Students’ conceptions and experiences of institutionalised curriculum for multilingual learning: the case of a dual-foreign-languages programme

Abstract

ABSTRACT Whilst the existing literature on multilingual learning in curriculum has properly addressed a variety of instructional factors, few studies have been dedicated to investigating the influence of institutionalisation as a contextual, power-laden factor on multilingual curriculum which in turn influences multilingual learning. To fill this gap, this qualitative study examines undergraduate students’ conceptions and experiences of the institutionalised dual-foreign-languages programme of English and French in a Chinese university. The findings unveil how the institutionalisation of dual-foreign-languages learning, as mediated by specific curricular arrangements, imposed a predetermined pathway towards achieving predetermined curricular goals. In such institutionalised curriculum, students experienced and conceived dual-foreign-languages learning as a rigidly devised project, in which they were pressurised to conform to fixed curricular arrangements as well as their underlying ideologies, and in which they also agentically responded to the institutionalised curriculum with the initiative to reflect and negotiate. It is thus suggested that curriculum developers and administrators should be cautious about imposing curricular intentions that over-simplify multilingual learning dynamics which may impede learning instead of promoting it.