Glocalized Professional Development for Sustainable Bilingual Education in Taiwan

• In Event: Navigating Taiwan’s Bilingual Education Reform and Sustainability Movement through a Glocalization Lens

Abstract

In response to the Bilingual 2030 Policy, the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Taiwan has authorized sixteen universities to launch professional development (PD) programs to prepare 1000-2000 teachers per year to implement the Content and Language Integrated Learning method (CLIL) in primary and secondary schools. However, many teacher educators involved in the PD programs soon observed challenges faced by the bilingual practitioners, resulting mainly from a purist view of bilingualism that overemphasizes the English native speakers’ norms in language use, an unclear definition of curriculum goals for bilingual education, and insufficient training for efficient methodologies of implementing bilingual education. To address these challenges, a research team was commissioned by the MOE to develop a PD program for in-service bilingual teachers at the primary and secondary levels. This program is guided by the 4C3+ framework, an approach that reimagines bilingual education in Taiwan in ways that foster cultural and linguistic diversity by underscoring the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and national curriculum guidelines in implementing CLIL in Taiwan. In this article, the authors will first pinpoint major challenges faced by in-service bilingual teachers that might make the implementation of bilingual education difficult to sustain in Taiwan. The authors will then demonstrate how the 4C3+ PD program, which emphasizes national curriculum guidelines, translanguaging strategies, multimodality, ELF awareness, and the use of AI tools, guides the in-service bilingual teachers to develop their expertise and agency to create a bilingual curriculum that meets the local educational needs while responding to the global trend of using English as a Lingua Franca. The article will conclude by discussing implications for similar educational contexts that support bilingual teachers in becoming active and empowered agents in response to educational initiatives, such as the bilingual policy in Taiwan.

Authors

• Rae Ping Lin, National Taiwan Ocean University

• Wenli Tsou, National Cheng Kung University