The development of multilingual curriculum has usually been regarded as one of marketized strategies for global neoliberal education environment (Huang, 2022) or the intercultural or multicultural practice in the society (Senar, Janés, Huguet & Ubalde, 2023; European Commission, n.d.). However, this may not be the case for the recent multilingual education policy in Taiwan. In 2019, the legislation of “Development of National Language Act” is given the task to realize linguistic and cultural human rights on the islands. Responding to the enactment of Development of National Languages Act, Taiwanese Ministry of Education has amended and implemented a new version of Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year Basic Education in 2022 in order to implement the policy of national language courses from elementary to senior high school level. According to the new Curriculum Guidelines, from the school year of 2022 (which starts from September, 2022), local languages education, implemented as mandate courses, is extended from elementary school to junior and senior high school with various course hours and/or credits. With such a policy, it becomes a mandate for students not only take national language courses in their 9-year compulsory education but also carrying on national language courses in the optional 3-year post-secondary education. With the conceptualization of half-education by Adorno (1993), the paper scrutinizes the discourse development of national language and its position in the post-secondary education in Taiwan. There are 2 overarching research questions: 1) What is the construct of national language education, and 2) What are the unique tasks and characteristics of post-secondary national languages education in Taiwan.

As a postcolonial society, Taiwanese schooling has organized and operated in different languages. In Japanese colonial regime, Japanese language was taught as the national language, while Mandarin has become the only instructional language used in schooling after the Chinese national government took place in 1945. The top-down language policies have been regarded as one of powerful tools that reconstruct not only the cultures and communication practices but also the identities. This paper critically examines two policies enacted in 2017 and 2019, the 2030 Bilingual Nation policy and the Development of National Languages Act, and investigates their impacts on schooling in Taiwan. The multilingualism and intercultural practices developed in European societies will be utilized as a reference in the investigation of Taiwanese multilingualism under the enactment of recent language policies.

An analysis of policy documents, press releases, and the publications from the Gazette of Legislative Yuan and Executive Yuan is conducted as the analysis of official discourse. And documents created for implementing policy in schools are analyzed with interviews with teachers and section/course leaders who realize policies in schools. The paper takes upon Ball, Maguire and Braun’s (2012) view of policy spaces among different levels of enactment and delineates the enacting of such language policy from the perspectives of situated contexts, professional cultures, material contexts, and external factors. An interview outline is produced to collect interview data from schools, including: 1) teachers’/section leaders’ educational and professional background and teaching experiences, 2) teachers’/section leaders’ viewpoints on multilingualism in Taiwan, 3) teachers’/section leaders’ experience and practice in the implementation of language courses in schools, 4) teachers’/section leaders’ experience and practice in the implementation of language courses in classrooms, and 5) reflections or insights on language education in Taiwan. Each interview takes around 45-60 minutes. And the interview data is collected and transcribed into texts and analysed with the documents distributed in schools, such as language course surveys, flyers, and parent consent forms, etc.

The paper delineates the inclusive and exclusive issues of current Taiwanese language policies. After the long-term monolingual policy, the MOE amended the Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year Basic Education along with the multilingual policies. The paper discusses the adjustment of curriculum intertwines with the development of multiculturalism of the society (Lee, 2017; Kasai, 2022) and the enactment trajectories of policy-in-school regarding to multilingual education. The paper contributes to the literature of language education and language policy in contemporary Southeast Asian societies.

Adorno, T. W. (1993) Theory of Pseudo-Culture. Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 95, 15-38. European Commission (n.d.) About multilingualism policy. Retrieved from https://education.ec.europa.eu/focus-topics/improving-quality/multilingualism/about-multilingualism-policy Huang, C. F. (2023) Multilingual writing in a marketised university: a critical multimodal study of student service advertisements, International Journal of Multilingualism, DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2023.2265396 Kasai, H. (2022) Taiwanese multiculturalism and the political appropriation of new immigrants’ languages. Comparative Education, DOI: 10.1080/03050068.2022.2099657 Lee, S. (2017) Imagination and formation: Discourse analysis of multicultural education developments in Taiwan. Taiwan Journal of Sociology of Education, 17:2, 1-44. Senar, F., Janés, J. , Huguet, À., & Ubalde, J. (2023) The mosaic of language and identity: territorial identification, linguistic attitudes, and proficiency in young immigrants of Catalonia, International Journal of Multilingualism, DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2023.2280682