Abstract
Education at all levels in Taiwan has undergone a tremendous transformation since the 1990s. Take higher education as an example. Today, higher education in Taiwan is facing an insurmountable challenge: one-third of universities will shut down by the academic year 2023/2024; the estimated number is 50. How could such an incredible situation happen? Believe it or not, it will happen. In the 1990s, there were a total of 50 universities in Taiwan. Within three decades, the number rapidly rose, bringing the total to more than 160 in 2015. The issue is that the number of students has gone in the opposite direction during the same three decades. The number of students has decreased every year since 1988, a disaster caused by Taiwan’s annual drop in birth rate. According to the White Paper on Human Resources published by the Ministry of Education (2013), the number of first-year university students in the academic year 2015 was approximately 326,000, and this number is predicted to drop to 271,000 in the academic year 2016, a decrease of 15.6%. Thus, the trend toward decreasing numbers will continue. As the official statistics show, the number of first-year students registered in 2013 will be reduced by half by 2028, at which time the total number of students in all university classes will be half of the current number. This worsening situation is forcing the education profession in Taiwan to confront an unavoidable and disturbing future. For instance, teachers at all levels are anxious about losing their jobs; schools and universities are being forced to close down; administrators are concerned about costs; and parents are worried about the quality of education.
The rapidly decreasing number of students is not the only factor that concerns educators and policy-makers – internationalisation enhances the tension. Universities are eager to recruit overseas students to fill classroom seats, but it is a substantial challenge for foreign students to study in Taiwan. The most prominent difficulty is the language barrier. The official language of Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese, so unless foreign students are willing to learn Chinese, it is difficult for teachers and students to accommodate them in a class . It is possible that the chance to learn Chinese could attract overseas students, but in this scenario Taiwan faces a strong and powerful competitor – China. In addition, educators and policy-makers have many concerns about how to raise the quality of education and performance against a backdrop of international and global competition. Accreditation and evaluation of all aspects of education has been conducted in schools and universities in recent years, and this has led to many debates and great tension.
We now turn our focus to initial teacher education programmes, another source of endless debate. In the past, teacher education in Taiwan was provided only in “Normal School System”, i.e. normal universities and colleges. These schools were established to train teachers, and the teacher education programme was tightly controlled because the status of public school teachers was seen as similar to that of civil servants. In 1994, the single-pathway model of teacher education was deregulated, and the teacher education programme could then be provided at comprehensive universities and technical universities if the programmes of these universities passed the ministerial review (Tsau and Liang, 2002). The old teacher education model then shifted to a multiple-pathway model, as part of the process of expanding universities in recent decades. In a sense, this deregulation could be seen as a concrete example of positive social transformation, leading to more diversity, openness and inclusiveness. Nevertheless, a new problem has arisen – the overproduction of manpower in teacher education. Today, this issue has become quite a hot-button topic – and the difficulty of finding a school vacancy for those with qualified teacher certificates is beyond imagination.
Another new debate concerns the 12-year compulsory education policy. Enforcing this policy involves substantial changes, especially in high school admissions systems. This new system of admissions was introduced in the summer of 2014, and it has led to many mistakes and a variety of complaints and criticisms. Parents, school teachers and students complained that the introduction of the new admission system, and its rules, was flawed and misleading because of the system’s complexity, the result of which was that students could not find places in the schools they wanted to attend. Whether or not the government continues to enforce the policy or make revisions, this policy has already produced mistrust in society.
In brief, the current education scenarios in Taiwan are diverse, complex and contentious. Policy-makers, administrators, teachers, parents and counsellors are eager to establish a better future for educational development, but a future that can accommodate everyone’s views and needs is difficult to imagine. This issue offers a different lens through which to view the education landscape in Taiwan. The first goal is to clarify the confusion of the present situation in Taiwan’s education system.
The contrasts between policy-makers and educators and the impasse in higher education in Taiwan are the subjects of three earlier papers on this issue. They all address the oscillation between the poles of accountability and market-driven excellence on one side and academic autonomy in Taiwanese education on the other.
