Identity serves as a valuable lens through which to investigate, understand and facilitate teacher learning during curriculum reform. Identity learning is the core process of educational change, with teacher emotion at the heart of professional learning processes. In this study, we traced the 1-year journeys of four Chinese EFL teachers during a…

Along with its unprecedented economic rise over the past several decades, debates about China's soft power push have become heated. Yet, consensus on what exactly constitutes China's soft power has not been reached. Findings of how resources of Chinese soft power play their roles in the national strategy for global rise are conflicting and lacking…

Research on identity in teacher education and professionalism has been a significant issue for language teacher educators in terms of their trajectories and career development. Examining identity from contextual perspectives can assist teachers in establishing a professional self in order to facilitate them to better understand and negotiate their…

Purpose: This article reviews the intercultural adaptability (IA) development models for students in South Korea and China in response to the growing internationalisation of higher education. The article provides significant implications for Confucian heritage culture (CHC) countries and others that wish to enhance in higher education.…

With the advent of chatGPT, burgeoning research have been conducted to explore AI technologies' impact on the EFL teaching and learning. However, little is known about how language teachers navigate the shifting education landscape and develop the digital literacy in the AI era. This preliminary qualitative study aims to investigate the processes…

Curriculum material use is an agentive, reciprocal and innovative practice, involving multiple stakeholders such as teacher, students and assessments that mutually shape one another. While it is generally acknowledged that teachers' knowledge and skills deeply shape the way they use materials, little is known about how material use can possibly…

This study investigates the effectiveness of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)-based instruction in enhancing vocabulary acquisition and learner interest among Chinese university students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Using a quasi-experimental design, 73 undergraduates were divided into an experimental group (n = 37) receiving…

There has been little research investigating the effects of notetaking on foreign language (FL) learning, and no studies have examined how it affects vocabulary learning. The present study investigated the vocabulary written in notes of 86 students after they had listened to a teacher in an English as a foreign language (EFL) class. The results…

As the education for sustainable development (ESD) has been advocated in diverse educational contexts, increasingly more attention has been paid to facilitate teachers as the promoters of such educational practice in higher education. Yet, less sufficient research has focused on the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teachers, who are regarded as…

This case study examines an under-explored domain of teaching, namely, teachers' use of curriculum materials to enact instructions. It focuses on English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers' enactment of instructions through utilising prescribed textbooks in Higher Education (HE) in China. Drawing on interviews and lesson observations from two…

The bulk of recent research on generative AI (GenAI) in education mainly focused on its potential pedagogical uses as well as how students actually exploit such tools during learning, while little has been done to systematically investigate how teachers integrate those tools in different parts of their teaching process. To bridge this gap, the…

Professional development of teacher educators has received growing attention in recent years owing to their important role in preparing teachers for schools and universities, however, female-dominated mid-career EFL teacher educators in regional teacher education universities remain underexplored. This study examined 18 female experienced teacher…

In 2022, China's Educational Ministry, for the first time, released an industry standard for teachers' digital literacy. This standard provides a holistic framework for teachers' digital literacy (TDL) in five dimensions. Since few studies have investigated EFL teachers' digital literacy, the relationships among the five dimensions proposed for…

International students' mobility is increasing day by day around the world. As a result, many international postgraduate students enroll in Chinese universities for higher studies and exchange programs every year. The more international postgraduate students enrolled, the more challenges and problems encountered by local universities. This paper…

This study explores how teachers construct and enact agency in professional learning from an activity theory perspective. Through a qualitative case study of three language teachers' experiences within a professional development (PD) program focusing on China's Standards of English Language Ability (CSE), this research identifies agency…