Confirmation of Candidature - Liyana Ahmad Afip

About Confirmation of Candidature - Liyana Ahmad Afip

Policy Borrowing and enactment: A case study of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and individual agency in Malaysian higher education.

Abstract

The recent English language education policy in Malaysia has borrowed a global language education framework, namely the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages to reform the English language curriculum in higher education institutions. As an influential global policy, CEFR has been considered useful for planning curricula, syllabi, test and certification at the macro level. However, the impact of CEFR at the micro level is relatively limited. The current body of empirical evidence on the use of CEFR at this level does not provide adequate understanding of how teachers respond to and interact with the policy as individual actors in the light of their personal beliefs, experiences, practices and visions. Therefore, there is a need for an in-depth study on the CEFR based policy (CbP) from a contextualised perspective, focusing on teachers in the classroom. The current study will investigate how English teachers in a Malaysian university exercise their agency to interpret and make sense of the policy, how teachers enact the policy in their classroom practices, and how teachers’ agentic practices are perceived by students in the classroom. The study is located in three bodies of literature: language-in-education planning, the CEFR as a borrowed language education policy, and local agency. Teacher agency from an ecological perspective provides its theoretical lens. The study is designed as a qualitative case study based on an interpretivist paradigm that allows multiple perspectives and diverse experiences of the participants in the enactment of the CbP in the local context. It will employ document analysis, classroom observation, in-depth individual interviews with department executives and teachers, and focus-group discussions for teachers and students to generate evidence on how the macro-level policy is translated and enacted at the grassroots level. The study is expected to contribute to research on language education policy by providing empirical evidence for an in-depth understanding of the local agency in adopting and enacting the borrowed policy in a local context.

Date         Monday 24th April 2017

Time        11.00am to 1:00pm

Location   Room S302

Location   Social Science Building 24  St Lucia Campus

PANEL:  Associate Professor Karen Moni (Chair) and Dr Vicente Reyes

Principal Advisor: Dr Obaid Hamid  Associate Advisor:  Professor Peter Renshaw