Contradictions and coping strategies in the implementation of curriculum-based ideological and political education by Chinese EFL tertiary teachers: From the perspective of activity theory integrated with teacher agency

In the context of Curriculum-based Ideological and Political Education (CIPE) reform in China, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers in higher education sector face tensions when integrating ideological content into language instruction, yet their specific challenges remain under-explored. Grounded in activity theory, this qualitative study draws on in-depth interviews with seven tertiary EFL teachers from different institutions to examine the contradictions they experience in implementing CIPE, with a focus on teacher agency. The analysis identifies four levels of contradictions across individual, institutional, and systemic dimensions, among which secondary contradictions are the most prominent. The study uncovers two previously understudied contradictions: the absence of a CIPE resource repository tailored to students' disciplinary and generational profiles, and the tension between conventional and CIPE-oriented curriculum objective. The participating teachers actively mitigated these contradictions and exercised diverse forms of agency, with the practical-evaluative dimension being the most salient. This study further reveals that the teachers adopted divergent strategies even when facing identical contradictions, and that the same teacher may employ varying responses - from proactive engagement to denial or withdrawal - across different contradiction levels. Their strategies, however, remain accommodative rather than transformative. The findings suggest that sustainable CIPE implementation requires a multi-actor ecosystem involving policymakers, teacher-educators, front-line teachers, publishers, and administrators to make joint efforts. This paper contributes theoretical and pedagogical insights on the multi-level contradictions that tertiary EFL teachers navigate, and offers transferable implications for similar curriculum reforms.