“Follow your research career or choose your family”: Female language teachers’ agency in their research engagement

Abstract Despite their growing prominence in academia, female researchers have encountered a number of challenges emerging from their household, institutional and societal obligations. More specially, studies investigating female academics’ pursuits of research and publication from a situated perspective remain relatively limited. This study aims to explore the barriers hindering female Vietnamese teachers of English, their resilience and personal efforts in their research pursuits. Agency is utilised as the key theoretical construct to shed light on teachers’ research engagement in temporal and relational contexts that call for certain actions. Biographical data from the case studies of two female language teachers working at a public university in Ho Chi Minh City (aged 45 and 34 respectively) were gathered by using critical reflection and timeline interviews. Findings reveal the critical incidents underpinning the two teachers’ research involvement within the complexity of roles, socio-cultural norms and expectations concerning gender issues that are situated in different settings and at various timescales. These elements significantly impact on the ways in which they exercised their agency in fulfilling their research commitment and other obligations. The present study provides significant implications for policy makers and stakeholders in facilitating and promoting pro-active research involvement among female academics as well as enabling them to develop strategies for tackling the obstacles in their research endeavours.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Our paper discusses the barriers hindering female academics and their agentive efforts in their pursuits of research in the new era that places publication and research at the forefront of the academic career and professional mobility.The findings provide policy makers and stakeholders with insightful understandings of the contextual and personal challenges confronting female academics' research involvement, thus contributing to creating more viable conditions and devising strategies for tackling such hindrances in their research endeavours.

Introduction
Involvement in research has been an integral practice in academic contexts worldwide either as institutional obligations or personal research interest (Borg, 2009(Borg, , 2010;;M. B. Mehrani, 2015;Rahimi & Weisi, 2018;Thornley et al., 2004;Xu, 2014).Teachers' research engagement has been labelled in numerous ways such as "a prescriptive activity" (Xu, 2014, p. 256), "a form of professional development" (Atay, 2008, p. 140), or "systematic, rigorous enquiry" (Borg, 2009, p. 377) that sketches the differing levels at which teachers' professional and individual commitments are revealed.These activities can vary in intensity from gaining second-hand insights through reading research to developing hands-on experiences by actually conducting research (Atay, 2008).Driven by the opt-cited aphorism "publish or perish", academics are under the ongoing pressure of research performance (Dugas et al., 2020;Farsani & Babaii, 2019) in the face of the immense constraints on their research endeavours regarding funding, research capacity and experience, lack of mediation and particularly the teaching workload which is deemed as the primary responsibility of teachers (Barkhuizen et al., 2009;Borg, 2010;Gao et al., 2010;M. B. Mehrani, 2017;Roulston et al., 2005;Wyatta & Dikilitaş, 2016).Teachers also display various attitudes and strategies, or agency, partially mitigated by the research culture of their workplaces and the practicality associated with doing research (Borg, 2009;Kincheloe, 2003;Xu, 2014;Yayli, 2012).With the changes in research policies currently implemented in universities and educational institutions around the globe, teachers are immersed in new roles and masked in different emotions and identities (Dugas et al., 2020;Nguyen, 2016;Riley et al., 2003;A. Tran et al., 2017).Given the extensive number of studies on teacher research engagement, the impacts of gender on the resilience and research productivity of female academics tend to be overlooked, particularly in societies where women are still confined to highly traditional household roles (Cama et al., 2016;Cotterill & Letherby, 2005;Jung, 2015;Knodel et al., 2005;Nguyen, 2013;Ogbogu, 2009Ogbogu, , 2011)).As Bhalalusesa (1998) notes, "the challenges women experience in trying to achieve their career aspirations are mainly social-cultural, and psychologically deeply rooted in their traditional values and practices" (p.21).The present study thus aims to explore the constraints confronting female academics in their research endeavours and the ways in which they utilise their agency in fulfilling such commitments.
