Doing useful research, or wanting to do research, or not having sufficient skills to do research are ongoing concerns for teachers, despite an increasing expectation that teacher research should be part of a teacher’s professional life. Cases in this chapter look at high school teacher-researchers in Vietnam, an MA student choosing a dissertation topic in the UK, and an ethical dilemma experienced by a student teacher while on a teaching practicum in the US.

This opening chapter goes straight to the heart of what language teachers do – classroom teaching. It includes cases set in seven different countries and in primary, high, and private language schools, as well as college and university. It covers topics as diverse as teaching in large classes, translanguaging, and using AI in an academic writing class.

Some teachers and teacher educators take on quite significant leadership roles, such as serving as a new president of a teacher association in Thailand, but all teachers exhibit leadership in some way. It may be relatively small-scale, such as attempting to decolonize the curriculum in one program in Colombia or establishing a collaborative teacher research group in a school in Botswana. Diverse teacher leadership possibilities such as these are represented in the cases in this chapter.

All teachers are in some way involved in the assessment of their learners, whether it be informal classroom-based assessments or preparing them for external examinations. This chapter offers cases that raise dilemmas teachers face when their work relates to language learner assessment. It covers topics such as too much internal assessment, the pressure of external public examinations, post-entry university language assessment, and students copying off each other.

Teachers’ relationships with their students are the focus of this chapter. These relationships can determine the outcomes of learning, but also affect the professional and emotional lives of teachers. The cases in this chapter examine how teacher-student relationships unfold in diverse multicultural contexts and cover topics such as being a Black teacher in Japan, compromising the privacy of a gay primary school teacher in Canada, and knowing students’ names.

Each case in this chapter examines the experiences of a language learner from a different country, usually from the perspective of their teacher. Learners are the people who teachers interact with the most in their professional lives and are often the cause of dilemmas they encounter. The chapter covers topics such as gender identity in the classroom, teaching dedicated older learners, and teaching a learner with suspected ADHD.

There are multiple dimensions to the work that language teachers and teacher educators do in their institutions, and beyond, besides teaching in classrooms and doing research. They all perform some sort of professional service, be it administrative or committee work or taking on management and leadership roles. Professional service is the focus of this chapter, and cases include meeting with dissatisfied parents, serving on a Department of Education working group, and giving a talk to pre-service teachers.

Effective language teaching and learning means managing instructional activities in the classroom, managing students and any issues they present, and managing one’s own professional conduct and learning. Cases in this chapter examine management issues, from New York City in the USA, to Thailand, to Poland, and include topics such as the field trip (that never happened), planning too much lesson content, and managing a new student in class.

Besides teaching, managing their classrooms, and assessing learners, teachers also take care of their own development, sometimes with the support of their workplace institutions or professional associations. This chapter presents cases that offer opportunities to examine a variety of teacher professional development types including doing a PhD part-time, conducting workshops for teacher colleagues, and going on a short-term study-abroad exchange.

As teachers go about their work of teaching in classrooms, doing research, and performing leadership duties, their psychological and emotional wellbeing is constantly under pressure in the workplace. This final chapter presents cases where wellbeing dilemmas are exposed. It includes a teacher educator who is under pressure from management to retire, a teacher coping with a heavy post-study abroad workload, and a teacher having to deal with students’ complaints.

Finally, lest the apparent scientific rigour of the arguments of a text such as Proclus’ Elements of Theology might mislead one to think that a definitive science of divine first principles is achieved, Damascius’ Difficulties and Solutions Concerning First Principles provides an effective antidote to such an illusion. In this chapter I describe how Damascius exploits the contradictory arguments and conclusions that rational soul can develop in its reasonings with concepts about the divine. I argue that these dilemmas, these impasses suffered by the rational soul are not, as Damascius sees it, expressions of the ultimate failure of metaphysics, nor the stalemate of a sceptic which requires suspension of judgement, but a privileged place where the soul exercises its rational powers in an approach to the divine.

Many future and current educators – teachers, leaders, counselors, and allied professionals – probably have more than a single expectation of the contributions of ethics to their educational theory and practice.2 Unsurprisingly, they have insights and cautions to offer about the field, especially in diverse schools and societies (Hansen 1988). The cautions are offered, in part, because opinions and expectations are so numerous and diverse that they frequently collide. Moreover, ethical claims and concerns can sometimes be off-putting because they are confusing now and again as certain ethical ideas are encountered (e.g., subjectivism, relativism, emotivism, pluralism, particularism). These strands of thought, however, are readily distinguishable (Pappas 2008; Ruitenberg 2007). Beyond wanting clarity and offering caution, then, many educators think that a study of ethics should offer ways of determining the differences between right and wrong and wise and unwise choices and actions as they interact with students, colleagues, and others. In short, they think ethics ought to offer clear paths to a fair, responsible, and caring way to teach and lead.

We explain the concept of dilemmas and how they underpin the logic of interpretive comparison. Existing work in interpretive theory refers mainly to ‘Big-D’ dilemmas that focus on ideational conflicts between traditions such as the clash between neoliberalism and state ownership. We add the notion of ‘small-d’ dilemmas that focus on the everyday, the routine and the mundane, choices, ‘court’ politics and realpolitik. We suggest that empirical, comparative, interpretive social science research revolves around the process of identifying the dilemmas that actors experience and the ways they respond to them, and puzzling about whether they vary according to the traditions in which they are situated. We suggest rules of thumb for identifying dilemmas.

In the Retrospective, we turn our methods back on our own book and ask, ‘what are the dilemmas of using the approach we advocate?’ It is an exercise in professional reflexivity as we reflect on the personal dilemmas that we navigated in writing this book. We ask, ‘what are the dilemmas of using our comparative approach?' Also, we impress upon the reader the merits of our approach by summarising the key terms of both the interpretive approach and our comparative interpretive approach. It is a short cut for those who like to skim books before reading them.

We look at the craft of writing. Although we discuss the challenges of writing that confront all social scientists, we focus on the dilemmas of writing up comparative interpretive research – dilemmas which we confront because we speak to a broader range of audiences. In doing so, we highlight the importance of seeing writing as integral to the research process, not something that starts once the research is done. We identify the rules of thumb for writing both linear and evocative narratives and discuss the dilemmas encountered in both approaches.