YOGI MAHMUD (THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA)

MEDIATING AGENCY AMIDST DEVICE-RESTRICTED TEACHING: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY OF ISLAMIC EFL SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS : TEACHER EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Recent studies have highlighted that teachers exercise agency while facing challenging instructional changes, such as teaching during the pandemic. Although studies on teacher agency, or teachers’ purposeful judgment to act, have gained significant attention, studies within Islamic EFL settings remain underexplored. This study explores factors influencing agency in two Indonesian EFL teachers, Arina and Jajang, from private Islamic boarding senior high schools with restrictions on mobile phone use for learning. Data were collected through three episodic interviews capturing the teachers’ experiences before, during, and after the pandemic. To analyse the interviews, this study employed Braun and Clarke’s (2022) thematic analysis through NVivo 14. The preliminary findings indicate that teacher agency was influenced by personal factors such as beliefs about technology use; relational factors such as teacher collaboration; and contextual factors such as school and government policies. While facing contradictions, such as restrictions on device use and encouragement to use technology in learning at the same time, the teachers exercised their agency through an intricate decision-making process based on these intertwined factors. This ongoing study underscores the need for professional support to help teachers navigate the complexities of technology use and policy constraints in unique educational settings like Islamic boarding schools.

Yogi Saputra Mahmud is currently undertaking PhD in Education at The University of Western Australia. He completed his MTESOL degree at Monash University. Upon graduation, he works as an English lecturer at President University, Indonesia. His research interests include teacher agency, identity, professional development, and narrative inquiry-based studies.