Individual agency in language-in-education policy: a story of Chinese heritage language schools in multilingual Brussels

ABSTRACTIt is increasingly recognized that agency plays an essential role in shaping language-in-education policy (LEP) and influencing the learning process. Research on agency has not yet adequately engaged with the field of heritage education and maintenance in diasporas. Drawing on Shohamy’s and Bonacina-Pugh’s conceptualization of declared, perceived, and practiced language policies, we examine the individual agency of three groups of actors – people with power (principals), people with expertise (teachers), and people with interest (students) – in a variety of policy or planning activities within two Chinese heritage language (CHL) schools in Brussels. On the basis of collected ethnographically informed data in conjunction with the conversation analysis of audio-recorded classroom interactions, our findings illustrate how three types of agentive roles are effective in forming language policies and constructing discursive spaces within the CHL schools, with a clear orientation shift from monolingualism to multilingualism. This study contributes to research on heritage language maintenance in a highly multilingual, diasporic, and educational context by providing a portrait of how educational practitioners and learners assert their agency to explore locally appropriate language policies that maximize actors’ potential to teach and learn heritage languages.KEYWORDS: Individual agencylanguage-in-education policychinese heritage languagemonolingualismmultilingualism AcknowledgmentI am very grateful to Dr Rik Vosters and Dr Jianwei Xu for supervising my doctoral thesis. My sincere thanks also go to all the principals, teachers, and students of the École Sun Yat-Sen de Belgique and the Eurochine Chinese Language School in Brussels, who kindly accepted my invitation to interview and observe them during my Ph.D. study. Needless to say, any errors that remain in this work are our sole responsibility.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was sponsored by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) under grant number [201607110011], Shanghai Pujiang Program under grant number [22PJC111], and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [22120230347].Notes on contributorsXiangyun LiXiangyun Li is a post-doc at the School of Foreign Languages, Tongji University. Her main research interests include language planning and policy, multilingualism, language maintenance, and heritage language education in diaspora settings. xiangyun.li@hotmail.comQi ShenQi Shen is a full professor and director of the Center for Language Planning and Global Governance, at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. His research interests include language planning and policy, educational linguistics, and sociolinguistics. qishen@tongji.edu.cn