This study is among the few earliest attempts to reveal an entirely unacknowledged set of actions and assumptions underpinning specific cases of female researchers' pursuit of research and publication in the face of cultural, societal, organisational, and internal barriers.Hinging on the theoretical construct of agency, the present study sheds new light on the academic journey and research involvement of female teachers through snapshots of their bumpy lifeworlds from a temporal-relational perspective.This theoretical frame for exploring female researchers' research engagement is significant in providing in-depth reflections of the situational and contextual constraints on their individual circumstances and the idiosyncratic efforts they expended at both micro and macro levels.The study also contributes to the growing concern for gender equity in research engagement and empowerment of female academics with opportunities to exert their own roles, values, and voices in academia (Cama et al., 2016;Peng, 2020;Phan, 2023).

Teacher agency
Throughout their personal and academic lives, teachers constantly regulate themselves in their interaction with social others and reflect on such incidents as a way to inform their decision-making (Kalaja et al., 2015;White, 2016).Their conceptualisation of the world and reactions to contextual elements are contingent on their lived experiences.These processes are mediated by diverse socio-cultural factors that impact significantly on their cognition and behaviour (Biesta & Tedder, 2007).In fact, teachers continuously utilise their agency to resolve issues emerging from their day-to-day activities.Biesta et al. (2015) exhort that "agency denotes a quality of the engagement of actors with temporal-relational contextsfor-action, not a quality of the actors themselves" (p.626).Agency is not an internal attribute determining teachers' cognitive processing and actions; instead, it involves a nexus of relations emerging from specific contexts that informs teachers' decisions in their career path.This view of agency confirms the function of contexts and societal relationships in shaping and reshaping teachers' ways of thinking, acting and being over time (Kayi-Aydar, 2015).This shows how teachers are empowered and simultaneously challenged by societal and contextual affordances and constraints respectively.Agency is thus viewed not only as "an important dimension of teachers' professionalism" but also as "an emergent phenomenon of actorsituation transaction" (Biesta et al., 2015, pp. 625-626).
In her study with 20 teachers of foreign languages other than English who switched to teaching English due to socioeconomic and policy shifts in Vietnam, H. Tran (2018) found that the teachers displayed dynamic agency in which they "did not show their resistance, distantiation, or reframing by refusing to follow the change" (p.11).These teachers transitioned to the changing situations in their profession with mixed feelings and a hint of doubt about the effectiveness of the implementation of the new policy.The findings pointed to the fact that teachers were "active enactors of policy change at the grass-roots level, rather than [as] passive acceptors of it" (H.Tran, 2018, p. 12).Also hinging on teachers' emotional responses to professional circumstances and their stance in making evaluations and positioning themselves, White (2016) explored the ways in which a language teacher exercised her agency to resolve critical incidents arising from classroom interactions.This study revealed the interrelationships between affective stance attribution and agency with the latter taking control of the former across different timescales, substantiating the argument that agency emerges from the process of confrontation and from multiple voices.The thrust of the findings lies in the way the teacher authored herself in tackling professional incidents and her evaluation of the context and relationships that induced certain emotional, agentive and interactive responses.In a similar study, Hökkä et al. (2012) examined teacher educators' utilisation of agency in constructing their professional identities as they switched between teaching and researching.The results of this study reiterated the interplay between teaching and research involvement in teacher educators' work and provision of support for their researcher-identity constructions.These studies have portrayed teachers' diverse approaches to agentively tackling professional issues arising from the socio-cultural context embracing their daily practices.
Agency is presented as a dynamic element underpinning teachers' affective, behavioural and interpersonal responses to life circumstances and is implicated within a complicated contextual and relational nexus.

Females in academia
A number of contemporary studies have focused on cultural, societal, organisational, and internal barriers to female involvement in academia (Bhalalusesa, 1998;Cama et al., 2016;Cotterill & Letherby, 2005;Ogbogu, 2009Ogbogu, , 2011)).Cultural aspects are deemed as the utmost barrier that downplay women's role in many contexts, thus leading to their underrepresentation in academia (e.g., Sales, 1999;Sari, 2012;Schulz, 1998).Indeed, within a patriarchal and/or capitalist culture, women are tied to traditional responsibilities of caring, serving, conforming, and mothering (Acker & David, 1994).Women are imbued with the cultural roles of caretakers and nurturers when they are girls (Chodorow, 1978;Lewis, 1990;Thorne, 1993).Particularly, the cosmic female principles in traditional stories incorporate fertility, fidelity and submissiveness to her husband, and insanity, which informs the present image of Nepalese women (Schulz, 1998).An old man, for instance, told one Nepalese girl that "Why you girls have to study?After all you are going to work in the household, even though you are educated" (Schulz, 1998, p. 171).Equally, in Pakistani culture, women's social domains and work are determined by the teachings of Islam that place greater demands of child-rearing, farming, and household work on women and girls (Sales, 1999).The traditional status of the daughter-in-law, hence, is jeopardized in relation to her sisters-and mother-in-law when she contributes to her social employment instead of her childcare at home (Sales, 1999).In this sense, women are labelled as "motherliness, emotional, empathetic, peopleoriented, patient, less career-oriented, obedient", hindering their involvement in employment and other social activities (Sari, 2012, p. 2).
