There is an ongoing concern regarding the alignment of textbooks with curriculum standards across different subjects. Such studies have emphasized the critical, yet complex, role of textbooks in bridging pedagogical practices with curricular reforms. The present research builds upon these discussions, by examining not only the alignment but also…

The Commonwealth-funded school English as a Second language (ESL) program used to be seen by the ESL profession as an essential educational access and equity provision responding to Australia's migrant and humanitarian intakes and its growing linguistically diverse population. In the decades before and after the turn of the century, however,…

As China increasingly engages in global human rights mechanisms, it has demonstrated a commitment to reforming its national curriculum. Through examining textbooks published during Xi Jinping's tenure, this study investigates how China embeds human rights issues in the English language curriculum. The findings indicate that the human rights issues…

Teacher agency in Vietnam is an under-researched area, to the cost of recognising teacher professionalism, the role of teachers in curriculum reform and, consequently, the success of important curriculum improvements. This paper reports on a multiple-case study investigating teacher agency in primary schools implementing the national EFL…

This case study reports how three high-school teachers from two state schools in Colombia enacted the National English Suggested Curriculum by the Ministry of Education. The teachers' trajectories of action were analyzed through semi-structured interviews, teachers' narratives, and lesson observations. Using the ecological model of agency as a…

Curriculum material use is an agentive, reciprocal and innovative practice, involving multiple stakeholders such as teacher, students and assessments that mutually shape one another. While it is generally acknowledged that teachers' knowledge and skills deeply shape the way they use materials, little is known about how material use can possibly…

National curriculum standards for different countries mean some International Baccalaureate (IB) schools must often balance IB and national standards. Literature on how schools find this balance is limited. Using a qualitative case study design, we examined the perspectives of teachers of English in a Chinese IB school that recently employed a…

This chapter discusses two important learning contexts that make and remake the Chinese international graduate students: first, as foreign language learners back in China, then as second language users and learners at Blue Fountain University in the United States. After reviewing the sociocultural context in which the students prepared to study…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the continuity of reading passages of Korean high school English textbooks with the 2015 Revised National Curriculum using CohMetrix, a software that analyzes English texts in a range of linguistic features. Twentyone English textbooks were analyzed: 11 High School English, five High School English I,…

This qualitative research study sought to understand teachers' resistance to English language educational change in Kyrgyzstan. The participants were six English teachers working in both rural and urban public schools in Kyrgyzstan. Analysis of non-participant observation and post-observation interviews revealed that, despite changes in English…

China's impressive growth over the last three decades warrants the need to re-evaluate the position and positioning of English in the country's educational system. For long, English has been taught and learned compulsorily alongside Chinese and maths in primary and secondary schools in the mainland of China. It was not until recent years that the…

With the spread of English as a global lingua franca, many governments have developed and implemented new curricula and pedagogies, aiming to enhance English competence for personal and national participation in a globalised world. In Vietnam, the Government established Project 2020 (since relabelled Project 2025), a reform of the national English…

China's National English Curriculum Standard, launched in 2001, clearly reflects a philosophy and characteristics of learner-centeredness. However, limited evidence is available as to how far the learner-centred philosophy has, through interacting with the local contexts, influenced teachers' beliefs, which will translate into a core philosophy…

In the field of second and foreign language learning, the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) is widely-used for setting language proficiency standards within European, and increasingly global, contexts. Few studies, however, have investigated the ways in which systemic, macro-level factors within national educational…

Exploring multilingualism as a complex, context-related, societal and individual phenomenon, this book centres around perspectives on how multiple languages are made (in)visible within educational settings in the Global North. The authors of each chapter compare and contrast findings across geographical contexts with the goal of understanding the…