Strategic Conformity as Learning: The Socialisation of First‐Year Novice <scp>EFL</scp> Teachers in China

ABSTRACT Teacher socialisation becomes a critical site of professional learning in China's educational contexts, marked by rigid accountability and rooted institutional norms. This study explores how first‐year EFL teachers in China navigate the tensions between personal perspectives and institutional norms, drawing on the concept of strategic conformity . A qualitative study design was adopted, with three first‐year EFL teachers in China involved as participants. Data were collected through individual interviews and triangulated with participants' social media posts and personal logs. Findings reveal that participants manifested strategic conformity as learning during first‐year socialisation. Rather than complying uniformly, they selectively integrated school norms to ease tensions, while agentically resisting practices incompatible with their pedagogical values. This dialectical process highlights socialisation not as passive assimilation, but as dynamic negotiation, where strategic conformity serves as an agentic means for novice teachers to navigate conflicting and challenging landscapes and mediate their professional growth.