A Tale of Four Teachers: A Study of an Australian Late-entry Content-based Programme in Two Asian Languages

Abstract

This article summarises the results of a multidimensional study of a content-based bilingual education programme piloted in a suburban high school in Melbourne in which specialist subjects taught in Chinese and Vietnamese were offered to Grades 9 and 10 students optionally enrolled in the Chinese–English or Vietnamese–English stream. The study incorporated a coordinated action research methodology in which four participating specialist teachers documented their teaching progress, problems, interventions and reactions which provided the basis for regular shared discussions. The principal researcher, who participated in the meetings, documented the collective progress of the course, focusing particularly on biliteracy acquisition. Problems faced and lessons learned over the pilot year are documented here.