Bilingual Education (BE) is a globally established educational approach implemented in both strong and weak forms (Baker, 2006). In Sri Lanka, the Bilingual Education Programme (BEP) was introduced in 2001 with the dual aim of fostering bilingualism and biliteracy, while promoting social cohesion and ethnolinguistic harmony in a multilingual and multi-ethnic community. The terms Bilingual Education and English Medium Instruction (EMI)  are typically used interchangeably, reflecting the privileged status assigned to English in a post colonial education system. However, even after two decades, Sri Lanka has no explicit national BE policy, which has led to inconsistent implementation, inequities in access, and persistent gaps in teacher education and pedagogies (Wijesekera, 2018). Although Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) was prescribed as the recommended pedagogical approach in 2016, less than 20% of BE teachers and teacher educators apply CLIL in practice while CLIL is largely absent from the teacher education curricula (National Education Commission, 2024).

In this context, the importance of teacher agency in navigating the pedagogical and institutional tensions inherent in BE classrooms, and the urgent need for empirical, evidence-based insights into teachers’ professional experiences have been highlighted (National Education Commission, 2024). However, empirical research examining how BE teachers in Sri Lanka perceive, negotiate, and enact their agency remains scarce and  has created a critical gap in understanding the lived realities of the bilingual classrooms, especially in relation to how teachers navigate daily challenges, and make critical  pedagogical choices amidst contextual constraints and affordances.

This ongoing  doctoral study addresses this gap by exploring the tensions, choices and experiences of BE teachers in junior secondary classrooms (Grades 6–9) in relation to their agency enactment. The aim of this study is to explore agency from the perspective of BE teachers’ pedagogical practices and choices, as well as affordances and constraints that shape their agency.The overarching research question is “How do Sri Lankan bilingual teachers navigate tensions and make choices in their agency enactment”,  supplemented by  the following:

1.      In what ways do bilingual teachers in Sri Lanka perceive and enact their agency at work?

2.      What are the pedagogical practices teachers apply to demonstrate teacher agency in BE classrooms?

3.      What contextual factors enable or constrain the enactment of teacher agency in bilingual education?

Theoretical framework 

Human agency has been conceptualized in multiple ways by researchers from diverse disciplines.  For Emirbayer and Mische (1998) agency  was a temporal construct while  Bandura (2001) viewed it as an individual’s intentional actions. In relation to teachers , Zembylas ( 2003) explained agency as an essential element of teacher identity construction and highlighted the role of emotions. 

This study is grounded in a two- layered theoretical framework including the ecological framework of agency (Priestley et al., 2015) and the socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978). The ecological model of agency proposed by Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson in 2015 is used as the primary framework as its core dimensions are mapped to this investigation. The ecological model conceptualizes agency as an emergent phenomenon that is the outcome of the interplay of individual capacities, environmental conditions, cultural and material contexts over time.

The three dimensions of ecological agency i.e. Iterational, Practical-evaluative and Projective agency capture multiple aspects of BE teachers’ agency enactment process. These dimensions provide the holistic framework to understand how BE teachers perceive and enact agency in their classrooms.This framework is complemented by the sociocultural approach that foregrounds social interaction, negotiations, and cultural contexts that can shape the agency of BE teachers. These two  perspectives provide a complimentary framework to explore how bilingual teacher agency is shaped , enacted or constrained in this Global South context.

This study adopts a qualitative research design, framed as a case study, driven by a narrative approach. As the study investigates how Sri Lankan bilingual teachers enact agency within the institutional, cultural, and pedagogical conditions of bilingual education, a qualitative approach is appropriate to capture and explore teachers’ meaning-making processes, professional choices, and pedagogical practices in context. This is a highly human-centric phenomenon that is best understood through individual experiences and sense-making (Eteläpelto et al., 2013) and a qualitative study provides the space to explore multiple meanings and lived experiences of humans (Creswell, 2013). A case study design with a narrative focus is used since case studies are appropriate when conducting in-depth studies of specific individuals in distinctive contexts (Yin, 2018) and compliments this study because it focuses on BE classrooms in urban and rural schools while affording an in-depth exploration of contextualized challenges, classroom realities and agency enactment. The narrative approach facilitates the study of BE teachers’ perceptions and their agency enactment through their own stories and reflections (Mertova & Webster, 2019). Study participants are selected through purposive sampling, focusing on bilingual teachers working in junior secondary bilingual classrooms, (Grades 6–9) in both urban and rural schools. Sampling targets participants with diverse profiles with varied teaching experience, subject expertise , and institutional contexts as agency is significantly shaped by teachers’ professional histories as well as their current working environments.This research will collect data using narrative style in-depth interviews, classroom observations and reflective audio journals. In-depth interviews are critical when exploring meaning and lived experiences in qualitative studies (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2018), as they help capture agency enactment and BE teachers’ negotiation of classroom demands. Interviews are designed to explore BE teachers’ recounting of pedagogical choices, language usage and professional challenges within bilingual classroom contexts that encapsulate teachers’ past experiences, present environmental factors , and future aspirations. In addition, classroom observations will shed light on real-time experiences (Tracy, 2012), i.e. participants’ enactment of teacher agency through language mediation, classroom interaction and pedagogical choices made in BE classrooms. Observations are non-participant and use a theoretically informed observation protocol. In addition, reflective audio journals will capture the dynamic meaning making process of the participant teachers across contexts (Verma, 2021). Data analysis will be a thematic analysis and this doctoral study will produce three journal articles on teacher agency enactment in urban schools, rural schools and a comparative study as well.

The initiated doctoral study will make significant contributions to bilingual education in Sri Lanka at multiple levels. At the pedagogical level, the potential findings are expected to provide empirically grounded insights into how bilingual teachers make pedagogical choices in a context where a coherent bilingual policy and systematic pedagogical training are absent. At the level of teacher education and professional development, the insights will inform national level dialogues on BE classroom practices, helping to design informed pedagogical training , professional development and mentorship programs aligned with the realities of bilingual classrooms. Furthermore, insights regarding pedagogical practices from participant bilingual teachers can be incorporated into teacher education curricula and support prospective teachers’ agency development. The actionable knowledge and recommendations provided by the study can directly impact the BE framework in Sri Lanka and provide a model for other multilingual contexts. At a theoretical level, this study has the potential to contribute to empirical research on bilingual teacher agency in the Global South by using the two- layered theoretical framework combining the ecological and sociocultural lenses. With this comprehensive framework, the findings will potentially generate a nuanced account of agency as an emergent and dynamic phenomenon that is highly contextual. In addition, the study may also shed light on language and mediation in shaping agency enactment in bilingual classrooms and these insights will inform BE practitioners and researchers in similar Global South contexts. Furthermore, the study has the potential to provide evidence-based insights critical to policy discussions on bilingual education in Sri Lanka as it is grounded in BE teachers' lived experiences and professional choices. By shedding light on how teachers navigate policy ambiguities and enact agency at classroom level, the study can contribute to the development of more responsive, tailored and context-sensitive bilingual education policies.

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