English language teacher educators’ identity tensions: academic publishing struggles and agency in Chile

Drawing on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with six early-career teacher educators working in English language teacher education (ELTE) programs in Chilean universities, the research explores how these educators navigate the pressures to publish in English-language journals while simultaneously engaging with local pedagogical, linguistic, and community commitments. Conceptually framed by decolonial theory, knowledge production, and teacher education, the study demonstrates that teacher educators are frequently caught in a double bind: they must meet institutional demands for international visibility and research output – defined by neoliberal and Euro-American norms – while remaining responsive to the sociocultural realities of teaching in Spanish-dominant, under-resourced contexts. These publishing pressures intersect with broader hierarchies of language, power, and coloniality that shape knowledge production in global ELT. Despite these constraints, teacher educators resist dominant epistemic paradigms through following agentive practices: drawing on locally grounded knowledges, fostering collaborative scholarly networks, and asserting alternative conceptions of academic impact and relevance.