Evaluating Collaborative Teaching under Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program

Hsiu-Hsien Wang

National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

The Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program (TFETP), launched in 2004 and significantly expanded in 2021 under the national Bilingual 2030 policy, mandates collaborative teaching between foreign English teachers (FETs) and local English teachers (LETs) in primary and junior high schools. Despite the program’s scale and financial investment, empirical research on how this collaborative teaching model is enacted in practice remains sparse. This study addresses that gap by evaluating the TFETP collaborative teaching model through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis across five junior high schools in a city in central Taiwan. Findings reveal that all participating schools adopted a localized variation of the “One Teaching, One Assisting” model, driven by the institutional positioning of collaborative sessions within Flexible Learning Periods, exam-driven scheduling pressure, and a one-to-many staffing structure. Local English teachers functioned primarily as classroom manager, linguistic mediators, and technical support facilitators rather than as co-instructional partners. Structural barriers—including limited co-planning time, administrative workload, and institutionalized role identity— systematically constrained the adoption of more integrated co-teaching configurations. The study concludes with evidence-based recommendations for strengthening collaborative teaching within TFETP, including structured co-planning time, role recalibration, and targeted professional development.

Article link: https://www.asianinstituteofresearch.org/EQRarchives/evaluating-collaborative-teaching-under-taiwan-foreign-english-teacher-program-