Societal factors have also found to be embedded barriers for female academics (Chakravarthy, 1986;Ogbogu, 2009).In most societies, men tend to perform the role of "providers" for their family while women are deeply entangled in their traditional role as mothers and homemakers (Bhalalusesa, 1998, p. 31).In other words, men grow very attached to societal activities to look for rewards and external statuses.Evetts (1990) states that women's career is socially perceived as a luxury to provide them with extras and fulfilment.Therefore, women are much obligated to take responsibility for their children, spouse, and extended family, which inherently conflicts with their career commitment (Kulis & Sicotte, 2002;Morrison et al., 2011;Sax et al., 2002;Toutkoushian et al., 2007;Wolfinger et al., 2008).Even in the circumstance of single women who are overloaded with responsibilities, or married women who receive much support or understanding of their husbands, they can find themselves disadvantaged (Bhalalusesa, 1998;Cotterill & Letherby, 2005).
The organisational structures, norms, and values in higher education can be regarded as other barriers for female academics (Cama et al., 2016;Cotterill & Letherby, 2005;Cubillo & Brown, 2003;Ogbogu, 2011).Contrary to the rapid shifts in gender equity, gender changes in higher education seems rather slow, even in high-income countries (Cotterill & Letherby, 2005).According to Ristad and Rigstad (2007), J. Williams (2001), and Cress and Hart (2009), academia is built on masculine ideal worker norms.It means that job schedules and organisational structures in educational environment remain relatively disadvantageous to those encumbered by family responsibilities (Mason & Goulden, 2002).Females tend to be denigrated as less committed or qualified to academia due to their overarching household concerns (Ogbogu, 2011).Also, there is a scarcity of research mentors for female academics have been found to provide female academics with networking, self-confidence, and career awareness to overcome such biases (Ogbogu, 2006(Ogbogu, , 2011)).
As a consequence of the long-standing hegemony of masculinity at societal and organisational level, women's internal barriers are also accountable for their under-representation in academia (Cubillo & Brown, 2003).Under pressure of full compliance with societal norms, female academics psychologically feel ashamed when they deeply get involved in career activities without devoting sufficient time to their family (Nguyen, 2013).Cubillo and Brown (2003) state that academic women feel diffident, uncompetitive and fearful of failure due to being overburdened, undervalued, and overlooked in a traditional academic environment.Other factors frequently connected to lengthy periods of training, dedicated effort, an interest in research work, and individual concerns about marital, family, or physical problems are attributable to the mounting pressure on women in academia (Angrist & Almquist, 1975;Maher et al., 2004;Ogbogu, 2011).

Teachers as researchers
Many of the identified benefits are easily predictable from language teachers' research engagement, and not difficult to find in the broader literature.Those benefits are very diverse, ranging from self-improvement to career development in academia.One benefit is that research engagement fosters language teachers' self-improvement.Indeed, language teachers via engagement in research are more reflective, analytical, and critical of teaching and learning incidents in their classrooms (Akyel, 2015;Atay, 2008;Borg, 2015).Research engagement develops language teachers' autonomy and confidence, which makes them less dependent and less vulnerable to external answers to any obstacles they confront (Borg, 2017), and more collaborative with other teachers, and researchers (Borg, 2014).The other benefit is that when language teachers are committed to doing research, they will deliver "better quality teaching and learning in individual classrooms" (Borg, 2010, p. 395).Language teachers, in particular, can integrate appropriate research evidence into their pedagogical practices (D. Williams & Coles, 2007), and their better insight on the nature of learning and teaching (Richards, 2010).From the perspective of classroom practitioners, they can even make their own theories on knowledge about learning and teaching (Borg & Alshumaimeri, 2012).Research engagement, therefore, is much beneficial for language teachers to fulfil their self-improvement, and career development in academia.
