A Review of the Contemporary Challenges Faced by Chinese Immersion Education and Its Related Teacher Preparations in the United States

Language Development

The studies in immersion programs have shown that immersion students can gain higher levels of target language proficiency while maintaining their native language development progress (Met, 2012a). Until recently, there has been a paucity of research on learners’ performance in Chinese immersion programs in the U.S. Emerging research studies revealed that Chinese immersion students achieved the intermediate low level across the language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) in 5th grade (Watzinger-Tharp et al., 2018). The research findings also provided some examples to explain immersion students’ language achievement in different language skills.

Overall, Chinese immersion students obtained higher scores in listening and reading compared with their speaking and writing skills, which were less differentiable. (Burkhauser et al., 2016; Padilla et al., 2013; Watzinger-Tharp et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2015). For example, in all four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking), Chinese immersion students (5th grade) performed highest in listening and more than half of them achieved Intermediate High level (Padilla et al., 2013; Watzinger-Tharp et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2015). Some of the 5^th grade students’ reading proficiency, according to Padilla et al. (2013) and Xu et al. (2015), could achieve the Intermediate High level. This level was not achieved by the high school students who were learning Chinese in their 5th year (Xu et al., 2015). The same study also revealed that most of the students’ speaking and writing proficiency in 5th grade attained Intermediate Low. The above-mentioned linguistic levels in Mandarin were achievable as the immersion students substantially developed their Chinese language oral and written proficiency in kindergarten or first grade (Met & Livaccari, 2012).

Academic Achievement

A substantial amount of research has pointed out the increase of immersion students’ academic learning slope and their higher achievement scores compared to the students in regular school programs in the U.S. (Fortune & Tedick, 2003; Lindholm-Leary & Howard, 2008). The study in the Chinese immersion programs revealed that although the standardized tests of core subjects (English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science) were administrated in English, the academic performances of Chinese immersion students were similar or sometimes higher when compared to their non-immersion peers (Padilla et al., 2013). For example, Watzinger-Tharp et al. (2018) studied students’ math achievement in both immersion and non-immersion programs. The result indicated that the students in immersion programs, who received most of their math instructions in the target language, performed at the grade level in 3^rd grade, and their math scores grew more in 4^th grade. The Chinese immersion students in 4^th through 7^th grade performed above the grade level and state’s median score in reading and math (Lindholm-Leary, 2011). Seitz (2019) also conducted similar research and the findings reported that Chinese immersion students’ language arts and math scores were slightly higher than their non-immersion peers. Note that Chinese immersion students received less instructional time in English as compared to the non-immersion students.

Cognitive Development

A certain amount of research indicated that bilingual education contributes to students’ cognitive development, which includes divergent thinking, pattern recognition, and problem-solving (Bialystok, 2001; Fortune, 2012). For instance, the immersion students’ nonverbal problem-solving proved to be grown remarkably (Fortune & Tedick, 2003). Research also revealed that the bilingual students enhanced their working memory and attention control from cognitive psychologists’ point of view (Bialystok et al., 2008; Craik et al., 2010; Steele et al., 2017). Sparse literature has reported the cognitive development of Chinese immersion students in the U.S.

Curriculum and Development

Due to the special characteristics of the Chinese language and the short history of Chinese immersion, Chinese immersion programs in the U.S. confronted some challenges different from other language immersion programs (Met & Livaccari, 2012). Beyond setting and aligning the curriculum for Chinese immersion, one of the challenges of Chinese immersion programs was the shortage of engaging and high-quality materials, especially the deficit of teachers’ guides and teaching assistant materials, as well as the appropriate and systematic learning materials designed for content-based learning (Chen et al., 2017; Met & Livaccari, 2012; Zhou & Li, 2015b). According to Zhou and Li (2015b), compared to the schools in China that had well-designed curriculum materials provided by the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Chinese immersion programs in the U.S. lacked materials for Chinese immersion instruction. For example, Chinese immersion programs needed authentic materials for the native speakers that had been created by the native speakers, as the content and topics were based on students’ readiness, interests, and learning styles (Lin, 2012; Ni & Na, 2016).

Staffing

A considerable challenge for many language immersion programs was finding the teacher candidates prepared specifically for the immersion settings (Met & Lorenz, 1997; Veilleux & Bournot-Trites, 2005). There have been constant struggles faced by immersion programs aimed at recruiting qualified teacher candidates due to the uniqueness of immersion education, inadequate immersion preparation programs, and the lack of understanding by the school districts about the teacher’s preparedness for immersion education (Freeman-Nepay, 2017; Met & Lorenz, 1997; Veilleux & Bournot-Trites, 2005).