Chuo-Chun Hsieh (2016) examined the history of the quality assurance processes in higher education in Taiwan. Against the background of globalisation, the author proposes the dual concepts of bricolage and translation to discuss the history of policy with respect to quality control in higher education. The research shows that higher education in Taiwan is struggling to raise standards by introducing the western model and that the process is replete with frustration and hardship.
Chuan-Rong Yeh’s article uses the lens of post-colonialism to reveal the hidden momentum of Taiwan’s struggle for greater educational competition within the global context. Yeh (2016) discusses the meaning of the competition faced by the educational sector from the political, economic, cultural and spatial sectors. The goal of enhancing competition seems to be a spell that was cast on educators and policy-makers to make them see it as an end and a means during the process of educational reform.
The next two articles were written by Juei Hsin Wang (2016) and Bo-Ruey Huang (2016), and both papers share similar concerns about teacher education and professional teacher development. For years the enforcement of professional evaluations for teachers has encountered grave resistance; for instance, many teachers oppose the policy because it could increase their workloads and responsibilities. The policy so far is in the pilot stage of implementation, and all teachers are not obliged to participate in the evaluation; they are free to join the scheme if they wish, however. This situation seems to satisfy all, but the problem is that teachers’ professional evaluations are done at will – poorly performing teachers do not need to improve because they can just choose not to take the evaluation. Meanwhile, the contributions of hard-working and well-performing teachers should be encouraged and rewarded through assessments, and the teachers’ professional development evaluation is where the difference should stand out. Decision-makers in Taiwan need to overcome the objections and pursue the teachers’ professional development evaluation scheme.
Shanhua Chen’s paper has a very specific focus on indigenous teacher education in Taiwan. Taiwan is predominantly recognised as a Confucian heritage society, and in fact, it is the origin of the Austronesia language family (Diamond, 2000). There are 16 officially recognised indigenous tribes, but their overall population is very small: less than 2% of the Taiwanese population is indigenous. Their cultures, language, lifestyles and traditions are very different from those of the Chinese. The Education Act for Indigenous Peoples was enacted in 2013, and it aims to safeguard and protect indigenous people’s right to education. The Act thereby adjusts and revises policies with respect to multicultural education. Chen’s paper (2016) reveals the current situation of multicultural education and the implied problems from the lens of critical race theory (CRT).
Overall, the articles in this issue contribute to mapping the changing landscapes of Taiwan education. I coined the phrase the ‘new demarcationalism’ to depict the current situation. The term refers to the scenarios of drawing and breaking educational territories, that is, the multiple processes and movements that involve tensions, contradictions, negotiations, communications, conflicts and competition in education in Taiwan today. Underlying these processes is the intertwinement of various political ideologies, economic powers and complex social forces. This issue draws out the predicaments and struggles of education in Taiwan, which encapsulate the quandary in terms of the internationalisation/globalisation that is disturbing many countries on the Asia-Pacific Rim. However, there are many problems and challenges for Taiwanese educators and policy-makers that haven’t been touched upon. For example, in recent years, cross-cultural marriages have increased dramatically, and this adds a new dimension to Taiwan’s multicultural background. Most foreign spouses come from China and from South East Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and others, and teachers need urgent help to respond to the various challenges of working with students’ multiple demographics. It is also important for students to learn about different cultures and traditions.
Nonetheless, when I was writing this editorial, I was reminded of the legendary scene that tells of how and when Taiwan was exposed to Westerners for the first time in the mid-sixteenth century. It is said that Portuguese sailors on their way to Japan came across an unknown island and, surprisingly, called it ‘Ilha Formosa’, meaning ‘beautiful island’, and the island has had this name ever since. Today, this island is more commonly recognised as Taiwan, and the islanders are eager to distinguish themselves on the world map by means of quality education – a difficult task given that the Ilha Formosa no longer exists in the unknown world but is sailing into an international market replete with rivals.