Agency in Multilingual Education Policy and Planning in Asia

Manan and Hajar invite experts and seasoned researchers from Asian contexts to explore the nuanced dynamics of language policy and educational practices in Asia, underscoring the importance of understanding local agency at a micro-level. The chapters of this title engage in the critical exploration of the tensions between structure and agency, and spotlight the institutional constraints these micro-level actors face in the enactment of multilingual education policy and planning.The contributors’ chapters provide case study examples of local actors responses towards policies at the micro-level when creating potential spaces for multilingual pedagogies and possible affirmation of multilingual identities. It also provides an analysis of how and why micro-level actors engage in the exercise of their agency, and what motives drive their responses. The volume serves as a challenge to, with the hope to change, the normative assumptions, pervasive postcolonial hierarchies, and hierarchical multilingualism in favour of more egalitarian and inclusive multilingual policies and practices, both within and outside, the classroom. More specifically, the volume shares significant developments occurring around the role of agency in negotiating the prevailing Anglophonic and Anglonormative trends and practices. This book will be of value to researchers and postgraduate students working in the fields of language policy and planning, multilingualism and language education.

Syed Abdul Manan, PhD, is Associate Professor of Multilingual Education at Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education, Kazakhstan. His research, teaching, and supervision interests include language education policy and planning, English Medium Instruction (EMI), multilingual practices, World Englishes, and policy issues related to the politics, economics, and sociology of languages, linguistic rights, and social justice. His research has been published in top- tier journals that include Language Policy, Language Problems and Language Planning, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Multilingua, Current Issues in Language Planning, World Englishes, and others. He is co- editor of the book Multilingual Selves and Motivations for Learning Languages other than English in Asian Contexts (Hajar & Manan, 2024).Anas Hajar, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He is particularly interested in motivational issues in language learning and intercultural engagement. He also works in the areas of internationalization and education abroad, language learning strategies, and shadow education.