English Language Teacher Agency in Response to Curriculum Reform in China: An Ecological Approach

Abstract

This study draws on the ecological perspective of teacher agency to examine the manifestation of English teachers' agency toward the ongoing curriculum reform in China and the factors that impact it. This study surveyed 353 high school English teachers and then collected data from three case study participants through in-depth interviews. The findings showed that the majority of teachers surveyed exhibited positive attitudes and beliefs about implementing the reform and inclinations to change, but the teachers also showed a constrained state of agency in practice. Teacher agency developed as the teachers exerted sustained pedagogical change and reflection on reform-based practices. Through the findings, prior experiences and reform-oriented beliefs were found to mediate teachers' agency, and reform-related experiences were more influential than future goals in shaping agency. The factors of perceived school culture that involved teachers' interaction with students, colleague cooperation, and administrative support also medicated teachers' agency in practice. Implications are proposed for policymakers and school leaders to help teachers coordinate inconsistencies between high-stakes examination preparation and holistic education and make positive sense of professional development in the context of educational changes.

Full text

ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 18 July 2022
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.935038
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1July 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 935038
Edited by:
Douglas F. Kauffman,
Medical University of the Americas,
United States
Reviewed by:
Hongzhi Yang,
The University of Sydney, Australia
Honggang Liu,
Northeast Normal University, China
*Correspondence:
Lian Wang
200301039@mailgufe.edu.cn
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Educational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 03 May 2022
Accepted: 16 June 2022
Published: 18 July 2022
Citation:
Wang L (2022) English Language
Teacher Agency in Response to
Curriculum Reform in China: An
Ecological Approach.
Front. Psychol. 13:935038.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.935038
English Language Teacher Agency in
Response to Curriculum Reform in
China: An Ecological Approach
Lian Wang*
School of Foreign Languages, Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang, China
This study draws on the ecological perspective of teacher agency to examine the
manifestation of English teachers’ agency toward the ongoing curriculum reform in China
and the factors that impact it. This study surveyed 353 high school English teachers
and then collected data from three case study participants through in-depth interviews.
The findings showed that the majority of teachers surveyed exhibited positive attitudes
and beliefs about implementing the reform and inclinations to change, but the teachers
also showed a constrained state of agency in practice. Teacher agency developed as
the teachers exerted sustained pedagogical change and reflection on reform-based
practices. Through the findings, prior experiences and reform-oriented beliefs were found
to mediate teachers’ agency, and reform-related experiences were more influential than
future goals in shaping agency. The factors of perceived school culture that involved
teachers’ interaction with students, colleague cooperation, and administrative support
also medicated teachers’ agency in practice. Implications are proposed for policymakers
and school leaders to help teachers coordinate inconsistencies between high-stakes
examination preparation and holistic education and make positive sense of professional
development in the context of educational changes.
Keywords: ecological approach, teachers’ agency, curriculum reform, educational changes, teaching practices
INTRODUCTION
Teacher agency is imperative for the process of implementing curriculum reforms and educational
policies (Lasky, 2005; Pyhältö et al., 2012; Hamid and Nguyen, 2016; Tao and Gao, 2017). Current
empirical studies show that teacher agency is a temporal and situated achievement and that
teachers exercise their agency to respond to educational change in different manifestations, such
as compliance, resistance, and negotiation (Robinson, 2012; Priestley et al., 2015; Yang and Clarke,
2018; Le et al., 2020). These studies constitute an area of inquiry of growing importance, which is
known as teacher agency research in policy implementation, and they reveal that personal factors
(e.g., teachers’ beliefs) and contextual factors (e.g., teaching contexts) contribute significantly to
teachers’ change and growth during curriculum reform. Nevertheless, notably, teachers’ agency
development during educational changes is the outcome of the interplay within their professional
life experiences and the expectations for future and contextual conditions.
A number of studies reveal that teachers are more likely to resist imposed policy
mandates and embrace conventional teaching techniques to avoid taking risks in educational
reform if the mandates are incongruous with their personal factors, such as their beliefs,
intentions, and prior experiences (Biesta et al., 2015; Bonner et al., 2019). Le et al. (2020),

Wang English Teacher Agency in China
for instance, emphasize that English teachers are more likely to
exercise their agency to struggle and resist educational language
policy when there is a conflict between policy mandates and
their beliefs, prior knowledge, and expectations. Teachers’ agentic
actions toward educational change are always mediated by the
sociocultural contexts in which they are situated. Sociocultural
contexts are reflected not only in classroom teaching, school
conditions, and local communities but also in educational policy
mandates, the promotion of ideological discourses, and changes
in assessment practice that can either enable or hinder teachers’
agency enactment (Lasky, 2005; Priestley et al., 2015; Poulton,
2020; Tao and Gao, 2021). For example, Liyanage et al. (2015)
identified the struggles and dilemmas experienced by English
language teachers in their attempts to exercise agency amid the
instructional demands of the exam-oriented community in Inner
Mongolia in China. Since teacher agency’s interaction with other
personal and contextual factors does not operate alone, a focus
on teacher agency during curriculum reform should not distract
researchers from profoundly examining the integration of their
historical experiences, present conditions, and future aspirations
that constitute an ecological perspective to explain how teachers
make agentic choices and actions during educational changes.
In China, the Ministry of Education (MOE) enacted the
2017 Edition of the General High School English Curriculum
Standards (课程标准, also known as xin kebiao) in 2018, which
was initiated to cultivate learners’ four key competencies, namely
language competence, cultural awareness, thinking capacity, and
learning capacity, as the core competencies (核心素养, hexin
suyang) in basic English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education.
Therefore, this study goes inside the classroom teaching in
mainland China and investigates how Chinese English teachers’
agency in response to the prescribed national curriculum may be
interpreted, and it takes an ecological approach with reference
to the factors that enable or constrain teacher agency during
educational reforms.
