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Advanced Activity Systems

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Teacher Mediated Agency in Educational Reform in China

Part of the book series: English Language Education ((ELED,volume 3))

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the three-level contexts of College English teaching. The first section depicts the development of College English in China, including the context and the problems of curriculum and test reform, as the macro-level context of College English teaching. After that, the analysis focuses on the activity system of the Chinese Ministry of Education (CMoE) in relation to the national curriculum reform as well as the national reform implementation style and strategies as the meso-level context. The third-level analysis then presents the activity system of the College English Department where I conducted my study as the micro-level context. Following that, the next section analyses the interactions and the contradictions generated between the activity system of the CMoE and the activity system of the Department. Finally, the last section summarises the impact that these three-level contexts have on individual teacher agency. The results indicate that there is little congruence or shared understanding between the reform requirements and the local needs of the Department.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There were 2,358 regular higher education institutions, 1,112 universities and 1,246 nonuniversity tertiary institutions, in China in 2010 (CMoE 2011b).

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  1. The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Hongzhi Yang

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Yang, H. (2015). Advanced Activity Systems. In: Teacher Mediated Agency in Educational Reform in China. English Language Education, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15925-6_3

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