Hao Xu

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University

This positioning paper maps the landscape of family foreign language education planning (FFLEP) research in China, framing key issues and future directions within the broader context of language acquisition planning studies. FFLEP is conceptualized as a dynamic process where families actively engage in planning and implementing foreign language edu...

This study explores how male pre-service teachers construct their masculinity in a predominantly female educational environment. Using a six-year multiple-case study, it examines how participants navigated gender expectations, revealing both resistance to and reinforcement of traditional gender norms. Findings show distinct yet intersecting traject...

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses aim to address students' needs for using English to pursue disciplinary learning. In China, however, the nature of EAP courses is often ill-defined, with the focus shifting ambiguously between language ability and academic competence. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Language-Task-Content Inte...

The identity construction of hard-of-hearing language learners has received limited attention in educational research. This study examined how two Chinese English learners navigated hearing impairment and constructed identities in a mainstream educational context. Using positioning theory as a conceptual framework, the study explored their cognitiv...

This paper reports on a study that investigates the impact of learning multiple foreign languages on learners’ social emotional competence development as mediated by the number of foreign languages and the recency of the learning experience. A questionnaire survey that involved 465 Chinese learners of foreign languages was administered that elicite...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the motivations and experiences of university academics who engage in open access publishing for survival and academic development. Design/methodology/approach This study employs a multiple-case qualitative approach, drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice to investigate the activities and experienc...

This paper reports on a study that examines how a school teacher, a university researcher, and a professional textbook writer interact when they collaborate in designing materials for English language teaching. Data were collected from interviews with the participants and audio recordings of their interaction in collaborative design supplemented wi...

Previous research on the use of foreign language teaching materials has tended to focus on phenomena associated with textbook use or closely related aspects, lacking in-depth analysis and interpretation of the underlying patterns. This paper attempts to propose a new research framework aimed at uncovering and explaining the deeper issues and patter...

Despite much research on how multilingual learners view the linguistic properties of language, how they perceive languages as cultural capital has been far less investigated. Drawing on the theories of social cognition, this study explores how multiple foreign language learners' impressions, as a lens to observe their multilingual awareness, are fo...

In this review article, we propose Social Network Analysis (SNA) as an alternative model for analysing interactions within diverse educational contexts. Emphasising the capacity of SNA to reveal unexpected results through the exploration of social ties, we discuss its application in understanding the dynamics of multilingual and multicultural educa...

This study analyzes the manifestations and characteristics of collective burnout among senior university foreign language teachers from an ecological perspective, exploring its impact on the professional development ecology of faculty members. The findings reveal that senior teachers in the three faculties studied as cases form three distinct group...

While research on postgraduate thesis writing has investigated how students cope with institutional assessment criteria, this study explores how students form their own criteria for self-assessment through the writing process, aiming to account for the development of their independent thinking in academic socialisation. Based on in-depth interviews...

This study investigates the AI assessment literacy of high school EFL teachers using the Chinese AI-powered chatbot, ERNIE Bot. Interviews and digital protocols revealed a dynamic relationship between teachers’ practical and conceptual knowledge, with both areas mutually reinforcing each other. However, technical knowledge emerged as a potentially...

This study explores how a multilingual Hong Kong student exercised agency to maintain a stable Dominant Language Constellation (DLC) amidst significant shifts in sociolinguistic contexts. Employing an intrinsic case study approach, the study collected data through interviews and written documents, which were then analysed using thematic analysis. T...

In this article, we offer a critical realist conception of curriculum that aims to cultivate critical thinking (CT) and liberate students from egocentric rationality. We first examine egocentric rationality as a problem emerging from the technicist paradigm of cultivating CT in higher education, exemplified by issues arising from the pedagogical ac...

Whilst the existing literature on multilingual learning in curriculum has properly addressed a variety of instructional factors, few studies have been dedicated to investigating the influence of institutionalisation as a contextual, power-laden factor on multilingual curriculum which in turn influences multilingual learning. To fill this gap, this...

This paper introduces the development background, process, and characteristics of Professional Competency Standards for University Foreign Language Teachers. These standards aim to provide comprehensive, scientific, and systematic guidance for the professional development of foreign language teachers in higher education institutions. Through a comp...

The professional competency of university foreign language teachers includes nurturing competency, disciplinary competency, teaching competency, research competency, digital competency, and learning competency. These six competencies are interconnected, mutually reinforcing, yet distinct from each other, jointly forming the specific indicators of f...

This Element aims to elucidate the theories of social cognition and to delineate their implications for the professional development of language teachers in primary and secondary schools. The Element first explores the concept of social cognition. The three key dimensions, that is, representation of social reality, social cognitive processing, and...

This qualitative study explores the influence of learning emotions on the sustainment of cognitive motivation in multilingual development. Specifically, it examines whether positive emotions experienced during the learning process contribute to the maintenance of cognitive motivation in future language use. The study adopted a multiple-case design,...

Family language policy for children’s foreign language learning has emerged as an important topic for research on language education policy and second language learning in general. Whilst there is no shortage of studies that examine how parents engage in the formation and transformation of family foreign language education policies, little has been...

While French is an important European language being taught in Chinese universities, not much is known about French language teachers’ beliefs about its teaching as a foreign language, particularly not from a multilingual perspective. Adopting a multiple-case design, this study examined 5 French language teachers’ beliefs about the French language...

This paper reports on a qualitative study that investigates the influence of curricular factors on the development of university foreign language teacher’s feedback literacy. Specifically, this multiple-case study examined how 12 novice teachers (including 5 LOTE teachers) who had less than three years of teaching experience developed their feedbac...