English is the foreign language studied by more than 99% of
students who participate in formal education in China (Wang,
2007). Although English language teaching (ELT) and assessment
in China has experienced a considerable transition in recent
decades, ELT has continued to rely on a tradition of centrally
administered exams to determine achievement and opportunity,
and constraints continue to operate as major structural elements
of the English teaching environment in China (Liyanage et al.,
2015). In combatting the chronic malady of “only scores” and
“only further education,” the advert of xin kebiao is considered
a driving force for a new round of English curriculum reform in
China, and the new syllabus gives teachers guiding principles and
pedagogical approaches, such as the activity teaching method,
to teaching in action, which challenges teachers to take more
responsibilities in innovating professional skills and nurturing
quality education. Meanwhile, notably, the implementation of
educational policies in China follows a traditional centralized
and top-down manner in which prescriptive policies are initiated
and imposed at the macrolevel (i.e., the MOE). Although a few
studies have explored Chinese university teachers’ agency and
their professional development in educational reforms (Tao and
Gao, 2017; Yang and Clarke, 2018; Tao et al., 2020), more research
is needed to examine how English teachers from different high
schools teach in accordance with the core competencies (hexin
suyang) in response to the prescribed national curriculum and
the extent to which they might exert positive agentic changes in
the context of China.
TEACHER AGENCY IN CURRICULUM
REFORM
Research has noted that there is often a tension in educational
policies about the amount of control that teachers are allowed to
exert over the curriculum and what and how they teach (Hamid
and Nguyen, 2016;Poulton, 2020). That is, implementing
innovation with an educational reform is not a matter
of straightforwardly executing policies; rather, it involves a
process of sense-making through which teachers make meaning
from their work environment (Vähäsantanen, 2015). Regarding
English language teachers, a few studies have explored teacher
agency during educational changes (Hamid and Nguyen, 2016;
Tao and Gao, 2017; Le et al., 2020). Among them, Nguyen
and Bui (2016) emphasize that teachers do not passively follow
a set of norms mandated by policymakers but act as agents
in shaping and reshaping a language policy through their
pedagogical practices. It has been noted that a positive association
was found between teachers’ agency and their engagement
with research and reflection on teaching in the context of the
Chinese national college English reform (Yang and Clarke, 2018).
The studies of Li et al. (2020) showed that English primary
teachers in Vietnam attempted to adapt the new language policy
mandates according to their interpretation, preferences, choices,
and current teaching conditions. One noticeable contribution of
these empirical studies is that English teachers can act as agents
for curriculum reform, in which the dynamic development of
teachers’ professional practices can be partly explored through
their different agency commitments. As agency in educational
changes is practiced as a mediational tool that is crucial for
teachers to resolve structural conflicts among personal beliefs,
language policies, and hierarchical power relationships (Liyanage
et al., 2015; Yang and Clarke, 2018), the research on English
language teacher agency is, despite the growing interest in recent
years, still modest in the current language policy literature.
DEFINING TEACHER AGENCY
The notion of agency has long been researched from quite
different theoretical perspectives. There is a lack of consensus
on the conceptualization of agency. Specifically, agency has been
viewed as individuals’ intentional acts to make things happen and
participate in their development, adaptation, and self-renewal
with changing times (Bandura, 2001). This concept emphasizes
the psychological mechanism of the self-system in one’s agency
formation, while some scholars have argued that agency is a
socioculturally medicated capacities to act (Ahearn, 2001; Lasky,
2005; Kayi-Aydar, 2019). Goller and Harteis (2017) derived a
definition of agency on both a psychological and practical basis
suggesting that human agency is the capacity and tendency
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
to make intentional choices, initiate actions based on these
choices, and exercise control over the self and the environment.
More recent attempts have been made to define agency in an
ecological term as “a matter of personal capacity to act, combined
with the contingencies of the environment within which such
action occurs” (Priestley et al., 2012). The ecological perspective
of agency argues the notions that agency is the capacity and
tendency to make intentional choices, initiate actions based
on these choices, and exercise control over the self and the
environment (Eteläpelto et al., 2013). These notions suggest
that even if actors have some type of capacity, whether they
can achieve agency depends on the interaction of the capacities
and the ecological conditions. Actors always act through an
environment rather than simply in an environment (Biesta and
Tedder, 2007; Priestley et al., 2015).
Agency has also been researched in the field of teacher
education. For teachers, it is largely about repertoires for
maneuvering or the possibilities for different forms of action
available to them at particular points in time (Priestley et al.,
2012). Therefore, Priestley et al. (2015) proposed an ecological
perspective to acknowledge that teacher agency, as a temporal
situated achievement, contains the three dimensions: iterational,
practical-evaluative, and projective (see Figure 1). Language
teachers, as active agents in social and educational contexts,
directly and indirectly, experience their professional qualities as
being naturally shaped by the environment in which they live
(Chu et al., 2021). In this regard, teacher agency in response
to curriculum reform may be afforded or constrained as the
outcome of the interplay among an individual’s past experiences,
present conditions, and future goals.
The ecological perspective has been considered an effective
approach for understanding the phenomenon of one’s agency
not only in context but also in one’s life history (Tao and Gao,
2021). This model offers a more explicit ecological approach
to teacher agency that constitutes both a methodological and
a theoretical framework for empirical inquiry that relates to
the approaches by which teachers achieve agency in practice.
Agency is not simply concerned with the ways in which we
engage with our contexts-for-action but rather with the capacity
to shape our responsiveness to the situations that we encounter
in our lives (Biesta and Tedder, 2007). The ecological approach
provides useful insight into how teacher agency can be located
through a consideration of their histories and beliefs, their
abilities to visualize the alterative future, and their interplay with
the sociostructural and material conditions in which individuals
act (Priestley et al., 2015). Since the ecological perspective allows
a historical perspective, Tao and Gao (2017) examined language
teachers’ professional trajectories in which their agency was
situated by life-history exploration. Framed within an ecological
conceptualization of teachers’ agency, Poulton (2020) explored
Australian primary teachers’ reported experiences of agency and
identified potential enablers and constraints to teachers’ agency in
curriculum planning and teaching; they found that strong beliefs,
teacher knowledge, and skill and aspirations for school-based
assessment helped teachers report greater experiences of agency.
Liu’s et al. (2022) study highlighted that English teachers, as
active agents situated in the educational context, could positively
negotiate with their surroundings, and exert their agency to
cope with professional and personal pressures. To conclude,
the exploration of teacher agency has gained much empirical
support and demonstrated diverse theme, while EFL teacher
agency in response to curriculum reform has not been thoroughly
examined from both psychological and ecological perspectives.
In this context, mainly drawn on the ecological model of teacher
agency proposed by Priestley et al. (2015), this study aims to
adopt a mixed-method design to enrich the understanding of
EFL teacher agency in response to curriculum reform in China
by addressing the following questions:
(1) In what way do teachers exercise agency in response to
top-down curriculum reform?