Despite the significance of research activities for English teachers, many scholars indicated that their involvement and investment in research activities remain an issue (Chau & Pham, 2022;Farsani & Babaii, 2019;M. B. Mehrani, 2015).To analyse the reasons behind the relatively low level of research commitment among English teachers, M. Mehrani and Behzadnia (2013) pointed to four primary shortcomings.First, English teachers have limited time due to overwhelming workload, shortage of knowledge of research methods, difficulties in accessing references, and unawareness of teachers' roles in research (Borg, 2009(Borg, , 2010;;M. B. Mehrani, 2015;Yayli, 2012).The second shortcoming relates to university restrictions on financial support for research and policies to promote research engagement (Borg, 2009;Yayli, 2012).Third, many teachers are not really confident with their own research capacity, considering research activities as challenging and complex (M.Mehrani & Behzadnia, 2013).Finally, English teachers receive less theoretical and methodological support, especially from leading experts in the process of their participation in research (M.Mehrani & Behzadnia, 2013).

Research design and instruments
This study draws on the case studies of two language teachers aiming to obtain in-depth and individualised insights into the lifeworld of each of the teachers and facilitated the ways in which they unfolded their personal stories (Duff, 2012;Yin, 2017).This design is optimal for exhaustively portraying the complexity of internal and external struggles, and varied emotional nuances implicated in female researchers' tough academic journey (Ebneyamini & Moghadam, 2018).Both personal and contextual elements on micro and macro scales are considered in interpreting the socio-culturally embedded nature of the teachers' agentive involvement in research and publication.These elements are highly useful for addressing the temporal-relational contexts-foraction view of agency (Biesta et al., 2015) as each teacher's accounts "provide indirect evidence at best as to how teachers chose to act and what the emotions were" (White, 2016, p. 580).The primary tools for gathering data included critical reflection (Fook, 2011) and timeline interviews (Adriansen, 2012).The participants were first invited to critically reflect on their research experiences, levels of research engagement and the issues that might have impacted on their research commitment.The critical reflection allows "a radical reworking of experience to fit better with a person's sense of self and personal history" (Fook, 2011, p. 59).They were then asked to identify the critical milestones or incidents occurring throughout the academic life that shifted their perspectives on research and present them as a timeline.The upward trend on the timeline indicated a positive change in their attitudes toward doing research whereas the downturns implied a negative experience they encountered.The input from the reflections and timelines were the basis for conducting interviews.Timeline interviews have been extensively used as a tool for an interviewee to "de-and re-construct their story" because "when trying to place events in chronological order, the interviewee sometimes discover that these events took place in a different order from what the person initially remembered" (Adriansen, 2012, p. 50).

Participant profiles
This case study derived data from two female language teachers Ms. Mai (aged 34) and Ms. Trang (aged 45) (pseudonyms are used) who were invited to join this project through convenience sampling and on voluntary basis.Only two participants joined this project as each female teacher had her own work-related background and family circumstances whose uniqueness was prioritised.Also, this study focused primarily on their individualised exercise of agency in their research engagement.Ultimately, the amount of time and personal effort required from the participants in providing in-depth reflections, devising the timelines and attending interviews was another major deterrent to inclusion of more teachers.At the time of this study, they worked at a public university in Southern Vietnam, and held master's degrees in Applied Linguistics.This research site was chosen for the ease of access as two of the researchers worked there.The faculty comprised over thirty teachers but there were only twelve full-time staff including three males and nine females; the others were guest lecturers on part-time or fixed term contracts.Ms. Mai had been working as an English language teacher for eight years and was one of the youngest academics of the department where she worked.She showed a strong interest in attending research training courses and had successfully obtained grants for a number of institutional research projects.Ms. Trang was 45 years old and had been involved in language teaching at university for 12 years.Ms. Mai was married with a small child and lived with her family-in-law while Ms. Trang entered a marital life at an age that was rather late for most Vietnamese women.

