The Hidden Curriculum of an English for Academic Purposes Reform in Chinese Universities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v11i11.186538Keywords:
Hidden Curriculum, Language policy, EAP, ChinaAbstract
The fundamental challenge in China’s higher education is its bureaucratic governance system; however, it remains untouched after several reforms. The recent Shanghai EAP policy does nothing to challenge the system, but rather, it blames the general English curriculum for failing to prepare students academically. By critically reflect on data from some previous studies, this study discovered that the new EAP curriculum and the policy proposed to replace the general English curriculum harbored a hidden curriculum that tightened the control of knowledge, legitimizing the existing higher education system, and reproducing future academic subalterns. This Shanghai EAP policy is the result of the policymakers’ social mobility struggle as members of a new middle class, together with their accomplices: neoliberalism and neoconservatives. However, resistance and conflict exist in every working context, including the context of Shanghai EAP as justified in the study, despite some of the students’ and the teacher’s resistance being counter-productive.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with Critical Education agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).