(2) What are the factors that enable and constrain teacher
agency during curriculum reform?
(3) How do these factors interact with teacher agency to
facilitate the sustained implementation of the reform?
METHODS
The study employed a two-phased, sequential mixed methods
explanatory design framework (Cresswell and Plano Clark,
2007). Precisely, the method used for the initial phase of the
study was a survey of Chinese high school English teachers’
agentic performance during the reform. For this purpose, a
questionnaire has been constructed based on Goller and Harteis
(2017)’s perceptions of agency constitutions. The questionnaire
formulated three dimensions of teacher agency: intention level,
action level, and regulation level. Intention level refers to
teachers’ action plans and strategies for participating in the
reform. Action level refers to teachers’ self-initiated and goal-
directed behaviors that aim to take control over themselves
and the environment. Regulation level refers to teachers’ self-
motivation and self-reflectiveness in light of educational change.
The questionnaire consists of questions, such as “Do you
agree that the core competencies should be integrated into
actual teaching practice?”, “Do you often consciously nurture
students’ thinking capacity in class activities?”, “Do you often
exchange teaching experience with colleagues about the core
competencies?”, “Do you often reflect on your teaching process
and adjust actions in line with xin kebiao?”, etc. To investigate
the factors that had an impact on teachers’ agency, this study
also developed an instrument to examine the influential factors
on teacher agency from the three established dimensions of
participants’ demographic characteristics, their reform-oriented
beliefs, and their perceived school culture. The questionnaire uses
a Likert scale from 1 (totally disagree or have never done) to 5
(absolutely agree or have always done).
Overall, the established questionnaire has four parts that
consist of participants’ demographic variables (teaching age,
gender, education level, professional title, and school type),
items concerning teachers’ agency (n=25), items concerning
teachers’ reform-oriented beliefs (n=7), and items concerning
teachers’ perceived school culture (n=13). The survey items
and instructions were revised and validated in a pilot test before
delivering the final questionnaire by using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
FIGURE 1 | Model of the formation of agency. Redrawn from Priestley et al. (2015), with permission from Bloomsbury Academic through PLS Clear.
7.0 in the aspects of item analysis, validity, and reliability analysis.
Item analysis was first performed to detect the discriminant
validity of each item. After a series of adjustments, five items
were deleted from the scale of teacher agency, and three items
were deleted from the scale of teacher-perceived school culture.
Since the factor structure drew on previous conceptualizations
of agency (Goller and Harteis, 2017), a confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA) was adopted to examine the goodness of fit of
the items from the teachers’ agency scale. The CFA showed that
the load values of 5 items included in the intension variable
ranged from 0.65 to 0.76 on this factor, the load values of 7
items in the action variable ranged from 0.61 to 0.73 on this
factor, and the load values of 8 items in the regulation variable
ranged from 0.61 to 0.80 on this factor. The reported degree of
the fitting indices of the three variables was acceptable as ²/df
=2.488, CFI =0.927, PCFI =0.815, RMSEA =0.065. These
results indicated that 20 items from the revised scale of teacher
agency were well-supported. Regarding teacher-perceived school
culture, both an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and CFA were
used to examine the factor structure, and a two-factor structure
composed of interpersonal conditions and the school system was
obtained to identify it. The KMO measure and Bartlett’s test of
sphericity were conducted to ensure that the data were eligible
for factor analysis. The KMO index was 0.856, and Bartlett’s
test of sphericity (Approx.Chi-Square =572.725, df =45) was
significant at a level of 0.000. The varimax method showed a high
correlation between the items and the common factors, with all
factor loadings >0.5 and commonality >0.4. Moreover, a CFA
for each factor was conducted, and one item was removed from
the teacher-perceived school culture dimension with a loading
lower than 0.40. The CFA results indicated that 9 items of the
adjusted scale of teacher-perceived school culture were much
better than the initial scale (²/df =1.847, CFI =0.960, PCFI =
0.818, RMSEA =0.049). After the CFAs, an internal consistency
reliability analysis was used to assess each of the subscales. The
alphas were 0.890 for teachers’ agency, 0.889 for reform-oriented
beliefs, and 0.892 for perceived school culture. The pilot results
helped to revise the total items from 45 to 36 and established the
final questionnaire for the participants (n=387).
Based on convenience sampling strategies, the questionnaire
was written in Chinese and distributed to teachers from different
high schools in five provinces of China (Jiangsu, Hebei, Guizhou,
Guangdong, and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region). A
total of 353 questionnaires were collected, and the proportion
of cleared samples was 91.2%, with 84 from Jiangsu, 77 from
Hebei, 57 from Guizhou, 36 from Guangdong, and 99 from the
Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. In addition, the gender
distribution of the convenience sample (male =73, female =280)
was in accordance with the fact that male English teachers are
largely outnumbered by female English teachers in China.
Within the second phase of the study, a multiple case
study with three participants was adopted to explore how
these potentially influential factors interact with teacher agency
to facilitate the sustained implementation of this reform,
which allowed an in-depth understanding of the participants’
perspectives, beliefs, and action regarding educational changes.
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TABLE 1 | Profile of the case study participants.
Characteristic Participants
Zhang Xu Wang
Gender
Age
Teaching age
Grades
Qualifications
Professional titles
Female
48
26 years
Grade 2
Master
Senior
Male
38
16 years
Grade 2
Bachelor
Senior
Female
29
7 years
Grade 3
Bachelor
Intermediate
Three participants who were born in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and
1990’s were all involved in the initial survey and voluntarily
agreed to participate in the second phase of the study. They
were from different schools, and their EFL teaching experience
varied from 7 to 26 years, which demonstrated that their
educational background, teaching proficiency, and professional
development conditions were very different. Table 1 describes
the demographic characteristics of the three participants.
DATA ANALYSIS
To answer RQ1, the questionnaire data were analyzed
quantitatively with SPSS 21.0 for descriptive analysis and
variance analysis. To answer RQ2, a one-way analysis of variance
(ANOVA) and regression were used to examine the correlations
between teachers’ agency and their background information,
beliefs toward the reform, and perceived school culture. To
answer RQ3, qualitative data were collected that involved
the participants’ reform-oriented beliefs, prior experiences,
future goals, in-class teaching decisions, and actions related
to curriculum reforms through semi-structured interviews.
