A PRISMA REVIEW: TEACHERS’ AGENCY TOWARDS THE ENGLISH-ONLY EDUCATION POLICY IN PAKISTANI HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This review-based study examines teachers’ agency regarding English-only education policy in Higher Education (HE) in Pakistan. For the review process, 190 scholarly studies published between June 2011 and June 2024 were gathered using keywords based on Boolean operators. The study finalised 12 relevant studies through the PRISMA flowchart. The sampling size of the scholarly articles  (n=12) was collected from Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and Francis & Taylor databases between 2011 and 2024. By analysing existing literature using the PRISMA framework, the study intends to decode the hurdles teachers face and their responses to the constraints enforced by such policies. The review explores both the nature and extent of teacher agency, highlighting pedagogical adaptation as the central theme along with lower-order themes like Teachers as transformative agents, Celebratory or guilty multilingualism and Flexibility in Assessment. Likewise, the study also identifies the influencing factors as the central theme to the agency of teachers, along with the sub-themes like Institutional Support, Policy constraints, Student Language Proficiency, and Personal Beliefs and Attitudes.  The findings suggest that teachers use various strategies to navigate English as MoI due to the contextual and systematic challenges.  The study contributes to the impact of language policies on teaching practices and teacher autonomy, underscoring the necessity of a supportive environment to leverage teachers’ pedagogic skills and linguistic knowledge. The study, moreover, opens new avenues for future studies regarding decolonial perspectives, evaluating textbook materials and examining ideologies for professional development that benefit postcolonial performativity in educational settings.