Because English is deemed important for trade, commerce, career and education in this globalized world, concerns over English education as a second language and its policy are regularly voiced in Bangladesh. However, it is generally accepted that the standard of English learning and teaching has fallen steadily despite a number of national policy reforms, NGO activities and donor-agency funded projects particularly in the last two decades. Exploratory and explanatory in nature, the present study aims to understand the complex dynamics in the English education sector in Bangladesh which impact the success and failure of English education policies in the country. The present study argues for taking a policy sociology perspective for its investigation which advocates employing multiple perspectives to data collection and analysis. Also, this is necessitated by the aim of the study which requires adopting the dual perspective of the policymakers who directly formulate policy and of the people who work to implement the policy.  The policy sociology perspective is informed by three critical lenses, as the study proposes, within which to explore and explain matters of policy referring to them as policy historiography, policy genealogy and policy archaeology. These are accommodated in a mixed methods research design drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data. My data demonstrate that an authoritarian approach to policy formation and implementation was the norm, which over the years has rendered the dialogue between policy-makers and teaching professionals fragile, if not entirely irrelevant. By contrast, the data also provide materials for constructing important narratives on the passivity of government agencies with regard to international agency-funded projects; the constant distraction of excessive 'cover my back' paperwork at different levels of a hybrid bureaucratic system; an under-theorised and distorted understanding of the sociology of English education in a so-called monolingual country and its impact on students' well-being and academic achievement; and an inability to devise and drive coherent and far-sighted policy strategies for a balancing act between national and global language in education.

Ball, S. (2006). Education Policy and Social Class: The Selected Works of Stephen J. Ball. London, UK: Routledge. Banu, R., & Sussex, R. (2001 a). English in Bangladesh after independence: Dynamics of policy and practice. In B. Moore (Ed.), Who’s centric now? The present state of post-colonial Englishes (pp. 122-147). Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Canagarajah, A. S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gale, T. (2004). Realising Policy: the who and how of policy production. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. 24(1). 51-65. Hamid, M. O., & Baldauf, R. B. (2008). Will CLT bail out the bogged down ELT in Bangladesh? English Today, 24(3), 16-24. Hossain, T., & Tollefson, J. W. (2007). Language policy in education in Bangladesh. In A. B. M. Tsui & J. W. Tollefson (Eds.), Language policy, culture, and identity in Asian contexts (pp. 241-257). London; Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kincheloe, J. (1991). Educational historiographical meta-analysis: rethinking methodology in the 1990s. Qualitative Studies in Education, 4 (3), 231-245. Ozga, Jenny. (1987). Studying education through the lives of policy-makers; an attempt to close the micro-macro gap. In L. Barton & S. Walker, (eds), Changing Policies, Changing Teachers. Lewis: Falmer Press. Pennycook, A. (1994). Cultural politics of English as an international language. London: Longman. Tollefson, J. W. (2000). Policy and ideology in the spread of English. In J. K. Hall & W. Eggington (eds.), The sociopolitics of English language teaching (pp. 7-21). Clevedon; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.