Exploration of Teacher Agency in the Implementation of the ESP Language Education Policy in a Chinese University

This case study investigates language teacher agency in the context of ESP curriculum reform in a Chinese university. Data collected from classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with both teachers and students from five ESP classes are analyzed by conducting a thorough thematic analysis. It is revealed that instead of following the national curriculum and institutional requirements, language teachers as policy arbiters make their own implicit policies which are creating spaces for their own discourses, and in this sense, they are “adjusting” the curriculum policy rather than “implementing” it. Teachers’ academic background, their views on the nature of language learning, their profound distrust of the efficacy of ESP courses, and students’ explicit performance are the main causes of teachers’ actual resistance to the policy. Unlike previous studies of teacher agency, an analysis of students’ needs and implicit discourses indicates that teachers’ agency excised through their hidden agenda may turn out to be a defense of their unwillingness to change, to the detriment of students’ academic performance. This study then suggests that policymakers should notice the negative side of teacher agency and stresses the necessity of a bottom-up survey on teachers’ ideologies in the implementation of a language education policy, and argues that creating spaces for negotiating and adjusting the policy at the instructional level, and offering effective teacher education programs are the key to the enactment of the national curriculum.