This concluding chapter consists of two main sections. The first section draws from previous chapters to classify promising topics for future scholarship. These include the generation-adoption distinction, innovation process openness, abandonment of innovation, post-adoption decisions, and innovation compatibility and performance. The second section presents emerging topics that require innovative solutions. One emanates from the global issues including climate warming, air pollution, scarcity of drinking water, and contamination of seas. Addressing these issues requires repurposing innovation from organizational obligations only to public responsibilities also. Social, environmental, and responsible innovations are conferred. Two emanates from enduring, predominant positive connotation of innovation. Research has been focusing on the bright side of innovation only, ignoring its possible downside and dark side. Knowing that innovation involves risks, innovation process can fail, and negative consequences may occur, organizational innovation scholarship should aim to provide a more balanced portrayal of the bright side and downside of innovation, for the innovating organization, and for the public and natural environment. Articulating trade-off between positives and negatives of innovation is a commendable research endeavor with potential for addressing emerging topics of the twenty-first century in need of holistic innovative solutions.

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.

This Facilitator Guide suggests ways in which the case components can be used. Merseth (1996) states that in the case method, the facilitator “plays a very important role – guiding, probing, directing, giving feedback or sometimes simply observing the exchanges and contributions among the class members” (p. 727). The Guide first addresses general facilitator guidelines that apply to the use of this casebook in all types of teacher education and professional development (PD) situations where the casebook is used. “Facilitator” in this section means a teacher educator working in an institution, a teacher trainer, or a facilitator of continuing PD workshops. These broad guidelines are followed by more specific suggestions for using the case components (a) in classroom or workshop discussions, (b) in online discussions, (c) for assignments, and (d) for the purposes of research.