Language Curriculum Innovation in a Chinese Secondary School: A Study of Teacher Cognition and Classroom Practices

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the changes in foreign language teachers’ cognition and practices during a four-year innovation project at a Chinese secondary school, and explores the factors that influenced the trajectory of those changes. It makes a substantial contribution to research on educational change by offering a longitudinal observation of the facts and voices in EFL settings in China; as such, the book offers a valuable resource for scholars, teacher educators, teachers, and others interested in initiating, managing and evaluating innovations in EFL classrooms.

Dr. Yan Zhu is a Lecturer at the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Fudan University, China, and a research associate and teacher educator at the Shanghai Centre for Research in English Language Education. Dr. Zhu’s research focuses on FLT curriculum innovation in basic education, task-based language teaching, in-service teacher education through university-school partnerships, and classroom instruction. Her publications have appeared in prestigious international and domestic journals, including Language Teaching, System, The Modern Language Journal, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language World, Modern Foreign Languages, and Foreign Language Education, among others. She is currently the principal investigator for a project supported by the National Social Science Fund of China.