Data analysis
Content analysis of the accounts from the participants was conducted based on critical theory that "attempts to understand conflict and oppression in order to bring about social change" (Winkle-Wagner et al., 2019, p. 5).The data were examined carefully with a focus on the conflicts that arose in the participants' liveworld leading them to use their agency in resolving them.The data analysis process comprised three main stages: first, the teachers' reflections were iteratively scrutinized for the tentative themes; next, these initial themes were juxtaposed with the timelines to align them with the incidents the teachers marked thereof; finally, the researchers read the interview transcript thoroughly to develop the common codes in the stories unveiled by the teachers during the timeline interviews.The themes emerging from the synthesis of the codes included the teachers' agentive effort in balancing their life, their struggles with pressures imposed by various sociocultural factors, and their agentive decision regarding their priorities between their academic and social lives.

Results
This section reports on the challenges that the two female language teachers encountered in their research engagement, and the ways in which these teachers exercised their agency in their pursuit of research in the face of the personal and professional affordances and constraints embracing their research practices and the incidents arising from various temporal-relational contexts.

Balancing research and family commitments
Work-family balance was a major hindrance for the two female language teachers contributing to their failing fulfilment in both or one of their research and family obligations.As a mother, a daughter, and a married woman, Ms. Mai found herself in a constant work-family conflict and a family-work conflict as unfolded in the following: Taking the former into consideration, the time devoted to and the strain created by my research-oriented self-development interfere with my responsibilities towards my spouse, my son and my parents. . . .Regarding the latter, troubles and difficulties at home, especially traditional values attached to the institution of marriage, and the cultural expectations of a woman as a wife and a mother living together with my husband's family in turn impair the progress my research-oriented career.(int-Mai) Ms. Mai's internal contradiction lies in the fact that her intensive involvement in research work hindered her from fulfilling her traditional roles in the marital life while her engagement in mothering and caring acted as a deterrent to her research progress.To meet the high expectation in academic work such as the demanding workload, research productivity and attainment of a full tenure, female faculties are inclined to postpone childbearing, skip significant events in their children's lives, and return to work earlier after giving birth (Gatta & Roos, 2004;Mason & Goulden, 2002).Conversely, marriage and childbearing obligations have been found to interrupt their research activities (Ogbogu, 2009).Even in the circumstance of Ms. Trang who currently had no child and received a great deal of support from her husband and parents-in-law, she also experienced obstacles invisibly caused by her late marriage, her role as a traditional wife, and other life concerns as follows: This was my next turning point when I decided to get married at the age of 42.In spite of the fact that my in-laws as well as my husband have always advocated me, my too much tardiness of marriage has changed heterogeneously my working life since 2018.In our first year of marriage, like most of Vietnamese newly-weds, we made evident decisions about estate planning, preparing for the cost of childcare and covering my own life insurance contracted from 2009.(rfn-Trang) Bhalalusesa (1998) presented a similar scenario "where the husband is very understanding and supportive, a woman can still be disadvantaged" (p.30).As an exercise of agency, Ms. Trang decided to transiently postpone her research work to be entirely dedicated to her family obligations as "our financial picture has collapsed when we came to the second year of marriage due to the time consumption and a fortune of money of doing IVF (In vitro fertilisation) and my apartment periodical payments" (rfn-Trang).These examples illustrate the shaping function of sociocultural and relational contexts on the teachers' agentive decisions regarding the amount of effort and time expended on either research work or family whereby the two teachers represented two rather opposing orientations.

