Rate My Professor Gary Bonar

Dr. Gary Bonar is a Senior Lecturer in Languages and TESOL in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia, within the School of Education Culture & Society. He earned a PhD in Education, supported by the Australian Scholarship Group’s PhD Scholarship for Exceptional Mid-Career Professionals awarded in 2013. Prior to his lecturing role, Bonar served in the Victorian secondary education sector as Curriculum Coordinator responsible for Literacy, Languages, and Social Sciences. He taught Japanese and Italian, as well as English as an additional language, in secondary schools. Additionally, he brings over ten years of experience teaching English across diverse sectors in Asia and Europe. Earlier in his career, he received the ACIS Fondazione Cassamarca scholarship in 2002.

Bonar’s research specializations encompass languages teaching, language teacher identity, English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI), TESOL, multilingualism, studies of Asia, Asia literacy, and Q methodology. His scholarship addresses language teacher agency, multilingual identities, professional learning in international schools, and support for English as an additional language learners. Notable publications include 'Advancing Language Teacher Agency Research: An introduction' (2025, co-authored with Nguyen, Slaughter, and Veliz), 'Productive tensions in language teacher education: How educator self-study can inform the research-practice nexus' (2025), 'Supporting students with English as an additional language during emergency remote teaching: a Q methodology study' (2024), 'Self-directed use of machine translation among language learners: Does it lead to disruptive L2 avoidance?' (2024), 'Educators’ agency in implementing English-medium-instruction in Chinese higher education: a cultural-historical perspective' (2023, co-authored with Dang), and 'Pre-service Language Teachers’ Multilingual Identities—Linking Understandings of Intercultural Language Learning with Evolving Teacher Identity' (2022). With 478 citations on Google Scholar, his work impacts TESOL and languages education fields. Bonar contributes as a peer reviewer for journals including International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, The Australian Educational Researcher, and International Journal of Educational Research. He has co-edited special issues such as 'Teaching EAL/D learners across the curriculum' (2023) and 'Languages in Early Childhood Education' (2021).