Agency Of Actors In Foreign Language Education Policy

In 2014,Shanghai Municipal Education Commission initiated “Shanghai Less Commonly Taught Language(LCTL)Learning Project for Primary and Secondary Schools” to pilot the teaching of nine LCTLs in some primary and secondary schools in the city.The project is aimed to,at the basic education level,enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of different cultures,and to cultivate a pool of talents with a broad global perspective,high humanistic qualities and strong ability of international understanding.This project has achieved some success so far,but there also emerge some problems.This study takes the project as the research object,focusing on its meso-and micro-level actors.The data are collected mainly through interviews,supplemented by policy texts and teaching materials.Then the data are processed through thematic analysis,combined with relevant theories,to analyse the agency of actors at different levels in the LP.The study finds that the foreign language education policy(FLEP)fails to receive a top-down implementation,since actors at different levels distinctly interpret and implement the LPs developed by other levels,and form their own LPs,in response to a variety of internal and external factors.Generally speaking,the idealised LPs developed by macro-level actors are difficult to implement entirely due to the internal and external constraints,but micro-and meso-level actors are able to exercise their agency and take a range of measures to promote better FLEP through continuous interaction between different levels.However,this exercise of agency is still inadequate,because in addition to the actors’ internal constraints,there are also a number of objective elements that hinder the full development of agency and,ultimately,the effective implementation of the project.Theoretically speaking,this study provides an example of using a meso-and micro-level perspective to analyse LCTL education policies in China at the basic education level,demonstrating how international LP research theories can be applied in the Chinese context.From a practical point of view,this study takes a specific FLEP in reality as the object of study,affirming its advantages in meeting the cognitive characteristics of the target students and the experience it has accumulated in promoting LCTL learning at the basic education level.At the same time,this research points out the problems that the programme still faces,such as the lack of teachers,the mismatch between the positioning of the programme and the demands of students and parents,and the unreasonable planning of the learning age,and proposes corresponding measures for its further improvement.In addition,this study focuses on the teachers and students of LCTL majors in universities,which helps to optimise the layout of LCTL majors in universities,promote the effective connection between different levels of LCTL education,and make the LCTL talents in higher education more in line with the needs of the country and society.