Internal struggles initiated by the feelings of shame and diffidence
The accounts from the two teachers revealed their overwhelming concerns over the traditional caring and nurturing roles resulting in a feeling of shame and lack of confidence.Such internal conflicts existing in her personal and professional lives became so intensive that Ms. Mai developed a feeling of guilt for not providing sufficient care for her son and not fulfilling other household obligations.As she claimed, I was entangled in a high degree of discomfort or even guilt.Sometimes I spent too much time at work for my research activities and thought of myself as an unfulfilling mother for leaving my son at home with his paternal grandparents and not looking after him.I also felt guilty of not paying regular visits to my biological parents.(int-Mai) The impositions associated with the expected roles performed by women was deeply internalised in Ms. Mai's mindset and were translated into her perceived lack of integrity.In her circumstance, she agentively opted for her research commitment at the expense of not being able to respond to household responsibilities, especially those toward her son.Phan ( 2023) presented a similar scenario in which female doctoral students shared the same experiences of being guilty as a mother.An opposite choice was made by Ms. Trang as she conceded that "To become a researcher, one needs to be persistent and diligent, but I am not . . .Taking care of my family is a must" (rfn-Trang).In relation to this, Cubillo and Brown (2003) pointed out that female faculties even conceptualised themselves as "lack of confidence, lack of competitiveness and a fear of failure" as the result of being overburdened by the marital life (p.281).Here we can see the power of teacher agency in the decision-making process in which Ms. Trang evaluated herself as incompetent and withdrew from the research work to wholly focus on her family life whereas Ms. Mai was stuck in an internal struggle of being an unfulfilled mother, wife and daughter-in-law.These findings provide corroborating evidence reiterating the significant impact of socio-cultural factors which reward women for being nurturers and caretakers (Chodorow, 1978;Lewis, 1990;Thorne, 1993) on teachers' agency and behaviour (Ahearn, 2001;Biesta & Tedder, 2007).

Critical incidents impacting on teachers' research engagement
Both of the participants hold a master's degree in Applied Linguistics.The postgraduate program shifted their perspectives on the value of research and contributed to enhancing their research awareness.According to van Lier ( 2008), a high level of awareness was one of three core features to inform their research involvement.In Ms. Mai's view, "While I was still at an undergraduate student, my father advised me on my academic pathway.He said I needed to hold a master's degree to be qualified for a lecturer position. . . .My main goal at the time was to be able to work in a university or a college" (int-Mai).In retrospect of her initial purpose of taking the postgraduate program, Ms. Mai confided that she had not thought of the potential research components that she could derive from it.During the course, she agentively took the opportunity to "put into practice the knowledge and theory I gathered from this program. . . .I could see the connection between my studies and my work.I found this an invaluable opportunity.I did the research with great inspiration and interest" (rfn-Mai).Similarly, Ms. Trang' experiences in the master's program also helped her to become more involved in doing research.In the words of Ms Trang, "Prior to my postgraduate course, I had simply made questions to survey students.After the course, I could design a more professional survey by using a two-tailed test" (int-Trang).These findings show that postgraduate education substantially contributed to upgrading teachers' research capacities and their perceptions of research (Bai, 2018;Borg, 2010).From this point of departure, the two participants became more involved in research: I am not committed to doing research for any materialistic rewards or building a strong profile for doctoral scholarship applications.I am keen on it and I find it highly valuable for my present teaching career.(int-Mai) After completing my postgraduate studies, I myself was able to solve all my issues in relation to my work at the public high school. . . .Doing research helped me learn from other researchers about the teaching issues concerning me, and I can apply their valid and reliable findings to solve them without spending much time thinking on my own.(int-Trang) The two teachers commenced to integrate research into their teaching at varying degrees, either conducting empirical research or reading and using research as a way to improve their classroom practices (Atay, 2008).However, the two teachers also encountered certain ups and downs in their research trajectories as illustrated in Figures 1 and 2.
Ms. Mai had been proactively and dynamically involved in doing research by looking for learning resources and opportunities for research and publication.However, one critical incident that pushed her to agentively reflect on her research career occurred when she presented her institutional research project: "I was utterly disappointed with myself for the undesirable outcome of the project which had received high expectations from the university stakeholders.A board member commented that he did not see any of its potential implications for the university" (int-Mai).In relation to this, Kayi-Aydar (2015) notes that teachers' ways of thinking and acting altered over time as a consequence of societal and contextual constraints.

