Teacher Agency and the Enactment of Culturally Responsive Teaching within Prescribed ELA Curricula in the Arab Gulf Region

The increasing reliance on Western-oriented English Language Arts (ELA) curricula in bilingual and international schools across the Arab Gulf might pose challenges for teachers seeking to enact culturally responsive teaching (CRT) within prescribed curricular expectations. Although such curricula provide established content, materials, pacing, and assessment expectations, they may contain cultural perspectives and representations that do not fully reflect, or match students' local cultural experiences, identities, and values. This conceptual paper examines how teacher agency is central to the enactment of CRT within these contexts. Drawing on Gay's culturally responsive teaching framework, Sheets' Diversity Pedagogy Framework, and Priestley et al.'s ecological model of teacher agency, the paper conceptualizes culturally responsive curriculum adaptation as a process shaped by teachers' past experiences and knowledge, present contextual conditions, and future-oriented goals. The paper argues that teacher agency is central to how teachers interpret, evaluate, adapt, and supplement prescribed ELA materials in relation to students' cultural identities, while negotiating institutional and curricular expectations. Based on this synthesis, the paper proposes four interrelated propositions explaining how teachers' prior experiences, present contextual conditions, and future-oriented goals shape culturally responsive ELA curriculum adaptation. Culturally responsive curriculum adaptation is therefore conceptualized as emerging through the ecological achievement of teacher agency rather than as a practice occurring independently of contextual constraints.