The teaching of Chinese in Australian primary and secondary schools has a history of more than 40 years, but it has only been in the past two decades that it has become widespread. Nonetheless, until the last year, of the six most taught languages in schools, Chinese has had by far the smallest number of students. Several factors contribute to…

Chinese teaching arose in the United States in the 1870s, which was relatively early compared to other regions, but due to issues of politics and funding it was perennially marginalized. Chinese teaching in the United States did not see development until the early 1960s, when it began receiving funding from the U.S. government. Owing to the global…

A study investigated results of the 1982 Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation initiative to expand teaching of Chinese in high schools. The approach taken was to examine the entire range of elements in the Dodge initiative at 55 schools where projects were funded, drawing from questionnaires, site visits, and interviews. Additional, different…

The Des Moines (Iowa) Public Schools foreign language program for K-12 is described and evaluated. The evaluation report focuses on six areas, including: (1) school district mission and philosophy of foreign language instruction; (2) context (state policies and standards, foreign language program overview and enrollment, fiber-optic communication…