key issues emerging from their daily participation in the Wechat group. b) Communicative data analysis Data analysis will follow an abductive approach (Tavory and Timmermans, 2014). Participants will be involved in data interpretation to ensure the transformative potential of findings and to establish trustworthiness. c) Advisory Committee meetingsAn Advisory Committee consisting of the researcher and non-academic research beneficiaries from the NGO will be formed. Meetings will be held throughout the research process to discuss the research purposes, adjust data collection tools, interpret data, and identify appropriate ways of findings dissemination and public engagement. Significance The potential contributions of the proposed research include but are not limited to: -generating insights that may build and refine emerging theoretical knowledge on teacher agency for social justice -paving the road for future CCM studies -creating democratic spaces where teacher participants may develop agentic capacity for reducing inequalities in rural China-producing usable knowledge which may transform policy and practices in the NGO