Interviews consisted of questions, such as “Have you ever taken
a part in a national curriculum reform in the past, and can
you describe its impacts on your teaching practice?”, “Can you
describe the teaching objectives in your classes at present?”,
etc. All these face-to-face interviews were conducted with each
participant in their actual daily workplaces in an ongoing and
cyclical process over 6 months. Drawn on the across-case analysis
of qualitative study, categories and patterns were inductively
generated (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Drawing on the model
of the ecological approach to teacher agency, influential factors of
the iterational, practical-evaluative and projective dimensions on
their enactment of agency during this reform were identified in
the initial reading and coding of the data. In particular, the three
integrated elements of teachers’ agency mentioned above guided
the whole encoding work regarding the choices and actions of
the pedagogical changes made by the participants in practice.
RESULTS
EFL Teachers’ Agency in Curriculum
Reform
The descriptive statistics for the teachers’ agency scores based
on the scale showed that the mean value of teachers’ agency to
implement the reform is 4.063 in total. The results appear to
suggest that most English teachers advocate for the mandates
proposed in xin kebiao. Although this finding reveals the big
picture of teachers’ supportive perspectives of the reform, in
discussing teacher agency, it is a question of not only how
teachers position themselves in relation to reforms but also how
they act in engaging with the reforms (Vähäsantanen, 2015).
To have a close examination of teachers’ agentic changes in
accordance with policy-related demands, this part conducts a
contrastive analysis of Wang’s, Xu’s and Zhang’s agency.
Wang: Constrained Agency
In the interviews, Wang mentioned that her motivation to take
on new pedagogical practice was not strong. She stated that
compared with her colleagues in the English department, she
was less capable of interpreting educational theories of the new
syllabus into effective teaching practices. As she claimed, she
did try to enact some of the innovative ideas and new teaching
methods recommended in xin kebiao, but the interactions
between the students and her turned out to be unsuccessful.
Thus, she rested on traditional pedagogies by promoting word
rehearsal, sentence translation, and grammatical drilling in
class, which she believed to be helpful for the students in
preparation for GaoKao, a high-stakes exam used to determine
the selection to study at prestigious key universities, ordinary
universities, colleges, or other higher education institutes (Fang
and Warschauer, 2004). In Wang’s case, she demonstrated a
constrained state of agency for engagement in the reform.
On the one hand, she struggled considerably with a sense
of powerlessness for the frustrated adoption of new teaching
methods in class; on the other hand, she made great efforts
to fulfill her accountability for students’ test-based performance
to such an extent that her teaching practices were identical to
her testing practice (Liyanage et al., 2015), which is contrary to
the recommended teaching methodology in policy. In addition,
Wang said she often “searched for professional assistance from
experienced colleagues in deeply interpreting the connotation
of some educational theories.” It may be inferred that Wang’s
minimal efforts to perform changes in practice could be explained
by her resistance to taking risks at the cost of exam scores.
Extract 1
Wang: I designed some teaching activities guiding students to
guess the meanings of words in contexts, but they couldn’t answer
my questions and were not interested in these activities, let
alone fostering their thinking capacity. The educational ideas
and goals recommended in xin kebiao are so good for students,
but currently, the main goal in my classroom is to practice and
memorize words and collocations. Thus, the meaning of texts can
be understood.
Xu: Transformative Agency
Xu mentioned that given the competitive exam-based assessment
system in the context of China, it was difficult to fully cultivate
key competencies among students. Simultaneously, he felt
obliged to improve his teaching practice and competence by
changing beliefs, pedagogies, and practices in the classroom
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
and maintaining a balance between test goals and holistic
educational goals. Xu pointed out in interviews that the new
syllabus focused on language skills in listening, speaking, reading,
writing, and watching. For watching, he actively brought varying
“Thinking maps” to innovate pedagogical practices to thus shift
class practices from a grammar-translation approach to a more
interactive approach. This teaching method is consistent with the
ideas advocated in the reform. It seemed that Xu demonstrated
a transformative state of agency in response to the reform.
Faced with conflicts and dilemmas between public exam-oriented
mindsets and holistic education required by the reform, Xu
enacted an ongoing transformation of teaching expertise exempt
from routine work to achieve innovations. These reform-based
experiences that accompanied reflection constructed his practical
knowledge and laid a solid foundation for his class practices,
teaching contests, and pedagogical research. Xu talked about his
impact on the students: “I always imparted new ideas reflected
in examination to the students; they were good at problem-
solving and critical thinking skills while aligning with academic
standards.” Notably, a well-interactive relationship with students
helped Xu make sense of his agency to enact pedagogies that he
believed to be valuable for student learning.
Extract 2
Xu: I acknowledge that scores are always of the primary
importance for students, most of their time and energy are put
into the preparation for exams due to the present examination-
success-oriented context, and very limited space of education
has been left for students’ all-around development. However,
I always possess the capability to make decisions on my own,
so I keep reflecting on how to infiltrate the core competencies
recommended in xin kebiao into my class and concentrate
more on developing students’ cultural awareness and critical
thinking capacity.
Zhang: Progressive Agency
As the head of the English department, the master teacher of
beginning teachers, and the leader of the teaching workshop at
school, Zhang has always kept learning on advanced curricular
theories and embracing educational changes to enhance her
professional expertise. She indicated that students’ English
learning and academic achievements could be greatly enhanced if
innovative, flexible, and appropriate pedagogies were adopted in
practice. She put considerable energy into learning and thinking
critically about xin kebiao since the government enacted the
policy. Specifically, she kept trying varied teaching approaches
to explore effective practices of educational theories contained
in xin kebiao with self-confidence. She spoke with evident
enthusiasm about conducting reform-based research associated
with pedagogical changes that innovated her practical teaching
and achieved well in meeting her students’ needs in creative ways,
through which her conviction and responsibilities as curriculum
developer strengthened greatly and motivated her to become one
of the first adopters of the reform. To shift her role as a facilitator
instead of being an authoritative instructor in class, Zhang
cultivated students’ capability of active learning by engaging them
in self-assessment and peer assessment. Moreover, Zhang showed
progressive agency with leadership in her school community: “I
felt obliged to facilitate young unexperienced teachers in school
to develop.” Zhang enacted her agency to negotiate her identity
in her classroom with her students and within the school with
colleagues; then, she took control of what was happening around
her in the reform.
Extract 3
Zhang: I was once sent to participate in a national reform-based
teaching competition on behalf of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region. At the beginning, I felt stressed because the new syllabus
only sets very general goals for English learning and teaching.
