Page 15 - R&KT Flipping Book - Issue 5, Dec 2016

Knowledge transfer forum

Contributing to Issue FIve

Trilingual Education in China

Since 2002, China has introduced English language teaching in primary
schools under new policies to foster internationalisation. However these
reforms pose challenges to ethnic minority regions where Putonghua often
competes with the minority language, and English is often taught in under-
resourced schools with few trained teachers. To help these regions adopt
trilingual education more effectively, Professor Bob Adamson, UNESCO
Chairholder and Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research
and Development at the Education University of Hong Kong, conducted a
knowledge transfer project, following a major study on trilingual education.

Professor Bob Adamson, UNESCO Chairholder and Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning
Research and Development

Titled Models of Trilingual Education in Ethnic Minority Regions The team held four international symposia in Sichuan, Yanbian,
of China Project, the study, involving Professor Adamson and Ningbo and Xining to further spread the knowledge of trilingual
Professor Feng Anwei of the University of Nottingham-Ningbo education. To address the shortage of multilingual teachers,
as Principal Investigators and 11 partner teams, offers a holistic the researchers provided over 20 workshops on pedagogical
account of trilingualism and trilingual education in minority regions techniques, with each having an average of 100 teacher attendees.
in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Jilin, Gansu, Teacher development programmes in Yunnan alone have reached
Qinghai and Guangdong. over 1,800 teachers. So far, the knowledge transfer activities have
impacted approximately 800,000 minority students in China. The
Transferring Knowledge of Trilingual Education in project team produced a book, “Trilingualism in education in China:
China
Models and challenges”, eight journal articles, six book chapters,
Using data collected from each region, the team examined factors and nine international conference papers. The research team also
shaping the models of trilingual education designed for China’s created a website, www.eduhk.hk/triling, to disseminate findings.
schools, how the models are implemented, and the outcomes in
terms of student trilingualism. Armed with these findings, the team
started transferring the knowledge to practitioners in China in
2013. “We visited Qinghai, Yunnan, Jilin and Zhejiang on more than
10 occasions to disseminate the findings and conduct knowledge
transfer activities with practitioners, including policy makers,
teacher educators, and teachers,” Professor Adamson said.

Prof Adamson in a Chinese lesson in an Ethnic Minority Yi School in Yunnan
Province. Prof Adamson obtained the Grand Award in Knowledge Transfer
from his university in the year 2015/16

R & KT News 15