Critical applied linguistics · Generative AI · Teacher education
Qinghua Chen
Assistant Professor, English Language & Literature Academic Group
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
I study how power, knowledge and subjectivity shape what language teachers and learners are able to do, and I build tools with teachers rather than only writing about them. Right now that means asking how teacher agency and translanguaging are being reconfigured as generative AI enters the language classroom.
Currently
- Teachers as AI Developers: Democratizing Educational AI Through Open-Source Innovation and Sustainable Practice (Cambridge Elements, 2026), with Yiqi Liu and Angel M. Y. Lin.
- Settling into the English Language & Literature Academic Group at NIE, which I joined in July 2026.
- Building open tools for AI-supported teaching and assessment; see Development.
Research
More about my research →Teacher agency in the age of GenAI
How teachers exercise judgement, resistance and care when AI arrives in their classrooms.
Translanguaging, writing and assessment
Translingual approaches to academic writing and plurilingual assessment in multilingual and EMI settings.
Subjectivity, power and decolonial critique
Foucauldian and postcolonial readings of how immigrant, teacher and researcher subjectivities are made and remade.
Teachers as developers of AI
Open-source, teacher-led design of educational AI as democratic and sustainable practice.
Selected publications
All publications →Yang, M., Chen, Q., Chiu, M. M., Lin, A. M. Y., & Ma, S. (2026). Fostering Critical, Agentic Engagement with Generative AI in Academic Research Writing Through the 4T Lenses: Translanguaging, Trans-semiotizing, Transknowledging and Transculturing. Language Teaching Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688261487634
Du, J., Q. Chen, & W. Wei. (2026). Generative AI, linguistic hierarchies and unequal access in under-resourced educational contexts. International Journal of Applied Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.70337
Chen Q., Tawilapakul, U., Lin, A.M.Y. (2025). Teacherness in the age of GenAI: An ethnographic exploration of pedagogical decision-making and AI integration in English language teaching. System. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2025.103877
Chen, Q. (2025). Critical Intersubjectivity: Leveraging Designed Narratives to Mitigate Language Ideologies in Pre-Service Teacher Education. Applied Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amaf024
Chen, Q., Liu, Y., & Lin, A. M. Y. (2026). Teachers as AI Developers: Democratizing Educational AI Through Open-Source Innovation and Sustainable Practice. Cambridge Elements: Generative AI in Education. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009781107
Development
All projects →Nursing communication training (nursing2)
An AI virtual patient for nursing students to practise clinical communication.
areview
A local-first workstation for reviewing manuscripts, with AI kept on a short leash.
Poster Grading
A local, AI-assisted tool for marking student work, where the instructor decides.
“Still a month left,” I would tell myself in early August. “Two weeks remaining,” I’d reason later, as if these calculations could slow the passage of time.
From My story, on leaving Beijing in 2016