It’s my work to determine which teaching approaches, such
as “task-based instruction,” “communicative language teaching,”
“activity teaching method,” and “san yi san xiang method,”
will be contextually appropriate for accomplishing my teaching
objectives. Although preparing for the competition was laborious
and painstaking, it was worth trying. I gained a lot during
the process.
The manifestations of Wang’s, Xu’s, and Zhang’s agency
toward this reform at the individual scale can symbolize certain
typical scenes and cases during educational changes in China. To
summarize, the three teachers all showed positive perceptions of
xin kebiao and its ideas, but they also exhibited different agentic
changes in practice. In contrast with Wang’s weak engagement
with the reform, Xu and Zhang demonstrated critical shifts in
response to the reform by constructing mutual support with
students and sharing valuable resources with peer teachers.
Demographic Characteristics and
Reform-Oriented Beliefs
A series of one-way ANOVA tests were performed to establish
whether there were significant differences in the respondents’
demographic characteristics. The statistical analysis reported that
no significant difference was found in divided age groups (p
=0.273 >0.05) and layered educational groups (p=0.261 >
0.05) on their agency values. However, the one-way ANOVA
indicated that all groups of varied professional titles manifested
significant differences (F =4.41, p=0.005). As seen in Table 2,
the median of senior teachers’ agency ranked the highest (m
=4.72), followed by associate senior teachers (m =4.10),
intermediate teachers (m =4.09), and primary teachers (m =
3.99). This finding suggests that teachers with higher professional
titles exercised more agency to implement advocated pedagogies
and pioneer changes in class. This difference might be related to
their variable identity commitments. Most experienced teachers
with high professional titles tend to incorporate diverse identities
as teachers, researchers, administrators, and policy practitioners
who are most likely to pioneer educational changes at school or
on indigenous levels.
Furthermore, a correlation analysis and a regression analysis
were conducted to examine how well the scores of quantitative
participants’ agency were correlated with their reform-oriented
beliefs. As shown in Table 3, there is a significant positive
relationship between teachers’ reform-oriented beliefs and
agency. The findings indicate that teachers’ beliefs significantly
predict teachers’ agentic performance, with teacher agency
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
TABLE 2 | Teachers’ agency differences among professional titles.
Mean F Sig.
Primary
(n=120)
Intermediate
(n=150)
Associate
senior
(n=64)
Senior
(n=4)
Teacher agency 3.99 4.09 4.10 4.72 4.410 0.005**
Intention 3.92 4.06 4.11 4.70 4.589 0.004**
Action 3.96 4.04 4.03 4.71 3.139 0.026*
Regulation 4.04 4.13 4.15 4.75 3.645 0.013**
The *and ** symbol indicates the values of p <0.05 and p <0.01 respectively.
TABLE 3 | Correlations of the variables.
Variables Beta t p R ²F
Teacher agency - - 0.000** 0.412 244.949
Teachers’ beliefs 0.642 15.651 0.000**
** p<0.01.
serving as the dependent variable and teachers’ beliefs serving as
the predictor, R² =0.412, p<0.01.
The interview data with the three case study participants
further confirmed the close correlation among teachers’
professional qualifications, reform-oriented beliefs, and agency
presented in the survey data. That is, the qualitative data
confirmed that the three teachers’ past experiences and
reform-oriented beliefs were closely linked to their agentic
choices and actions, which was especially relevant to their
sensitive perceptions of the current reform. In particular,
the past experiences that the three teachers drew on when
making a choice in accordance with policy mandates were
often related to their perceptions, responsibilities, and
participation in prior curriculum reforms. As the youngest
teacher among them, Wang had obtained her Bachelor’s
degree as an English major at a prestigious foreign language
university in China. She had not received teacher education
prior to entering high school and had not experienced
any previous national curriculum reforms. As shown in
Extract 4, she has been struggling with the contradictions of
students’ passive learning, has clung to traditional teaching
methods, and has been expected to adopt new approaches
of pedagogy in the changing environment, which resulted
in the incongruence between her reform-oriented beliefs
and her actual behaviors in class. It may be inferred that
superficial beliefs in curriculum reform and limited knowledge
of educational theories are not sufficiently solid for teachers to
make a professional shift beyond their immediate classroom
experiential strategies.
Extract 4
Wang: Theoretical knowledge is certainly helpful for the quality
of teaching, and the core competences were often heard when
I attended academic lectures and peer colleagues’ open classes.
For me, however, I had little reference to the theories in my
daily work and drew on only some advanced theories when
participating in teaching contests. One reason is that the students’
test scores in my class are the worst compared with other
classes’ students. The reform requirements are too difficult for
them to meet.
Compared with Wang, Xu and Zhang are experienced
teachers and the backbones of their schools. They were involved
in previous curriculum reforms and acquired a wide repertoire
of experience to cope with puzzles raised by educational changes,
which might account for their adaptation to the current reform
and confidence in their professional knowledge and pedagogic
skills. During interviews, Xu and Zhang both stated that they
have already published some reform-based research papers;
meanwhile, they expressed strong desires to conduct more
research on the basis of their pedagogical beliefs, practical
knowledge, and self-reflection. The interviews revealed that deep
insights into curriculum reform and critical reflection on creative
pedagogies underpinned teachers’ stronger sense of agency to
engage in changes.
Extract 5
Xu: Since I had learned some new ideas, for example, the
new term “cultural awareness” would replace the old term
“cultural character” in the upcoming curriculum reform when
communicating with some policy-makers and administrators of
local educational office, I was prepared for the current reform.
In the past, English teachers did pay enough attention to foster
learners’ Chinese cultural confidence, which had been modified
in xin kebiao. Respect and appreciation for excellent cultures have
been advocated to strengthen learners’ patriotism and pride in
Chinese historical culture.
Extract 6
Zhang: In the past 10 years, I have been committing to a series
of training projects, namely, “Excellent Teachers’, organized by
the Municipal Education Department, where I kept learning
and researching on advanced pedagogies; thus, my professional
expertise has been greatly enhanced. This reform exerts pressure
on me, but its policies are great. It centers on fostering students”
integral competences rather than only judging them by academic
performance; teachers are not simply imparters of knowledge but
also helpers to scaffold students to establish correct values.
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
TABLE 4 | Correlations and correlation of the variables.
