A continuum of teacher collaboration to enhance the effectiveness of bilingual education programmes

Abstract

Bilingual education programmes are characterised by the use of students’ second/foreign/additional language (L2) as the medium of instruction for content subjects. In many educational contexts, such programmes are implemented by content subject specialists who have not received sufficient training in helping students master content and L2 simultaneously. Professional development is therefore necessary for this group of teachers. One potential professional development model is promoting collaboration between content and L2 teachers in the same school. Previous studies have explored different forms of cross-curricular collaboration, teachers’ attitudes and factors affecting its effectiveness. This paper seeks to extend the current discussion by investigating different models of teacher collaboration, based on a multi-case study of secondary schools adopting English (L2) as the medium of instruction for some or all subjects in Hong Kong. With various sources of data and cross-case comparison, this paper conceptualises a continuum of teacher collaboration in bilingual education programmes.