English teachers in Saudi Arabia quietly adapt a rigid national curriculum

In the classrooms of Saudi Arabia’s universities, English language teachers who are expected to deliver a centrally mandated curriculum as written are instead simplifying dense reading texts, reordering lessons, replacing textbook exercises with conversation tasks, and supplementing materials with content drawn from outside sources. A new study suggests these are not isolated acts of defiance but a widespread, carefully reasoned form of professional judgment. The research, published in the journal Discover Education, reports that instructors in Saudi higher education routinely modify prescribed content to accommodate students’ proficiency levels, compensate for rigid pacing guides, and address material they deem linguistically or culturally inaccessible, framing their decisions as professionally reasoned responses to instructional realities rather than opposition to policy.

The study was conducted by Mayez Almayez and drew on written responses from 62 English language instructors working in Saudi higher education institutions. Participants were purposively selected to capture a wide range of teaching experience, academic qualifications, ranks, and institutional affiliations. They came from 26 national backgrounds, spanning Arabic-speaking countries as well as South and East Asia, Europe, North America, Australia, and South Africa. Nearly 97 percent worked at public universities, a balance the author acknowledges as a limitation because private institutions were barely represented. The sample was almost evenly split by gender, with 51.6 percent holding master’s degrees and 48.4 percent holding doctorates. Teaching experience ranged from fewer than ten years to more than twenty, and academic ranks included lecturers, language instructors, assistant professors, and associate professors.

Data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire during the second academic term of the 2024–2025 academic year, following ethics approval from the University of Ha’il. The methodological design was deliberately exploratory. After expert review by five academics in applied linguistics and qualitative research trimmed an initial pool of eleven questions down to six, the instrument was pilot-tested with 13 English language teachers at Saudi universities who were excluded from the main study. The final prompts asked teachers why they adapted the mandated curriculum, how they enacted those adaptations, and what effects they perceived on student learning, classroom interaction, and their own professional identity. Responses were analyzed using an inductive codebook thematic analysis supported by MAXQDA software, with coding performed manually rather than automatically.

Two coders working independently achieved 83 percent overall agreement, with a Cohen’s kappa of 0.74, indicating substantial reliability in how the qualitative data were categorized. The analysis was theoretically informed by scholarship on teacher agency, which the author defines through Tao and Gao’s conceptualization as teachers’ capacity to make intentional, context-sensitive instructional decisions informed by professional experience, values, and institutional conditions. Within this framework, agency is understood relationally rather than as unrestricted individual autonomy: teachers’ capacity to act is shaped by the institutional structures, curricular requirements, and classroom conditions within which their decisions are made. The study also draws on Kayi-Aydar’s argument that language teacher agency is constructed through teachers’ ongoing negotiation of institutional expectations, professional identities, and classroom realities, rather than being a fixed individual characteristic.

The Saudi context gives this negotiation particular weight. Unlike many other countries, the Ministry of Education oversees every aspect of language education, from textbook selection and pacing guides to assessment standards, leaving little formal room for teacher involvement in curriculum decision-making. The author notes that broader English language teaching reform in Saudi Arabia, tied to the national Vision 2030 agenda, has been driven primarily by top-down socio-political priorities with limited emphasis on grassroots pedagogical reform or teacher empowerment. Prior research cited in the study has documented that the national curriculum privileges a fixed model of English, prioritizes grammatical accuracy and vocabulary acquisition over spoken fluency and communication strategies, and offers limited intercultural engagement, while teachers are rarely consulted in curriculum development or revision processes.

The thematic analysis converged on a central finding: teachers adapt the curriculum frequently, and they do so for reasons rooted in pedagogy rather than preference. Participants described textbook materials as linguistically complex, culturally misaligned, or pragmatically inauthentic, and as frequently out of step with students’ actual proficiency. One Saudi language instructor characterized the curriculum as “inappropriate and inapplicable,” noting that “the general level of foreign language acquisition and comprehension among students is poor” and that some topics were “repetitive and clichéd.” A Nepali lecturer with more than two decades of experience observed that there were materials his students did not find relevant, that were far removed from their context, and that sat beyond their levels. Participants also cited structural constraints, including large class sizes, mixed-ability classrooms, inflexible pacing schedules, and inconsistent access to digital tools and instructional resources.

The concrete strategies teachers described reveal the technical craft behind these adaptations. An American lecturer explained that the reading texts in her textbook were too complex, with long sentences and advanced vocabulary, so she spent considerable time rewriting paragraphs, breaking down sentences, and replacing difficult words with simpler synonyms. “It’s time-consuming, but my students can actually understand the core meaning,” she said. An Indonesian teacher described reversing the textbook’s assumed writing sequence, which expected students to produce paragraphs before learning sentence structure. “I reverse it: start with subject-verb agreement, then expand to compound sentences, and finally paragraphs,” he explained, comparing the process to building a house where bricks are needed before the roof. A Tunisian lecturer reported creating several scaffolded activities from a single prescribed work task, and an Australian instructor described replacing textbook gap-fills with short conversation-based tasks using grammar structures in contexts students care about.

