Implementation Evaluation on Foreign Brides’ Literacy Education in Taipei

Abstract

There are more and more foreign brides (very few foreign grooms) who have migrated from Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, and China to Taiwan. Currently the total number of foreign spouses is about 407,810, which occupies 1.8 percent of the total population of Taiwan. Foreign brides and their children are entitled “New Taiwanese” since they must adjust their life style to fit Taiwan culture and environment. Moreover, they must improve communication skills and knowledge to meet their family demands as well as child education after their marriage. In order to help foreign brides’ for life adaptation, the Taiwan government has initiated and operated the Care and Counseling Policy over the past decade. The policy primarily covers literacy education, living skills, cooking skills, culture and environment acquaintance and so on. By and large, linguistic problems have attracted most attention, and, therefore, literacy education has become one of the important issues to those foreign brides.BR This paper focuses on the implementation evaluation of foreign brides’ literacy education in Taipei city. Currently 16 elementary schools have set up three-year literacy programs for foreign brides. The research employed questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews to understand the opinions of policy stakeholders. Basically questionnaires were handed out to the foreign brides who were taking literacy education programs in the elementary schools in order to understand their values, attitudes, and satisfaction toward the whole program. Additionally, interviews were conducted with four categories of policy stakeholders: foreign brides, families of foreign brides, teachers of literacy education programs, and public officials from the Department of Education in the Taipei City Government. The research findings indicate that foreign brides and their families are satisfied with literacy education programs and feel the programs are helpful and beneficial for their life adaptation, especially for communication and children education. However, foreign brides’ understanding of government affairs, their attitudes toward Mandarin learning, class materials/textbook still have some room for improvement. The research expects not only to induce various studies of foreign brides from academics, but also to propose policy implications for policy makers and practitioners.