Perceived
school culture
Interpersonal
condition
School system
Teacher 0.563** 0.528** 0.422**
agency
Variables Beta t p R ²F
Teacher - - 0.000** 0.317 162.181
agency
Perceived 0.642 12.735 0.000**
school
culture
** p<0.01.
The results above suggest that Xu had focused on developing
learners’ cultural awareness and had reflected considerably on
this term’s connotation beforehand. Teachers are most likely to
act as reform agents when their prior beliefs are in congruence
with reform principles (Bonner et al., 2019). Xu acknowledged
that it was impossible to reflect all the core competencies
advocated by xin kebiao in assessment, while teachers should
adhere to holistic educational goals in the long term and take into
account students’ academic excellence simultaneously, which
inspired him to integrate valuable ideas of xin kebiao and high-
stakes testing goals into his class. The interview data with Zhang
confirmed that she exerted great efforts to foster learners’ critical
thinking by promoting academic knowledge and social justice to
ensure that learners were equipped with a lifelong ability to learn
and a sense of social responsibility. In general, the analysis of the
three teachers’ past experiences and beliefs revealed that teachers’
experiences in career trajectories and reform-oriented beliefs
are important prerequisites for alternative evaluation, decision
making, and acting in a particular professional situation.
Interaction With the Structural
Environment
In this section, correlation analysis and regression analysis were
conducted to examine how well the quantitative participants’
perceived school culture correlated with teachers’ agentic
performance. A significant positive relationship was reported
between perceived school culture and teacher agency, whose
items of interpersonal condition were highly correlated with
teachers’ agentic performance. The findings shown in Table 4
indicate that perceived school culture significantly predicts
teachers’ agency level, R² =0.317, p<0.01. These results might
reveal that harmonious interactions with students and strong
professional bonds with coworkers guarantee sustained agentic
development for individual teachers.
Teachers’ perceived school culture is another important factor
in mediating teachers’ agency during the reform. The qualitative
analysis showed that the schools in which the three teachers
worked had recontextualized policy mandates in different forms
that had socially influenced their perceptions of their roles in the
reform. Wang’s data suggested that the school that she worked
in concentrated more on teachers’ examination accountability
for evaluating students’ learning and teachers’ teaching, mainly
based on test scores. Extract 7 also revealed that little intellectual
support and interactions at the school level reduced Wang’s
possibilities of professional cooperation with colleagues. This
evidence might partly explain Wang’s great emphasis on students’
concrete language skills in exam preparation.
Extract 7
Wang: Since English teachers at my school are overburdened with
loads of classes, we have no stable time and space for regular
teaching and researching sessions and simply gather together
when there is a research activity held by the local educational
office. Most of the time, we communicate via QQ group chat
(a Chinese social medium) and share some teaching materials
and resources that we believe to be useful. I truly hope that the
school administrators could offer us more opportunities to learn
advanced knowledge and skills in diverse ways.
Xu described that lately he had engaged in interschool English
teachers’ professional development training in association with
curriculum reform. The teacher community mentioned in
Extract 8 was organized to empower teachers to acquire a
profound understanding of xin kebiao, which helped Xu to
self-perceive as an active subject in educational changes. The
data revealed that the creation of a learning environment for
teachers who are enabled access to new educational theories and
pedagogies in professional communities may enhance their sense
of agency, confidence, and optimism regarding the reform.
Extract 8
Xu: My school has established a training program for
teachers’ professional development hand-in-hand with the Basic
Education Institute of Jiangsu Academy of Educational Sciences,
in which some chosen English teachers across the province are
regularly organized to receive trainings for a week or two. During
the session, I had chances to ask questions, discuss doubts and
seek advice from experts and instructors. At the beginning, we all
had no idea about the new curriculum reform, but we harvested
many new theories when a series of trainings were completed.
Zhang mentioned in interviews that she and other faculty
members in the English department met on the same workday
each week to work on teaching plans and learn official documents
together. Extract 9 demonstrates Zhang’s enthusiasm for writing
extended school-level textbooks and enriching teaching materials
in a subgroup. This may indicate that intellectual exchanges occur
through professional cooperation in different social activities,
which create an opportunity for individual teachers to actively
engage in the reform. It seems that Zhang not only perceived
herself as an active performer of the reform but also performed
in a larger picture of facilitating inexperienced teachers to take
on new pedagogical innovations.
Extract 9
Zhang: School authorities require all English staff to attend
regular weekly meetings to solve routine issues of daily work. We
usually share some valuable resources, such as teaching plans,
teaching design and PPTs, in giving and generous attitudes.
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
To enrich students’ cultural awareness, I set up a team in the
department to build a school-level curriculum materials resource
base, that aimed to work with other colleagues to intrigue
learners’ interests by containing more local cultures that they are
familiar with in life.
Aspirations for Professional Development
The projective dimension of teacher agency concerns both
their long- and short-term work aspirations (Priestley et al.,
2015). The interview data with the three teachers demonstrated
that their future professional goals were closely linked to
their agentic choices and actions during the reform. Wang
said that it was absolutely necessary to “enact some advanced
teaching theories and skills in class. However, for the students,
entrance examination preparation to college upon which their
future would be determined are most important, I don’t
dare to implement innovative pedagogies when Gaokao is
approaching.” Additionally, she has undergone a professional
dilemma and aspired to promote her professional learning
by “participating in a Master program in the future and
learning more knowledge of EFL educational theories.” It
seems that her aspiration for a Master’s degree regarding long-
term professional goals articulated her hope of controlling her
professional development trajectory with autonomy, which was
in conflict with her short-term goal of pursuing higher scores and
meeting students’ academic standards set by school authorities.
Comparatively, Xu’s long-term goals in work were to “facilitate
his students to gain more holistic knowledge and improve
their language proficiency,” and his short-term goals were to
“expand practical knowledge and conduct more reform-based
research.” Zhang’s long-term professional goals were to “explore
deeply in educational theories and reinforce her students’ social
responsibilities, including how they could gain capability of life-
long learning and how they could gain independence of thought
and moral sense of judgment.” Her short-term professional
goals were to “enhance professional expertise and academic
competence through self-directed learning, cooperative learning
and researching.”
The interview data and the teachers’ published papers revealed
that they had different expectations to conduct research. For
example, Xu utilized mind maps in practical teaching and
published academic papers based on his practical knowledge.
Thus, he gave a future orientation for conducting more action
research on relevant themes. Similarly, Zhang brought up
her research interests as incentives to take on pedagogical
changes. Extract 10 describes her research experience and agentic
actions in focusing on activity teaching methods recommended
in xin kebiao.
