Utility of policy enactment theory and its extension: Incorporating the role of teacher cognition in policy process
In more and more contexts, governments intervene in education in an attempt to change teachers’ classroom practices with the aim of raising the quality of education. However, most innovations are reported to have only limited impacts. This presentation investigates one such innovation, a Korean government certification scheme called Teaching English in English. This is a part of a broad set of curricular policy initiatives which aim to change English education from teaching about English to teaching how to use it, and it has complex impacts on teachers and their teaching.
In this presentation, I will discuss the utility of policy enactment theory in understanding the process of implementing this innovation, and explaining its impacts. Additionally, drawing on the literature on the dialectic relationship between teacher cognition and their teaching practices as well as on my ethnographic data of the scheme as experienced and perceived by teachers, I will suggest that policy enactment theory can be extended through recognising individual teachers, not just institutions (e.g. schools), as sites for policy enactment.