Notably, teachers did not frame these decisions as opposition. A South African lecturer insisted, “I wouldn’t say I deviate, but I do add in additional exercises, worksheets and tests to ensure the students are able to fully understand the material.” Others described adapting content for students with learning disabilities or introducing photos to help visual learners understand while challenging them into critical thinking. This variation in how teachers understood their own practices suggests that curriculum adaptation operated along a continuum, ranging from substantial restructuring to cautious supplementation within existing curricular boundaries. For some participants, agency was exercised through selective additions rather than departure from the prescribed content, indicating that adaptation was not enacted uniformly but varied in degree according to how teachers balanced learner needs with adherence to institutional expectations.

The justifications teachers offered were grounded in professional reasoning about learners rather than institutional politics. An Indian language instructor explained that she provided reading articles from outside sources to support a unit theme, doing it “for the needs of my learners.” A Moroccan language instructor put his internal logic plainly: “if students are disengaged or confused, I know I have to shift the method.” A Sudanese assistant professor noted that administrators understood changes that were purposeful and student-focused. Many teachers also cited their instructional beliefs, with an Indian associate professor describing how her conviction that language is primarily a tool for communication pushed her toward communicative, task-based, and authentic approaches even when the curriculum leaned toward grammar-translation methods. A Latvian lecturer said the curriculum was very prescriptive, telling teachers and students exactly what to say and do, and that she adapted by providing students with choices and autonomy. The author interprets these patterns through Prenger and colleagues’ prior concept of strategic compliance, in which instructors preserve instructional autonomy without directly confronting institutional norms.

Teachers reported that these adaptations produced benefits for their students, though the study is careful to flag that these outcomes are teacher perceptions rather than independently measured changes in learning. Participants described improved comprehension, greater task completion, and increased classroom participation when content was aligned with learners’ actual levels. A Jordanian language instructor affirmed that curricular adaptations made students more motivated, improved their learning by meeting their needs, and created a more engaging and interactive classroom environment. Others reported affective gains, including reduced anxiety about English and greater willingness to take communicative risks. A Canadian lecturer observed that when content is relevant and paced properly, students stop fearing failure and begin taking risks. A Saudi associate professor noted that adaptations build students’ trust in the learning process and show them that teachers are listening, giving them confidence in themselves as well.

Participants also described how adaptation shaped their professional identity. A Sudanese assistant professor wrote that these experiences made her more confident, more autonomous, and more reflective in her teaching. A South African language instructor said it made her feel more like a teacher and not just a machine, while a Tunisian lecturer reflected that it made her feel like she was actually teaching rather than just delivering what someone else wrote. A Pakistani lecturer said adapting the curriculum validated her professional judgment. No contrasting accounts of diminished professional confidence were evident in the responses, though the author cautions this absence should not be interpreted as evidence that such experiences do not occur beyond the dataset. No classroom observations, student accounts, or assessment data were collected to corroborate the reported effects, and the questionnaire format did not allow the researcher to probe answers or investigate contradictions as they arose.

Within the study’s scope, the author draws practical implications for the Saudi context. The findings suggest curriculum reform processes should incorporate teachers’ experiential knowledge, with structured channels for instructors to provide feedback, particularly for those teaching preparatory or mixed-proficiency classes. Institutions are encouraged to offer greater flexibility in pacing expectations, provide differentiated guidelines for diverse teaching contexts, and design in-service training that equips teachers to navigate constraints through pedagogically sound adaptation. The author also argues that institutional discourse should shift toward valuing context-sensitive decision-making as a professional competency, with reflection on adaptive practices incorporated into performance reviews and professional learning communities. Prior research in other centralised systems, including Vietnam and Iran, has documented similar patterns of teachers negotiating tensions between policy mandates and classroom realities through localised instructional adjustments, and the Saudi findings add empirical detail on the professional reasoning underlying such practices in higher education.

Subject of Research: Teacher agency and curriculum adaptation in policy negotiation among English language teachers in Saudi higher education

Article Title: Teacher agency and curriculum adaptation in policy negotiation among English language teachers in Saudi higher education

Article References: Almayez, M. (2026). Teacher agency and curriculum adaptation in policy negotiation among English language teachers in Saudi higher education. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02336-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02336-6

Keywords: Teacher, agency, curriculum, adaptation, policy, negotiation, English, language, teachers, Saudi, higher, education