The scaffolding roles of social others
The two teachers also attributed their academic and research career to the scaffolding roles social others through their interaction in multiple contexts over time.When Ms. Mai commenced her work in the current university, she found new opportunities to quench her passion for research.She participated in various events for developing her research skills, through which she became a member of a new research network.In her words, "I attended a meeting for young lecturers where I met one of the most prolific researchers of the university.I told him my passion for doing research and requested his advice on how to undertake research" (int-Mai).In this way, Ms. Mai agentively looked for opportunities to sharpen her research skills as well as found "a community of practice" (Wenger, 1998) for herself.Building a research network and collaborating with colleagues were found to be highly beneficial for teachers in their research engagement (Borg, 2009;Chau & Pham, 2022;M. B. Mehrani, 2014M. B. Mehrani, , 2015;;Peng, 2020).Additionally, her workplace interaction with colleagues who had recently completed their doctoral programs overseas contributed to sustain her interest in doing research as revealed in the following account: When I joined a project on educational psychology with a colleague, this experience consolidated my belief in the rewards of doing research.The project had huge implications for my child rearing and education.It helped me to be better prepared for supporting my son's cognitive development.I was comforted by the idea that I had not been selfish to my family, especially my son, as I could apply my research findings in bringing up and education him in a more scientific manner.(int-Ms.Mai) One of the rewards of such research engagement was that she became a more informed mother in terms of childrearing.For Ms. Trang, the revised research policy at her university required her to re-assess her research performance as she stated, "under the pressure of the recent update on the research policy which imposed higher demands on research hours and publications in recognised journals, I obviously found myself not a competent researcher" (int-Trang).She thus had to resort (Tml-Ms.Mai) to the support of her more research-efficient colleagues: "Thanks to my dear colleagues who came back to work after their studies overseas, they brought new ideas and invited me to join some exciting projects" (int-Trang).The institutional research obligations refreshed Ms. Trang's attitudes toward research for which she agentively took her colleagues offers as a way to improve her research skills and output.This points to the fact that research involvement was captured by actors of multiple contexts and the temporal-relational contexts of action (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998).

Discussion and conclusion
This case study has provided glimpses of the lifeworld of two female academics that entail a nexus of personal, interpersonal and contextual challenges that called for certain agentive actions in their research pursuits.Through their research experiences, the two participants, Ms. Mai and Ms. Trang, demonstrated commitment to "crossing the traditional sex barrier in academic and career fields" at varying degrees (Bhalalusesa, 1998, p. 32).Their accounts reflected the impacts of life circumstances as well as personal and societal elements encompassing their research endeavours including family obligations, socio-cultural roles, institutional requirements, personal aspirations and their retrospective evaluation of their research performance and the degree of fulfilment of familial and social duties (Cama et al., 2016;Nguyen, 2013;Ogbogu, 2011;Wyatta & Dikilitaş, 2016).In this vein, Xu (2014) notes that "Teachers manage personal, workplace, and socio-cultural influences with their agency" (p.256).The teachers' research interest and involvement were attributable to their undertaking of the Master's in Applied Linguistics programs which was considered a unique initial experience significantly sharpening their research skills and helping them "gain heightened awareness of how they can contribute to the research on education" (Kincheloe, 2003, p. 18).From this point of departure, however, the two teachers took their individualised routes in their research engagement as a result of their agentive responses to contextual challenges and affordances.In the case of Ms. Mai, the constant work-family and family-work conflict arising from her endeavours to fulfil both household and academic roles imposed a substantial amount of pressure on her and to some extent a sense of guilt and shame.This finding corroborates the observation that "Researchers who are unable to carve out substantial time to engage in research are expressing the greatest levels of identity stress" (Dugas et al., 2020, p. 320).These negative feelings were also identified in the research conducted by A. Tran et al. (2017) that investigated the impact of research policy on Vietnamese lecturers' academic identities and emotions.Irrespective of such challenges, she made unfailing efforts to pursue her passion for research by enrolling in research training courses, conducting research at various levels, and seeking academic support from colleges and established researchers as well as opportunities for publications.Conversely, Ms. Trang was more inclined to prioritise her family life over her research engagement.She commenced her marital life at an age that was rather late for most Vietnamese women and had to alter all her prior personal and academic plans to adjust to this milestone.A similar scenario is found in Ogbogu's (2011) study on gender inequality in academia in Nigeria where "women's research activities fluctuate and are compromised for the family" (p.22).Consequently, Ms. Trang became deeply involved in the financial aspect of her new life at the expense of her research engagement and performance.In this way, she agentively decided to abandon further involvement in doing research because "women tend to view family responsibilities as an inseparable commitment around which a career should be fitted" (Bhalalusesa, 1998, p. 30).The accounts and research trajectories of the two teachers and their changing attitudes revealed that their agency is located in multiple contexts of the university, their home and other venues for social interaction that transcended diverse points in time, leading these teachers to continually "define and re-define their past, present and future images" (A.Tran et al., 2017, p. 73).
