Beyond Replication: Rural EFL Teachers’ Sense Making of Place‐Based Pedagogy in China

ABSTRACT Place‐based pedagogy (PBP) has recently gained international prominence as an approach that connects learning with local contexts and communities. In China, it is increasingly invoked as a way to revitalize rural education, yet little is known about how rural English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers interpret and enact it in practice. This study explores how ten rural EFL teachers make sense of PBP as a newly introduced teaching method. Drawing on Kumaravadivelu's macro‐strategic framework of particularity, practicality, and possibility, the analysis reveals a dynamic process in which teachers negotiate between national policy discourses, test‐oriented school cultures, and local sociocultural realities. Rather than replicating Western models, they decontextualized PBP to link English learning with rural identity, moral education, and community development. The study highlights teacher agency as a mediating force between global pedagogical ideas and local educational needs, demonstrating how language teaching can become a site for negotiating social change and educational equity in rural China.