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Journal of Educational Change

, Volume 13, Issue 4, pp 431–447 | Cite as

‘We can only change in a small way’: A study of secondary English teachers’ implementation of curriculum reform in China

  • Chunmei Yan
Article
First Online:

Abstract

This article reports on a study of English secondary teachers’ perceptions of and implementation of the new English curriculum reform in China. Triangulated data collection methods were employed to gather information about teachers’ perceptions of the new curriculum and their teaching behaviours. Implementation gap emerged between the new curriculum requirements and the teachers’ classroom practices despite the teachers’ common endorsement of the new curriculum goals and pedagogies due to a series of contextual constraints: the considerable professional and psychological challenges to teachers, the students’ resistance, and the lack of support school administrators and most importantly, the backwash effect of the prevalent examination culture. The study suggests the necessity to address teachers’ challenges and difficulties in the curriculum reform process to facilitate their implementation of the reform.

Keywords

The new curriculum reform China Secondary English teachers Implementation gap Contextual features Challenges and difficulties 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of Foreign LanguagesCentral China Normal UniversityWuhanPeople’s Republic of China

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