School teachers often involve parents to assist in online assessment, but parental involvement can violate equity principles when not carefully monitored. In this article, we analyse types of parental involvement in online classroom assessment resulting from teachers’ requests, and discuss how such requests may impact on educational equity. Our dat...

This article, drawing on recent research on Language Other than English (LOTE) programs in China’s universities, examines the impact of multilingual education policy on the professional development of LOTE teachers. We argue for the mediating roles of LOTE programs as they carry the influence of education policy on teacher development. In other wor...

This qualitative study explores the influence of curriculum configuration as an instructional context on teachers' L2 writing assessment literacy and practices. Specifically, the study examined how a group of university French language teachers in China drew on their assessment literacy to assess student's embedded writing situated in an integrated...

Drawing on a three-dimensional framework, i.e., textbook as learning resource, textbook use as instructional process, and textbook as a component of the instructional system, this article problematises research on teacher’s use of new English textbooks for senior high schools, as it fails to adequately address the educational realities involved in...

Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, this qualitative study adopted a multiple-case design to investigate how university researchers exercised their agency as they engaged in actions of open access publishing, and how such actions influenced the researchers themselves and the university as an institution. Guided by a four-dimensiona...

How teachers should elicit and draw on behavioural cues for online-classroom assessment is of much interest to both researchers and practising teachers. Aiming to explore how to enhance interactive self-reporting as a behavioural cue elicitor for online-classroom assessment, this study adopted a large-scale questionnaire survey to investigate the e...

Resistance is a common issue in academic discourse socialisation (ADS), especially for learners who study in their second language. How learners enact agency to negotiate their resistance can largely determine the outcomes of their ADS. In this article, we report the findings of a case study on four Chinese undergraduate students' experiences of an...

This paper reports on an experimental study that investigates the impact of language awareness on the auditory working memory accessibility (AWMA) of 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-year old children in L1 (Chinese) and three L2 (English, Spanish, and Arabic) conditions. Results reveal: (1) AWMA increases in L1 with age; (2) from 4 to 6 years old, children’s AW...

This paper problematises foreign language acquisition planning in undergraduate programmes for language majors at the tertiary level in China. The problem is three-fold: Corpus planning of foreign languages is insufficient to inform their acquisition planning; types of foreign language users, i.e., users of a foreign language for general purpose or...

This paper reports on the results from a multiple-case study of how EFL school teachers in China coped with online assessment for 10 weeks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. We looked into the online assessment practices of seven teachers from seven regions of China, through individual interview, teachers' journals, instructional designs for online t...

In multilingual education for sustainable personal development, compared with that of multiple languages, the teaching and learning of multiple varieties of a language has been underexplored as a special and important form of multilingualism. In this article, we examine the linguistic, psychological, and social characteristics of multiple variety l...

Transparency of textbook activities, i.e., the degree of easiness for teachers to process and comprehend them, needs to be researched in terms of both materials design and materials use. This article reports on a study that investigates the impact of teachers’ professional experience and transparency of textbook activities (due to materials design)...

This article reports on a multiple-case study which aims to investigate how novice university teachers construct professional identities as they process and utilize resources to promote professional development. Data were collected from 35 novice university teachers in China through prolonged individual interviews as a major source of data, with jo...

This article reports on a case study that investigated language teachers’ perceptions of a newly launched multilingual programme in a Chinese university. Forty-one teachers from the university were interviewed. Data analysis reveals that the teachers perceived the new programme as an administration-dominated initiative that would impact on their te...

Employing a qualitative case study approach and informed by an ecological perspective, this study explores two veteran language teachers’ mindfulness and how their mindfulness influences their professional practice and continuing development. The findings show five critical dimensions of teacher mindfulness regarding self, teaching and learning, pr...

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of teacher beliefs and practices, those of novice EFL secondary teachers regarding writing instruction remains underexplored. Drawing on complexity theory, this article reports on two secondary teachers’ beliefs and practices about writing instruction in Macau. Data were gathered through classroom obs...

This article reports on a multiple-case study that investigates the impact of the promotion of Putonghua on individuals’ social interactions and language identities in multilingual minority regions in China. Drawing on the theory of linguistic market, the study focuses on what mediates individuals’ access to the linguistic market. The 24 participan...

This three-year longitudinal study examines the development of four Chinese novice EFL teachers’ classroom assessment literacy, which refers to teachers’ knowledge of and abilities to conduct classroom assessment and is reflected in their planned and improvised assessment practices. The dataset includes 26 classroom observations, 48 interviews, and...

This paper reports on a 3-year case study of four novice EFL teachers in China that examined the impact of collaborative lesson preparation on the development of their teacher autonomy, and the joint impact of collaboration and autonomy on their professional development. Data analysis of 48 individual interviews, 47 journal entries, and 26 classroo...

This case study on three Chinese EFL learners in junior high school examined the interaction inside and outside learners’ EFL self-concept system, and the findings revealed: (1) inside the self-concept system, the interaction between the global and specific self-concepts is of much complexity; (2) the gap between the global and specific self-concep...

Since the beginning of China’s nationwide New Curriculum reform in 2001 (Ministry of Education, 2001), the increase in the number of teaching staff in basic education schools has been striking. In 2011, approximately 1.139 million foreign language teachers were in service, and this number quickly increased to 1.155 million one year later in 2012 (W...

This article reports on an inquiry into a group of English language teachers’ professional experiences that interpreted their motivation to teach and their shifting professional commitment with reference to representations and visions that they had and did not have about themselves in rural secondary schools in China’s hinterland regions. It reveal...

This paper reports on a four-year longitudinal case study of four Chinese EFL teachers on their professional identity change in the first years of teaching in K-12 schools in China. Teachers' cue-based and exemplar-based imagined identities formed in the pre-service stage transformed into rule-based and schema-based practiced identities in the novi...