This research focuses on two key issues in areas in tertiary education, academic literacies theory, a key theory influencing directions in writing in higher education, and EMI contexts, which provide education in English in countries where English is not the first language, a fast growing, but understudied area of higher education globally. This study focuses on writing teachers’ perceptions of academic literacy(s) and the influence of early formal writing experiences in an EMI university. Data analysis revealed that a teacher with an academic background in education exhibited perspectives closer to the concept of academic literacies across three emerging themes: collaboration, creativity, and social situatedness, compared with two colleagues with non-social science undergraduate degrees. This teacher was initiated into an academic community as an undergraduate, unlike those with backgrounds in physical sciences. Our study highlights the role of prior experiences in shaping pedagogical perspectives, and the potential challenges associated with altering these. The study provides an approach to operationalising academic literacies theory in terms of the three themes: collaboration, creativity, and social-situatedness, categories which may be used to promote academic literacies awareness, not only within EAP teacher education, but more widely across other disciplines.

The resolution of identity tensions has become an important theme in language teacher identity development, but an identity tension approach to language teacher researcher identity is missing from the literature. This systematic literature review examines the inherent tensions and conflicts in teacher researcher identity development. A search across multiple academic databases yielded studies that problematize identity conflicts and tensions. We reviewed a total of 25 studies published between 2008 and 2024 and analysed how challenges related to teachers' engagement in research shape the experiences of teachers who engage in various forms of research. After compiling a list of tensions across studies, the authors used thematic analysis to determine three categories of tensions: those relating to the research itself, teacher researchers, and institutions. The review highlights the contextualized nature of tensions, which depend on factors such as the type of institution, teacher profile, and the purpose of the teacher research (TR) (e.g. formal or informal teacher education), and underlines that tensions can interact in complex ways, across the three levels. Further analysis revealed sub-categories with each level and found important sub-themes of conceptual tensions relating to teachers, and values-related and resource-related tensions associated with institutions. The review points to the relationship between these key sub-themes, and the role of the institution in providing the practical and motivational support to counteract the cognitive dissonance caused by challenges, and enable teachers to take on researcher identities. The review also underlines a need for a partnership between teachers and institutions, and a three-point strategy is proposed, setting out the responsibilities of each side.

This study explores the perspectives of the two authors, who have very different language backgrounds, reflecting the subtleties of first and additional language development. We distinguish between a 'literacy-track' (i.e. starting from written language) and an oracy track (starting from spoken language). We draw on duoethnography for our dialogic inquiry. Despite very different study and career trajectories, we reach convergence in both the theory and practice of learning and teaching and we were able to see clear parallels across trajectories. This approach led us to new insights into the nature of bilingualism in 'wild', i.e. naturalistic, and instructed contexts, and through our newly-discovered lens of literacy-oracy, and the concept of heteroteaching, we hope that our readers too will be encouraged to explore new understandings of their language learning and teaching journeys.

In the post Ph.D. thesis period, Simon, the only participant in this study was encouraged to reflect on his learning process by his supervisor through interviews. Simon had already reflected on the practice of colleagues during the thesis process; however, this follow-up study brought out the researcher's own voice. Taking a view of identity that emphasizes the interaction between the personal and the professional, the study reveals that Simon was able to understand how reflection on a wide range of incidents and memories, and the classification and thematising of these, led to insights into his own identity growth. The analysis of his own interview data led to reflection on the connections between different aspects of identity. As the analysis progressed, self-confidence and self-realisation emerged as personal themes, and changed teaching content, and changed relationships with students, as professional themes. The learning in the thesis became subject to greater scrutiny, or meta-reflection, and he was able to compare himself with thesis participants, and insights into his changed identity in relation to them. The links emerging involved his roles as writer, researcher, learner and teacher. Some implications for thesis supervision are provided.

Many studies have focused on discrepancies in scoring writing, focusing on determining rater types, rubrics and their interpretation, and the factors that make a particular paper hard score. This qualitative study attempts to understand sources of discrepancy from the perspective of the raters themselves. Teachers from an English medium university freshmen academic skills programme provided scores and comments on an exemplar paper with an analytic, three-criteria rubric. Results reveal considerable differences within content and organisation criteria. In the next stage, unstructured interviews were conducted with three teachers from the programme, and their perspectives on rating were compared, and used to interpret possible causes of discrepancies in the first stage. Although the interviewees? attitudes to the scoring process were broadly similar in terms of accounting for discrepancies, each had a different focus: on institutional factors, teacher role, and the rating process, respectively. The implications for L2 writing standardization are discussed.

This autoethnographic study traces the development of novice researcher identity. We investigate the mentor-mentee relationship and consider how mentoring practices helped develop researcher identity. We adopted an autoethnographical approach which relies on our memory, reflective and critical email exchanges, and feedback notes in the margins of the research papers in preparation as a set of accessible and relevant data, and the mentor voice is included to overcome possible bias. The narrative focuses on the mentoring process, looking at formal and informal aspects and covers a period of about four years. The research frames the narrative through Wenger's (2009) four aspects of situated learning: community, practice, learning, and identity. The first author established a researcher identity through talk mediated by the mentor about joint research projects, involving a continual reiteration from micro to macro aspects—from the technical to the cognitive—leading, eventually, to development of researcher identity.