Chinese immersion programs shared this common obstacle with other language immersion programs as well. Following the rapid development of Chinese immersion programs in the U.S., there has been an increase in demand for qualified Chinese immersion teachers (Freeman et al., 2014). The shortage of qualified and certified Chinese immersion teachers challenged Chinese immersion programs as well (Chen, 2019). Chinese immersion programs recruited a certain amount of Chinese Foreign Language (CFL) teacher candidates to teach in the immersion setting. Note that the CFL teachers in the U.S. might include (1) Native English speakers of CFL (Graduates of American university preparation programs for teachers); (2) Heritage teachers (Educated Chinese native speakers who had been residing in the U.S. and had or might have received teaching credentials); (3) Guest teachers (Chinese nationals who visited the school districts on a short-term visa through exchange educational arrangements) (Bissell & Chang, 2012; Peng, 2016). According to Bissell and Chang (2012), the teacher pool of commonly taught languages (French and Spanish) involved native and heritage language speakers, as well as the non-native speakers who were certified to teach. However, there were limited English-dominant teachers for the less commonly taught languages (Chinese and Japanese) due to the high linguistic and language proficiency prerequisites for teaching in the immersion setting (Bissell & Chang, 2012). In this case, Chinese immersion programs mainly recruited heritage and guest CFL teachers, as Chinese immersion programs struggled with recruiting teachers who are proficient in the Chinese language and have obtained teaching certificates even though they had less restrictive regulations (Chen et al., 2017). As these teacher candidates were not prepared specifically for teaching in the immersion setting, they confronted different issues and challenges in their immersion teaching.

Curriculum Design and Instruction

Curriculum planning and content teaching challenged Chinese immersion teachers in general. In Chinese immersion programs in the U.S, Chinese immersion teachers needed to develop students’ language and literacy proficiencies, and their abilities to use the Chinese language as a medium to access the academic content (Bissell & Chang, 2012). The following two challenges happened in the process of theme-based curriculum planning and content teaching. First, according to Chen et al. (2017), Chinese immersion teachers struggled in integrating the theme content into Chinese language teaching. Since the curriculum of the Chinese immersion programs followed the existing English thematic topics, teaching the subject content in the Chinese language was difficult for children to understand (Chen et al., 2017). Second, there was a mismatch between Chinese immersion teachers’ backgrounds and their teaching duties in the United States. Due to the inadequate instructional knowledge of math, social studies, and science, the Chinese immersion teachers who did not receive training on the skills to teach these subjects struggled with the subject-area instructions (Liao et al., 2017; Zhou & Li, 2015b).

Chinese immersion teachers who were native Chinese speakers and educated in Chinese-speaking countries lacked the foreign language pedagogy. Their traditional teacher-centered philosophies did not match the popular notion of the student-centered classroom in the U.S. (Chen et al., 2017). For example, a certain number of Chinese immersion teachers emphasized rote and mechanical memorizations instead of conducting student-centered learning (Romig, 2009; Zhou & Li, 2016). However, the schools in the U.S. emphasized student-centered activities, in which students learned social skills and communicative languages through real-life tasks (Fortune, 2012; Hall Haley & Ferro, 2011). In this case, the Chinese immersion teachers encountered cross-cultural challenges due to the mismatch between the student-centered learning approach and their experience and expectations in the traditional Chinese teacher-centered instructional approach (Chen, 2019; Zhao, 2007). As a Chinese immersion teacher, the author of this study had noticed that many Chinese immersion teachers still conduct teacher-centered instructions, as they believed that teachers could transfer knowledge to the students and students would not learn much in the student-centered classroom. To address this concern, Zhang (2016) clarified that real student-centered classrooms created meaningful practice opportunities and tasks, which will help the students transfer their declarative knowledge to autonomous knowledge in the language acquisition process.

Behavior Management

Chinese immersion teachers in the U.S. had the tendency to experience difficulties in managing classroom disciplines and guiding the student-centered environment as they were not familiar with the U.S. culture and had high participant expectations (e.g., respectful) more than the teachers who were not from Confucius culture countries (Chen et al., 2017; Zhou & Li, 2016). In general, Chinese language teachers valued the strength of the traditional teacher-centered relationships between teachers and students, which believed that teachers have absolute authority and that respecting teachers was a classroom norm (Kang & Chang, 2016; Xu, 2012). In this case, classroom/misbehavior management was a major concern/challenge for Chinese language teachers in student-centered classrooms (Chen, 2019; Liao et al., 2017; Liu, 2012). As Chinese immersion teachers had the same Chinese cultural expectations (e.g. respecting the teacher) for students, they were more likely to use the same strategies that worked well with Chinese students’ classroom behaviors, such as being vocally strict in Chinese terms or using nonverbal interventions (e.g., giving a glance) (Chen, 2019; Romig, 2009; Zhou, 2013; Zhou & Li, 2015a). However, these strategies were ineffective in changing students’ actions as (1) Chinese immersion teachers and students have different cultural understandings; (2) students did not understand the language in an immersion setting (Romig, 2009). The author also indicated these two situations might happen simultaneously. In this case, the behavior management strategies that Chinese teachers used cannot be transferred and work effectively on American students, as the latter demanded distinct and unsubtle management approaches, such as the positive discipline methods (Chen, 2019; Jin & Cortazzi, 2012; Zhou & Li, 2016).

