Taiwanese Elementary School English Teachers’ Design and Implementation of Concept-Based Instruction on Global Citizenship

Lanning (2013) defines a concept-based curriculum as “a focus on the transfer of the important conceptual ideas of a discipline [that] facilitates synergist thinking” (p. 7). Under concept-based instruction, learners can make connections between prior and new knowledge, relate the facts to their real-life scenarios, and analyze and evaluate the acquired information for deeper learning. Since concept-based instruction is coherent, different concepts are unified and connected by the relevance of learners’ lives (Nair et al., 2015). Such learner-centered pedagogy has been proven to significantly improve learners’ understanding.

This collective case study explored Taiwanese elementary school English teachers’ designs and implementations of concept-based instruction on global citizenship. The thematic analysis of documents, interviews, and observation achieved the following major findings. Firstly, teachers’ decision-making on concepts relied on the standards of the content areas, learners’ lives, and community, and concepts varied from “appreciating floral festivals” to “appreciate and consume lunch fully.” Secondly, diverse instructional strategies in concept-based instruction were designed and implemented, such as teachers’ employment of multimodality to present and explain the main concepts, drill practice, tasks, and individual and group sharing for learners to connect and demonstrate their understanding of concepts. Thirdly, teachers faced challenges in terms of learners’ limited English proficiency levels, scaffolding strategies, and assessment. Finally, the collaborative lesson planning enabled teachers to identify the concepts to be covered in content areas and to design strategies for concept-based instruction. Suggestions on effective designs and implementations of concept-based instruction on global citizenship were provided in terms of diverse instructional strategies in concept-based instruction, equipping teachers with competence in integrating differentiated instruction for concept-based instruction, and integrating assessment as learning into concept-based instruction.