This case study investigates the growth of reflective thinking skills in three pre-service English language teachers in Turkey. The participants were attending a hybrid course focusing on reflection development through mainly online engagement with a practicum Teacher Research project, guided by the teacher educator. An exploratory approach is taken, based on interviews with pre-service teachers, observations of their contributions to online lessons, and their reflective papers. Of the three, only one teacher reached higher levels of reflection. The discussion focuses on implications for online learning, particularly for synchronous written interaction in pre-service teacher education, and highlights the importance of, and the difficulties in the establishment of a social presence in online interaction. Implications for the relationship between reflection, technology for teaching, and technology for teacher learning are discussed, and the need to prepare pre-service teachers for online interaction.

This study examines three preschool teachers’ developmental journeys from Foreign Language to Bilingual English teachers who participated in an in-service training over the course of nine months set in preschool education in Turkey. The data were teachers’ logs, two written interviews and observation notes. The research questions addressed the evidence for a developmental growth into bilingual teacher roles and examined how such development might influence these teachers. Adopting a longitudinal design, our study is informed by Benson’s (2004) categories of BE teacher competencies but modified to fit an EFL context with no history of heritage/colonial language. The findings indicate teachers’ roles of pedagogue, interactive communicator, and a previously uninduced role, translanguaging facilitator. In addition, we argue that these categories influence each other, because the theoretical pedagogical aspects and the practical language aspects inform each other. The evidence of growth into new bilingual teacher roles could offer implications for similar contexts, particularly by showing that kindergarten school teachers need to embrace and develop roles other than foreign language teacher.

ABSTRACT This study highlights the need to promote more personal and informal processes in Teacher Autonomy and focuses on university Language Teachers’ processes in reading Teacher Research (TR) in order to understand how this impacts their autonomy development processes. In particular, it addresses teachers’ interactions with TR articles during the reading process, and aims to gain insights into autonomy development from the teachers’ reflection during the process. This study uses two well-known research tools, Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) for an innovative purpose: to fulfil both research and teacher education purposes, thus exemplifying a particular way to promote and investigate critical reading in teacher education. The analysis of the TAPs, and follow-up focus group discussions reveal the key theme of autonomy. Three autonomy-related sub-themes emerged: gaining agency, developing motivation and gaining awareness of a more democratic form of teacher development. 11 participants undertook a task that allowed a highly personalized interpretation of all aspects of the text. It is argued that conditions for autonomy development were created by offering freedom to choose and interpret a text that is comprehensible and relevant. Teachers were entirely free to interpret their texts, and responsible for their learning from it. Teachers interpreted the articles in a variety of ways, and differed according to their emphasis on the particular aspects: motivation, agency and identity. The study concludes that the task provided an opportunity for autonomy to emerge according to the developmental needs of the individual.

This study, conducted by two researchers who were also multiple-choice question (MCQ) test item writers at a private English-medium university in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context, was designed to shed light on the factors that influence test-takers' perceptions of difficulty in English for academic purposes (EAP) vocabulary, with the aim of improving test writers' judgments on difficulty. The research consisted of a survey of 588 test-takers, followed by a focus group interview, aimed at investigating the relative influences of test-taker factors and word factors on difficulty perceptions. Results reveal a complex interaction of factors influencing perceived difficulty dominated by the educational, and particularly, the social context. Factors traditionally associated with vocabulary difficulty, such as abstractness and word length, appeared to have little influence. The researchers concluded that rather than basing their intuitions regarding vocabulary difficulty on language-lesson input or surface features of words, EAP vocabulary test writers need a clear understanding of test-takers' difficulty perceptions, and how these emerge from interactions between academic, social and linguistic factors. As a basis for EAP vocabulary item writer training, four main implications are drawn, related to test-takers' social and educational background, field of study, the features of academic words, and the test itself.

This study focuses specifically on the writing up process of relatively inexperienced teacher researchers. The data consist of interviews with 11 teacher researchers at a private university in Turkey. There was evidence that mentor-supported collaboration created a socio-constructivist learning environment, leading to the development of academic writing skills. This was achieved by research partners sharing responsibility and negotiating the writing process and content. The data suggest that this process led to the teacher researchers experiencing longer term learning and greater autonomy as writers, although not all benefitted from collaboration, possibly because of conflict due to perceived differences in commitment. The study's implications highlight the importance of participant commitment, and, in particular, a supportive institutional environment. In the current study, the mentor played a key role in supporting the intrinsic motivation of the teacher researchers, but also in providing the essential instrumental motivations of conference presentation and publication opportunities.

It is common practise to assess vocabulary through multiple choice and matching tasks. While these tasks may appear to be a straightforward test of vocabulary, many factors contribute to students perceptions of difficulty, which in turn may influence performance. This study aims to identify factors which influence student perceptions of difficulty through a questionnaire which measures students’ perceptions of difficulty related to the test taker factors. The study, set in an EAP context, deals specifically with academic vocabulary, which presents challenges in terms of word form, multiple meanings, and morphology. The results reveal that neither of age, length of studying English, or faculty had any effect on guessing the meaning and the perception of difficulty in vocabulary tests; however, gender is a factor at the perception of difficulty.