Findings in the present study reiterate the reasons behind the underrepresentation of female academics in the research landscape and the constraints in their research engagement (Cama et al., 2016;Nguyen, 2013;Ogbogu, 2011;van den Besselaar & Sandström, 2016).Female researchers are entangled in various cultural, social, institutional and household obligations that require intensive exercise of agency in tackling these challenges to fulfil their diverse roles.These issues raise questions regarding the equity between male and female academics as well as female traversals across multiple timescales and contexts in which they are subjected to differing responsibilities.For the former, Sales (1999) propounds that "An education system that is seeking equitable provision should surely aspire towards equity in its own personnel" (p.417).This line of argument addresses the necessity of ensuring the role balance between males and females in academic settings (Jung, 2015;van den Besselaar & Sandström, 2016).For the latter, a shift in research policies that take account of "organisational, collegial, emotional, intellectual, and practical support structures" (Borg, 2009, p. 377) would substantially facilitate female academics in their research pursuits.As revealed by the two case studies, collegial and practical support are highly needed for them to stride forward in their research commitment.Also, this will contribute significantly to assisting female researchers in bridging their gaps in research experience and competencies resulting from the pressure of responding to varying roles and obligations (Farsani & Babaii, 2019).Concurrently, Xu (2014) notes that "Research should not be promoted as a prescriptive activity for teachers, but as part of a dynamic learning system in which these stakeholders negotiate and collaborate on a regular basis" (p.256).Such dynamicity and negotiability would provide a rich platform for female academics to bring forward their concerns and difficulties, and together they could establish a "community of practice" (Wenger, 1998, p. 72) in which research strategies and initiatives are shared.The value of this consists in building a sustainable network whereby female teachers and researchers can agentively and confidently pursue their research interest, sharpen their research skills and see an evident source of support available to them (Barkhuizen et al., 2009;Chau & Pham, 2022;Gao et al., 2010).
The present study addresses the issue of gender equity in research engagement through the portraits of female researchers' constraints and struggles in their research journey by interpreting their agency from a temporal-relational perspective.This theorical lens is useful in depicting both micro and macro elements of context embracing the lifeworld of each researcher and justifying their decisions and actions in their pursuit of research.It captures the ongoing changes occurring in their personal and academic lives and the mediation of idiosyncratic as well as sociocultural factors attributable to their degrees of research involvement at different stages and in specific circumstances.The value of this view of agency lies in not only the context overarching the teachers' research engagement but also the temporal nature of agency.In other words, agency is a shifting construct that traverses time, context and relationships accounting for the variations in the research commitment and investment of the teachers in this study.Further, the case study design contributes to offering more rounded reflections of the teachers as the primary actors in their research journey within their own context, social relationships and norms.Each of the teachers, drawing own their personal and social networks and the resources afforded across settings, is responsible for their agentive behavior seen as "temporal-relational contexts-foraction" (Biesta et al., 2015, p. 626).As no two teachers are the same in terms of "historical background, physical setting, and other institutional and political contextual factors (Ebneyamini & Moghadam,p. 2), this design is aptly significant in showcasing their situated struggles and agentive decisions in their academic lives.This study thus provides a robust theoretical and methodological frame for investigating such a complex construct as teacher agency embedded in a intricate temporal-relational nexus.This case study relied on the critical reflections and timeline interview data from solely two teachers as its main aim was to illustrate the challenges they encountered and their agency in their research involvement within their specific their workplace, family and other settings.The perspectives of other participants such as female academics' male coworkers or spouses were not examined.Future researchers should explore the views of such stakeholders to gain an insightful understanding of female researchers' barriers, resilience, and personal efforts in their research pursuits.However, this study usefully provides situated evidence of how female academics pursue their research and publication in the face of cultural, societal, organisational, and internal barriers.It is significant to both stakeholders and policy makers in fostering the proactive research participation among female researchers and helping them formulate strategies for overcoming the obstacles in their research endeavours.