Russian language teachers’ professional agency against the backdrop of the New National Teaching Quality Standards in China: an ecological perspective

ABSTRACT

With the ‘New National Teaching Quality Standards’ and its supplement – the ‘Guide for the Russian Majors Education’ as language education policies, this paper argues that these policies have constructed an ecological environment for Russian language teachers’ (RLTs) agency in China. The interpretive policy analysis, interviews and classroom observations of four RLTs help explore which environmental factors (the macro-system, exo-system, meso system and micro-system) impact their agency from an ecological perspective, and which factors are ignored by RLTs. The findings are: (1) (the ideology embodied in) these policies is (are) mandatory in terms of the vocabulary and text, and they set a macro (exo-) framework for and influence RLTs’ agency; (2) The meso system (universities) has the greatest impact on RLTs’ agency, which may access or deny the possibilities the macro-language policy may offer; (3) RLTs’ dispositions and the Russian language department constitute a potential micro-system, and the role of this sub-system in RLTs’ agency cannot be ignored. This study is of methodological, theoretical, and practical significance for research on the impact of language policy and planning (LPP) on the developmental environment for teachers of less-commonly-taught language in terms of LPP for the diversity of foreign language education.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher agency
• Russian language policy and planning
• the new National Teaching Quality Standards
• ecological perspective

View correction statement:

Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Different universities (College of Russian Language, or Russian Language Teaching and Research Centre) may constitute different systems (meso- or micro ones) that may facilitate or hinder the exercise of RLTs’ agency. A department is different from a teaching and research section in terms of the course design, RLT numbers and the objective for cultivation. So is the college (school) different from the department.

2 By doing so, the MoE supervises foreign language teaching nationwide. And the evaluation and observation take place every four years. RLTs have a deep understanding and first-hand experience of such complicated ecological system that may hinder or facilitate their agency.

3 This point is reflected in her classroom as she often reminded students to complete the pamphlet for practicum at the end of her class.

4 Some universities in China require that new teachers should complete a number of tasks (paper publication and project/program) and should be promoted in their academic titles in 3–5 years after they join the universities. Otherwise, they have to leave the universities. This practice is similar to the idea: ‘to publish or to perish.’

5 Russian Language program, like other majors in universities, is evaluated or appraised every five years by MoE. Presidents, deans and especially teachers have to fill in various tables, figures and prepare other materials for the evaluation. Besides teaching, teachers have played other roles as tutors, supervisors, advisors, sectaries, compilers, editors, and even mediators in school. Additionally, they are parents, daughters (sons), or wives(husbands). They are often in multi-role-conflict situation.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the China National Foundation for Social Sciences (20BYY221), the Teacher Education and Development Centre, Shaanxi Normal University (JSJY2020010) and the Key Graduate Education Program, Southeast University (3317002101D4).

Notes on contributors

Yuan Tao

Yuan Tao is a Professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University. Her research focuses on corpus-based translation studies, sinological studies in Russia, and teacher development and education.