It was essential and necessary to encourage Chinese immersion teachers to understand the cultural differences in developing classroom management strategies (Bissell & Chang, 2012). Specifically, American culture inspired students to choose their learning styles without regulating how they should behave and learn, whereas Chinese culture has rigorous requirements for conducting appropriate learnings (Chen, 2019; Zhao, 2007) In this case, to help the Chinese immersion teachers gradually adapt to the western approaches to discipline, Chinese immersion teachers have to change the classroom management approaches used in the Chinese culture to an approach that integrate the local culture for implementing disciplinary measure (Romig, 2009; Zhou & Li, 2016).

Cross-Cultural Communication Issues

Many Chinese immersion teachers reported their obstacles in communicating with parents and American colleagues (Liao et al., 2017; Zhou & Li, 2015b). Chen (2019) illustrated that Chinese immersion teachers consumed a certain amount of time to communicate with the American parents and help the parents understand teachers’ curriculum perspectives as Chinese immersion teachers and American parents had different expectations on learning. For example, American parents valued the self-promotion, creativity, and critical thinking of the students, so they gave students more freedom (Hue & Li, 2008; Young, 1996). On the contrary, Chinese teachers promoted students’ academic achievements, so they had the tendency to challenge students (Pan et al., 2019). Ren (2017)’s study also found that due to the shortage of teacher training on preparing the teachers for the culture shock and cross-cultural working, the parents of Chinese immersion programs had shown their concerns on parent-teachers cross-cultural communication issues.

According to Zhou and Li (2015b), Chinese immersion teachers also reported that misconceptions and complications occurred during their communication with American colleagues due to cultural differences. Note that cultural differences existed between the indirect expressions in the Chinese culture and active expressions in the American culture (Bissell & Chang, 2012). Therefore, teachers’ competencies in adapting culture shock and achieving acculturation were influenced by the school’s cultural knowledge, which was being modified and adjusted to suit the mainstream classrooms in the U.S. (Romig, 2009). Thus, Bissell and Chang (2012) found that it was essential to help both English and Chinese faculties avoid misunderstandings by engaging them in recognizing each other’s culture.

Curriculum and Instruction

The college and universities could build effective teacher preparation programs that provide teacher candidates with preparations on the topic of immersion and early language instructional approaches, which included the use of technology in language teaching and addressed the pedagogical differences in immersion language teaching settings (Stewart & Livaccari, 2010; Zhou & Li, 2015b). In particular, Chinese immersion teachers needed training related to Chinese language curriculum design and teaching methods. Although Chinese immersion programs provided professional learning communities and/or professional development opportunities for the Chinese immersion teachers, they still believed the Chinese immersion programs provided insufficient training for teaching the Chinese language, such as how to teach Pinyin or utilize project approaches in the Chinese immersion setting (Chen et al., 2017). In this case, the professional development could also provide relevant training on fostering Chinese immersion students’ language and literacy development (Bissell & Chang, 2012).

Cross-Cultural Competence

The preparation/training programs were crucial to foster the Chinese immersion teachers’ cross-cultural competence for them to have the insider’s understanding of students’ home culture and the culture embedded in the target language (Chen, 2019; De Courcy, 1997; Zhou & Li, 2015b). This cross-cultural competence training could help Chinese immersion teachers in threefold:

First, Chinese immersion teachers need to acquire cultural awareness in different cultures for them to effectively adapt their classroom management strategies to the U.S. culture. Chinese immersion teachers’ cultural competency has a direct impact on their interaction within/across two different cultures; thus, the teachers’ ability to develop cultural competency affected their classroom management skills (Romig, 2009; Zhou & Li, 2015a).

Second, immersion teachers represented their own culture and integrated it into their language teaching curriculum. In this case, immersion teachers could help students adapt to the culture reflected in the target language and interpret the cultural meaning of the language (De Courcy, 1997).

Third, the knowledge of cultural differences can help Chinese immersion teachers communicate with their American colleagues and parents more confidently and balance the differences in communication and cultural understanding (Bissell & Chang, 2012; Zhou & Li, 2015b).