Extract 10
Zhang: Last summer, I attended a lecture given by an expert of
curriculum reform on activity teaching methods, which raised
my interests and inspired me to learn more about it. In the
process of teaching practice guided by the method, I wrote an
article and eventually published it, which gave me a great sense
of achievement. I believe theoretical knowledge can instruct a
teacher to supervise and evaluate his class, so I will continue to
do research.
In all, Xu and Zhang were highly self-conscious that the
class was inherently an “experimental field” where they enacted
instrumental reform to thus promote their reflections on
existing teaching practices. This evidence may indicate that
teachers are most likely to act as reform agents when they
can operate closely with positive interactions among their
pedagogical beliefs, research interests, professional goals, and the
reform policy.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
In this study, the researcher endeavored to examine the
agency of English teachers and analyze the influencing factors
from an ecological perspective. Accordingly, the majority of
teachers surveyed exhibited positive attitudes and beliefs about
implementing the reform and noticeable inclinations toward
change. Regarding the demographic characteristics, the findings
confirmed that the scores of senior teachers’ agency were
much higher than those of other cohorts with lower ranks of
professional titles. These results reveal that the imposition of
national top-down educational policy from the macrolevel (i.e.,
the MOE) has strong impact on teachers’ potential changes in
their beliefs, behaviors, and competence in classroom practice.
The teachers’ abundant professional experience and resources
may allow them to actively engage in policy implementation as
motivational forces in its infancy.
Although the agency of English teachers demonstrated a
relatively high implementation of policy mandates, their agency
to act on changes is at variance with and is mediated by
the personal qualities that they bring to their work. When
the prescriptions and policy mandates are enacted at the
microlevel (the classroom context), the qualitative study reveals
that English teachers’ high agency in the reform manifested in
a series of sustained pedagogical change behaviors and reform-
based reflections. Although the three case study teachers’ ideas
and beliefs are in congruence with those of the curriculum
reform, they exhibited different agentic actions in the teaching
process and pedagogical shift. Three forms of agency are
found in this study: constrained agency, transformative agency,
and progressive agency. More specifically, Wang demonstrated
the constrained state of agency with notable inconsistency
between positive reform-oriented beliefs and reversed actions
in classroom practice. The problems in Wang’s powerlessness
in change and weak participation in the reform are predictable
on the basis of her inexperienced practical knowledge and
unsupportive school environment. Contrary to Wang, Xu
and Zhang displayed considerable reflections on educational
change and thus demonstrated themselves as active agents in
consciousness and actions. The example of Xu supports the
statement of being transformative by showing that his realistic
intention of preparing the students for examinations and his
ideal intention of promoting holistic education are integrated
into his efforts to overcome the contradiction to then enhance
teaching quality. In the same way, Zhang’s progressive agency
in the reform was manifested by actively constructing the
expected identity imposed by educational changes and facilitating
colleagues’ growth in teaching.
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
FIGURE 2 | Formation of language teachers’ agency in a curriculum reform context. Adapted from Priestley et al. (2015), with permission from Bloomsbury Academic
through PLS Clear.
These findings draw attention to how particular ecological
conditions interconnect and interact with individuals, as
captured in Figure 2.
Figure 2 presents a complex model of understanding the
formation of language teachers’ agency as a continuum that
contains the three dimensions of iterational, practical-evaluative,
and projective. Regarding the iterational dimension, as shown
in Figure 2, prior experiences and reform-oriented beliefs were
found to mediate teacher agency, which allows one to sustain
previous practice or change on the microlevel. The implications
of this model on the interplay between teacher agency and
the iterational dimension that impacts it are as follows. First,
this study supports the statement that particular experiences
in a teacher’s biographical dimension provide a strong ‘drive’
toward the future and make a clear difference in the here
and now (Priestley et al., 2015). This study extends this
perspective by finding that teachers’ agency to change may
originate from the recognition of one’s agentic capacity that
relies on transferring prior reform-related experiences into the
present reform. A prior successful experience is likely to help
teachers maintain confidence in their teaching ability (Chu
et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2021). These prior successful experiences
seem to enable teachers to have a clear awareness of implicit
developmental opportunities, possible resources, and behavioral
principles accompanied by educational changes and to thus
take initiative to make reform-oriented choices and practical
actions to transform in line with the reform. These findings
also emphasize that the accumulated experiences and thoughts
from the past are always intertwined with practical activities and
are more significant than future professional goals in shaping
teacher agency in curriculum reform in teachers’ developmental
trajectories. Second, reform-oriented beliefs are considered to be
important factors to achieve agency in the iterational dimension.
This is incongruous with the proposed pattern, which includes
beliefs in the practical-evaluative dimension (Priestley et al.,
2015) (see Figure 1), as the study found that teachers’ reform-
oriented beliefs that directed their actions were rooted largely
in prior experiences and were more difficult to change than
knowledge or practice during reform enactment. Although
teacher beliefs always act in the present, belief change in teacher
practice is difficult, slow, and often transient (Bonner et al., 2019).
These findings also confirm that the agency to change is not
activated by beliefs alone; a partial adoption of reform beliefs
can also coexist with the agency of resistance toward the reform,
but teaching and learning achievement gains for implementing
reforms appear to be precursors of deep change in beliefs (Biesta
et al., 2015; Naraian and Schlessinger, 2018; Bonner et al., 2019;
Bao et al., 2020). For instance, the tension between Wang’s
stated beliefs and inconsistent behaviors in class was largely
motivated by her perception of students’ reactions and the safety
of using innovative teaching methods in her classrooms. Since an
insufficient experience with effective pedagogical strategies and
practical knowledge is the primary cause of teachers’ “willing
spirit but weak power” phenomenon, it seems that policies
prescribed in xin kebiao should be interpreted and implemented
in more flexible and diverse senses rather than in narrow and
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
rigid ways, which might lead to inappropriateness to the realities
of the students. Thus, the critical question becomes how reform-
related teacher educational programs could enable teachers to
generate agency in challenging changes and gaining autonomy in
contextual conditions. Third, this study implies that systematic
reflections on prior experiences, future goals, and actions are
seen as indispensable parts of teacher agency development.
The three teachers interviewed reported their experiences of
transferring familiar valuable acting principles into the reform
context, in which reflective thinking was intertwined with their
decision-making and action-taking in professional practices.
