The Intersection of English Education Policy in Sweden and Teacher Agency

Sammanfattning: Researchers have examined how teachers come to make sense of language policies in their practice. These studies explored the relationship between language policies and teacher agency in various contexts. The aim of the study was to explore English upper secondary school teachers’ agency in Sweden, since the Swedish educational language policy expects English teachers to include various functions that English serves in societal domains and to interpret and make sense of the policy locally. Qualitative methods were employed for this purpose. Semi-structured interviews were employed to interview five teachers and inductive qualitative content analysis was used to analyze their answers. The results show that, as in other studies, teachers can feel constrained by the policy documents, adjust the syllabus because of their personal beliefs, and adapt their practices due to local policies at their school. Additionally, the results suggest that there might be a risk in the future that students who are not proficient in English might be locked out of certain societal domains in Sweden. In conclusion, by being affected by these various factors while interpreting the educational language policy, the interviewed upper secondary school English teachers have created diverse and varied local operationalizations of the Swedish educational language policy for English.