Constructing an ethnic minority culture-enriched kindergarten curriculum in southwest China: the role of teacher agency

A policy called 'ethnic culture into campus' was set to facilitate cultural transmission via the K-12 schooling in China. To understand how teachers' agentive roles play out to enact this policy in a certain ethnic minority district in southwest China, this study examined the local voices of city, town, and village kindergarten teachers from a socio-cultural perspective. An ethnographically informed and inductive-interpretative approach was adopted to collect and analyse various types of data. Results showed four perspectives among these teachers: i) explorative and engaging, ii) suggestive and distancing, (iii) spatial and temporal, and (iv) resisting and defying. Also, it was evidenced that only the explorative and engaging agentive perspective could lead to specific strategies in mobilising various cultural resources. Teacher resilience and collective momentum together were found to activate limited yet much needed local efforts and resources to enact the government policy in terms of cultural transmission.