Thus, reflection on action is considered to be the dominant
activity for expanding practical knowledge and supporting
teacher learning in general (Le et al., 2020), especially proactive
reflection in evaluating aim accomplishment after experiences lay
the groundwork for teacher learning in educational change.
For the projective dimension, future professional short-term
goals and long-term goals on the microlevel were found to have
been applied when evaluating alternatives, making decisions, and
acting in a particular situation (Leijen et al., 2020). The results
from the study concur with early research (Priestley et al., 2015),
which suggested that teachers’ short-term goals with respect to
their day-to-day decision-making and teaching action are shaped
by a perceived need to deliver enjoyable lessons and keep students
engaged. For instance, examination preparation was prioritized
when Wang exerted pedagogical practices in routine school
work. Regarding long-term professional goals, the three involved
teachers set purposes for improving teaching competence in
different ways, which demonstrates that teachers are conscious
of the imperative shifting of educational context in China and
the need to transform their professional identity. Wang expressed
aspirations to make progress in career development and be
promoted as a senior teacher. Xu and Zhang mentioned digging
deeper into the domain of the core competencies and developing
wider social purposes of education. It is evident in these findings
that when teachers’ long-term professional goals are more
congruent with ideas proposed by the policy, they will be more
engaged in the reform. This suggests that educational innovation
aligned with teachers’ professional interests and expectations
for the future can sustain and inspire their dedication to the
whole process of curriculum reform. Therefore, in the early
phase of curriculum reform, opportunities, social dialog, and
time should be offered to teachers to become aware of their
transformed roles and make sense of their views on the reforms
(Vähäsantanen, 2015). It is also essential for policymakers and
school administrators to create more opportunities for teachers
to make a positive sense of professional development in the
context of educational change.
Concerning the practical-evaluative dimension, a closer
examination of how the variables of perceived school culture
mediated the exercise of teacher agency on the meso level
yielded additional evidence with implications for practice. The
challenge of localizing the national curriculum should not be
underestimated (Kennedy, 2013; Le et al., 2020). The results
indicate that teachers’ relationships with students, colleague
cooperation, and administrative support strongly mediated
teachers’ practices during the whole reform period. Wang’s
previous intention to change was discouraged by students’
inactive responses in class and insufficient support from the
external environment. In contrast, Xu enhanced his sense of
agency by participating in teacher communities organized by
the school, and Zhang had access to more socially supportive
interactions with the students and colleagues to develop relevant
educational expertise. Therefore, the study confirms that whether
school authorities attach importance to the reform by organizing
training programs at the school level and interschool level
and providing pedagogical resources for teachers affects their
agency to a different degree. Given the deep-rooted tradition of
examination-driven education in the Chinese context, localized
school institutions always implement macrolevel curriculum
reform as policy translators by changing the existing curriculum
to various degrees based on their diverse financial conditions,
deep-rooted culture, and hierarchical context. Notably, schools
at the meso level interact with national educational policy, social
ideologies, students’ anticipations, and teachers’ agency in a
very complex way. Highly hierarchical school systems usually
have close ties with less individual autonomy, which might
be seen as a key competency of agency (Tao and Gao, 2021).
Wang’s constrained state of agency was largely accountable
to her school context, where the regime of examination
accountability prevailed and was dominant, while inadequate
learning opportunities and professional help were offered. The
finding echoes other published empirical results (Liu et al.,
2016; Yang and Clarke, 2018; Poulton, 2020). Change requires
both reculturing and restructuring of schooling (Biesta et al.,
2015). However, the influence of schooling does not operate in
a linear way on teachers because boosted agency may gradually
drive the decomposition of traditional school culture and rebuild
new culture, and vice versa. For example, Zhang constructed
a teacher-learning community and created mutual support
among colleagues through cooperation, which empowered her
as a leading practitioner in the reform. Thus, suggestions for
school institutions to relieve teachers’ anxiety about educational
change and enhance their agentic change include nurturing
the role of reform leaders among teachers and providing them
good opportunities for school-guided collaborative interaction,
learning, and research. This study also calls for teacher education
programs that concentrate on teachers’ assessment literacy and
help them find approaches in more profound ways to coordinate
the inconsistencies between high-stakes examination preparation
and holistic education.
CONCLUSION
This study contributes to future research, as it demonstrates that
English teachers’ agency in response to the reform manifested
in constrained, transformative, and progressive forms at the
early phase of curriculum reform. In particular, the study found
that teachers developed deep agentic changes through sustained
pedagogical change and reflection on reform-based practices.
Another important contribution of this study shows that the
relationship between reform-oriented beliefs and teacher agency
is more than linear. Teachers’ agency to change is not activated
or refrained by beliefs alone; other influential factors whose prior
experiences, self-perceptions of transformative opportunities,
accessible resources, and positive acting between pedagogical
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Wang English Teacher Agency in China
reflections and academic research also profoundly influence
teachers’ contextual agentic choices and actions.
To challenge the constraints on agency, regular learning
opportunities need to be offered at the school-based level to foster
teachers’ curriculum reform literacy and assessment literacy,
enhance their agency to take on positive changes, coordinate
inconsistencies between high-stakes examination preparation
and holistic education, and produce more autonomy in class
practices. It is vital that a variety of indigenous school-based
reforms be implemented to echo the national reform, which
supports teachers in creating a space for critical reflection
and negotiating more favorable identities in their professional
trajectories. It is acknowledged that teachers’ agency dynamically
develops during different periods of curriculum reform (Priestley
et al., 2015). In the future, longitudinal-designed research is
needed to explore language teacher agency and provide more
explanatory power for understanding agency in educational
changes. Moreover, there is a lack of a sufficient amount
of class observation that tracks interviewed teachers’ agency
development trajectories within classrooms. It is also worth
examining teachers’ discourse and actions in responding to
the reform and enabling the student voice to be heard at the
classroom level.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
LW is an associate professor in the School of Foreign
Language, Guizhou University of Finance and Economics,
Guizhou, China. LW interests include educational
linguistics, language teacher development, and language
education policy.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The original contributions presented in the study are included
in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be
directed to the corresponding author.
ETHICS STATEMENT
Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s)
for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data
included in this article.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
has approved it for publication.
FUNDING
This work was supported by the Research Launch Project
for Introducing Talents of Guizhou University of Finance and
Economics (Grant No. 2020YJ029) and the Specialized Project
of Key Discipline-Guizhou University of Finance and Economics
(Grant No. 2020ZJXK08).
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Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 13 July 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 935038