Institutional Constraints and Agentive Stances of Adult ESL Instructors in Fostering Culturally Responsive Spaces in Their Language Classrooms

Drawing on an ecological perspective of agency, this article provides insight into how two adult ESL instructors’ experiences and relationships influenced their capacity to exercise agency in fostering culturally responsive spaces in their classrooms. The study shed light on the several challenges adult ESL instructors face in supporting ELs and their choices to serve their culturally and linguistically diverse students. This article introduces new considerations for scholarship on language teacher agency by focusing on how language teachers exercise agency when experiencing constraints in promoting culturally responsive spaces in the language classrooms.