Leading Language Education Through Situated Judgment: Teacher Agency, Multilingual Practice, and Assessment Governance in Applied Linguistics

Language programme leaders decide how teachers may adapt curricula, which linguistic practices count in assessment, and when institutional consistency should constrain local judgment. This conceptual article reframes educational leadership through applied linguistics by integrating contingency and participatory leadership with recent work on teacher and learner agency, Global Englishes, translanguaging, and AI-mediated language assessment. A 2016 reflective assignment on English teaching, college administration, and conference coordination serves as an illustrative source of decision problems, not an empirical dataset. The article argues that leadership in language education is enacted through policy texts, rubrics, materials, interaction, and the allocation of professional authority. It proposes a situated judgment framework that diagnoses purpose, jurisdiction, expertise, urgency, consequences, participation, and review. Illustrations address differentiated English instruction, CEFR-aligned reform, multilingual norms, digital speaking assessment, and generative AI feedback. The central contribution is to connect institutional decision processes with the validity and equity of language learning opportunities. The framework yields testable propositions and a research agenda for longitudinal studies of language policy enactment and assessment governance; its effectiveness remains to be established empirically.