A Study On Foreign Language Education Policy Enactment In China

With the development of the knowledge economy and the information age,the globalization has accelerated in the 21^st century.And the competition,the cooperation and the exchanges between countries have become increasingly frequent and deepening.Hence,countries have placed the educational reform,particularly the education development,as one of the national development strategies.Paying much attention to the value of language education,countries have begun to re-examine their educational goals,educational ideas,educational methods and content,and meanwhile the majority carefully consider whether their national talent cultivation objectives can adapt to the rapid development of global politics,economy,science and technology and culture.Based on the domestic elementary education curriculum reform,this study investigates the status quo and effects of foreign language education policy?FLEP?enactment in primary and middle schools in Shanghai,and explores the main factors influencing the enactment of FLEP.The following four research questions are addressed:?1?How does the chain of Shanghai foreign language education policies work??2?What is the enactment of FLEP like in Shanghai from the perspective of teacher actors??3?What factors affect the enactment of foreign language education policy?How do the above factors affect the enactment of foreign language education policy??4?Based on the above factors,how to construct the foreign language education policy enactment path?Accordingly,this paper explores the research questions with literature research,theoretical analysis,text analysis,historical logic analysis and case study,and conclude the research findings of this study.The analysis of status quo of FLEP enactment in Shanghai primary and secondary schools from the perspective of teacher actors shows that FLEP has been well enacted,and the FLEP chain runs smoothly.Particularly,the superior policy has a leading role in the lower policy with good policy enforcement.Even though the policies are coherent in a linear way,the policy discourse is more abstract and less operational.The structure of FLEP institutions can be adjusted timely to meet the needs of the education practice and the clear administration and division of respective institution ensure the policy activities to enhance the quality of education.But for the policy implementation,the communication and collaboration between institutions and actors within them needs to be strengthened.The FLEP actors,i.e.teachers,have their own professional accomplishment,such as content knowledge,pedagogical skills,policy literacy,and educational philosophy,etc..More importantly,teacher actors have high autonomy and self-efficacy for foreign language education policy‘enactment',which has laid a good human resources foundation.Even though the human,material and financial resources are rich in Shanghai,all of them need to be further optimized.The fact that Shanghai is striving to become an international metropolis of international economic center,international financial center,international trade center and international shipping center has laid a good political,economic and cultural environment for the FLEP enactment.From the perspective of teacher actors,there are four factors affecting the FLEP enactment in Shanghai primary and secondary schools and the sequences from strong to weak are as follows:the executive institutions,the policy implementation resources,the policy and the policy environment.Through the multiple regression analysis,the factor model achieves the good fit degree.It can be seen that the above four factors have a positive role in promoting teacher actors to enact FLEP.The author explores the path of FLEP enactment which is suitable for China,based on the analysis of the interaction among the factors of teacher actors,policy,executive institutions,policy resources and policy environment.This paper is divided into eight chapters:The first chapter is the introduction,which includes the research background,the research purposes,the core concepts,the research path and the overall structure of the paper;the second chapter is the literature review,which probes into the relevant researches on the two core concepts of language education policy and FLEP enactment.The third chapter is the theoretical foundation,which clarify the core concept of language education policy and language education policy implementation,and elaborates the policy enactment framework.The fourth chapter is the research design.In this chapter,the research questions,research methods,research process are clarified.The fifth chapter is the analysis of FLEP chain in Shanghai primary and secondary schools,which examines the background of foreign language education policy formulation,introduces and analyzes the policy texts,and policy enforcement and policy coherence as well as evaluates policy chain development objectively.The sixth chapter is the results and discussion part.Data from questionnaires,interviews and text materials about the status quo and affecting factors of FLEP enactment are carefully observed and explained.The seventh chapter discusses the influence of teacher actors on FLEP enactment and how to establish the paths to enact FLEP in China.The eighth chapter is the conclusion part.It includes the conclusion of the research,the innovation and limitations of this research and finally looks into the future research of FLEP.