Negotiating teacher agency in English for Academic Purposes writing instruction: A case study of a Bangladeshi early-career teacher

Research on teacher agency in language education has expanded, yet limited empirical attention has been given to how teacher agency is negotiated in the everyday teaching of academic writing, particularly by early-career instructors working in under-resourced higher education contexts. This exploratory single-case study examines how an early-career English for Academic Purposes instructor in Bangladesh negotiated teacher agency while teaching academic writing within a resource-constrained public university. Guided by an ecological perspective on teacher agency, data were generated through a classroom observation, three semi-structured interviews, a reflective diary and a student focus group, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings show that teacher agency was enacted through situated pedagogical judgement, including curriculum pacing, epistemic mediation and constraint-aligned instructional recalibration, rather than through overt resistance or pedagogical innovation. These judgements were shaped by the interplay of past experiences, present institutional constraints and future-oriented professional concerns, and were often ethically ambivalent, simultaneously enabling student access to academic writing while reproducing institutional priorities. By foregrounding teacher agency as everyday, negotiated professionalism in English for Academic Purposes writing instruction, the study offers contextually grounded insights into early-career teacher practice in under-researched South Asian higher education settings and suggests the importance of supporting reflective, context-sensitive pedagogical judgement in English for Academic Purposes teacher education within resource-constrained environments.