Recent years, language teachers have been increasingly expected to design, or adapt materials amid the changing educational environment. Technological developments have motivated teachers to utilize multimodal resources such as videos, augmented reality games, and pictures as pedagogical materials (Guerrettaz and Johnston, 2013). In addition, the rise of English as a global lingua franca have urged language teachers, particularly those in EFL contexts to design locally appropriate materials to claim ownership of English. Moreover, the rise of independent publishing has offered more fertile soil for language teachers to develop and publish language learning materials than ever before. In light of these recent contextual changes, it has become imperative for researchers to closely explore how language teachers engage with language learning and teaching materials focusing on language teachers as materials developers, a role attached with increasing attention. However, most studies on materials development have focused on materials evaluation, materials use and the procedures and principles of designing materials, while language teachers as materials developers in designing locally appropriate materials remains under-explored (Garton & Graves, 2014; Guerrettaz et al., 2018). Therefore, it becomes urgent to understand teachers’ experiences in taking up this role of materials developers. 

Enlightened by Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory, teachers would encounter different levels of challenges in teacher change. At the macro level, reform mandates are commonly imposed by “political and economic elites who advocate, fund, and politically implement educational reforms” (Costigan, 2017, P. 199). However, due to their limited knowledge of “actual situations of teachers; the actual ecology of classrooms” (Costigan, 2018, p.223), the mandates they present are difficult to interpret, understand and put into practice on the part of teachers. Besides, traditional culture should be taken into account to understand challenges for teachers in implementing educational reforms. For instance, it has been found that some of the notions like “obedience” in Confucianism as a popular ideology in China have profoundly influenced teachers’ transformation in educational reforms. At the meso level, one of the most salient challenges concerns school policy, mandates, and school culture, which has been pointed out in a review of publications during the years 2000 to 2010 in Teaching and Teacher Education (Avalos, 2011). Limited access to material resources and professional support discourages language teachers from trialling new practice. Particularly, training opportunities have been claimed to be needed by teachers to support them in implementing reforms effectively and efficiently (Fang & Garland 2013). At the micro level, teachers are very likely to experience emotional disturbance in assuming new roles expected by educational reforms (Fullan, 2015). Moreover, belief changes have proved to be challenging for language teachers. For example, Hennessy et al. (2015) found that teachers’ beliefs in their students’ lack of capacity in interactive learning and in using spreadsheets represented a powerful hindering factor in teachers’ use of new pedagogy. All in all, language teachers could face multi-level challenges when playing expected roles in educational reforms at the macro, meso and micro levels, which can inform my study in exploring language teachers’ experiences of learning to become teaching material developers.

In brief, despite more expectations on language teachers playing the role of materials developers, little research has paid attention on this. Considering the different levels of challenges in teacher change, the present study aims to explore language teachers’ experiences of developing materials, with a focus on their experienced challenges and responses to these challenges. In the presentation, I will show you the findings to answer the first research question:  What challenges do language teachers encounter in material development?

The present study uses multimethod approach to gaining a more comprehensive perspective of the complex phenomena, i.e., language teachers as materials developers (Hesse & Biber, 2015). More specifically, it combines semi-structured interviews and document collection which covers meeting minutes, policy documents, teachers’ personal notes, and reference materials, through which qualitative data were collected. The study used a purposeful sampling strategy (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Punch, 2009). At the micro level, I intended to involve language teachers with multiple teaching experiences for the reason that teachers’ belief change in teacher learning is related to teaching experiences. Teachers’ teaching experiences ranged from two to 25 years, almost covering the range of a career life. Apart from that, the teachers’ educational background was considered as one of the criteria as this factor could result in differing challenges in their lived experiences. In light of this, language teachers were recruited with such different educational experiences as master’s degree in Literature, Applied Linguistics, PhD in Applied Linguistics and Education. Each of the 15 participants took one interview so as to probe into the complexity of their learning experiences as materials developers broadly. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes and patterns of language teachers experiences as materials developers. With recognized flexibility and independence of theory and epistemology (Braun & Clarke, 2006), this method was used in the study for its potential in offering a detailed, yet complex account of data. To ensure trustworthiness in this study, peer debriefing, member check, and audit trail were used.

The findings reveal that at the macro level, there are ideological issues, challenges related to the publishing market, and teacher assessment policy. Challenges at the institutional level are found to be associated with team collaboration and institutional resources. Challenges related to individual teachers are emotional challenges, knowledge challenges and difficulties in dealing with role conflict. Challenges relating to the task of materials development include materials selection, materials creation, materials adaptation, and task design. Moreover, data analysis indicates that there are interactions among these issues at diverse levels. There are interactions among various levels. For example, influenced by the ideological issues, teacher assessment policy, and publishing market, institutions required or expected teachers to incorporate Chinese dominant ideologies in materials development and play multiple roles including those of researchers, teachers, and materials developers. These varying demands contribute to teachers’ challenges at the individual level, such as role conflict and challenges in materials selection, materials adaptation, materials creation, and task design. In addition, individual teachers were also directly influenced by cultural and educational values dominant in Chinese macro context and this led to challenges such as relating to selecting ideologically appropriate materials. Furthermore, there is institutional agency at the meso level with some institutions ignoring materials development policy and providing only limited support for language teachers, further constraining teachers’ materials development. Next, individual teachers were also able to influence team collaborations at the institutional level, as individual teachers had little motivation or knowledge, and then delay the materials development schedule. Furthermore, at the individual level, teachers’ lack of diverse knowledge, such as content knowledge and materials development knowledge resulted in negative emotions that further constrained teachers’ materials development. And the conflict between teachers’ ought self and expected self also led to emotional challenges.

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