Abstract
Situating the macro–micro dialectic in Pakistan’s multilingual language education policy context, this study examines the structure-agency entanglement around the implementation of the policy called ‘Introduction of Mother Languages as Compulsory Additional Subject Act’, enacted by the government of Balochistan province, Pakistan, in 2014. Grounded in the current macro–micro debates in Language Policy and Planning, the study draws on qualitative interviews with 12 schoolteachers across the province to analyze their response and positions towards the policy, the challenges they confront, and the adaptation strategies they adopt in implementation. Findings show that though the implementation of the policy is fraught with numerous challenges, teachers do exercise their agency which manifests in diverse forms, as they adapt, critique, and re-interpret the policy in ways that align with their classroom needs and contextual realities. We emphasise that teachers’ agentive responses should be viewed through a reformative lens rather than as outright opposition to government policies about the local mother tongues in public schools. This calls for a balanced analysis of the structure-agency tension – one that neither overestimates nor underestimates the role of agency or structure, recognising their intersection as dialectical rather than dichotomous. We conclude that both can coexist within a single policy or event.