Reconceptualizing Agency in English-Medium Instruction Policy Enactment

This chapter outlines the development of a conceptual framework for examining how Vietnamese university teachers and students exercise agency in enacting English-medium instruction (EMI) policies. While EMI is central to higher education internationalization, vague policies and limited institutional support in emerging EMI contexts like Vietnam pose significant challenges for classroom-level actors (Tran & Nguyen, 2018). Grounded in language planning and policy scholarship, this study highlights how classroom-level agency shapes policy enactment and outcomes. The chapter reviews foundational theories of agency, including Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory, which links agency to social structures, and Bandura’s (2001) social cognitive theory, which emphasizes self-efficacy and intentionality. While both are valuable, the former adopts a sociological focus that risks overlooking individual motivation and beliefs, whereas the latter treats policy contexts as static backdrops rather than dynamic forces shaping EMI practice. To address these gaps, my conceptual framework integrates Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) ecological perspective, further developed in education policy studies by Priestley et al. (2014, 2015), which conceptualizes agency as emerging from interactions between individuals and contexts across past, present, and future dimensions. It also incorporates Deed et al.’s (2014) concept of mutuality, emphasizing the reciprocal influence of teacher and student agency. This chapter offers insights for researchers navigating the theoretical complexity of agency in language policy and planning research.