Sustaining Chinese Language Curriculum Reform in Tanzania: A Documentary Analysis of Policy Alignment, Teacher Support, Localisation, and Institutional Coordination

Integrating Chinese Language into Tanzania’s Adult Education System: Policy Gaps, Lifelong Learning Opportunities and Implementation Pathways

Tanzania’s educational cooperation with China has expanded through Confucius Institutes, university programmes, secondary school syllabi, and the recent extension of Chinese language learning to primary and teacher education. Yet Chinese remains largely absent from adult and non-formal education, despite growing interaction between adult Tanzanians and Chinese actors in trade, tourism, construction, and digital commerce. This article examines the policy and institutional basis for integrating Chinese language education into Tanzania’s adult learning system. It uses qualitative document review and comparative benchmarking of policy documents, curriculum materials, adult education frameworks, and selected African experiences. The analysis shows four main findings. First, Tanzania has a clear strategic rationale for extending Chinese language learning beyond formal schooling because language competence is increasingly linked to employability, business participation, and intercultural communication. Second, the adult education system provides practical entry points through the Institute of Adult Education, Folk Development Colleges, Community Learning Centres, vocational training programmes and distance learning platforms. Third, successful integration requires a localised, modular curriculum focused on functional Chinese for business, tourism, construction, community services and digital communication. Fourth, sustainability depends on teacher preparation, financing, monitoring, partnerships and adaptation to adult learners’ linguistic backgrounds. The article proposes a phased implementation roadmap for pilot testing, curriculum development, teacher training, digital delivery, and policy institutionalisation. It contributes to debates on language policy, lifelong learning and South–South educational cooperation in Africa.

Four-Skill Alignment in Bangladeshi Higher-Secondary English Education: A Critical Narrative Review of Curriculum, Assessment Washback, and Classroom Implementation

This critical narrative review examines why communicative curriculum intentions have not produced balanced instruction in listening, speaking, reading, and writing at the higher-secondary level in Bangladesh. The review synthesises Bangladesh-focused scholarship, official curriculum and textbook materials, policy reports, and education-system documents available up to June 2026. Sources were analysed through a structured thematic procedure organised around six interacting layers: curriculum intention, textbook affordance, assessment practice, teacher capacity, classroom ecology, and resource availability. The evidence consistently indicates that listening and speaking are marginalised because they carry limited assessment value and are difficult to enact in large, resource-constrained classes. Reading and writing receive substantially more instructional attention, but examination pressure frequently narrows them to predictable item practice, memorised responses, reliance on guidebooks, and limited formative feedback. The article refines the proposed four-skill alignment framework by treating assessment as a powerful institutional signal whose effects are mediated by teacher assessment literacy, training transfer, class size, time, materials, and institutional expectations. It avoids attributing implementation failure to teachers alone. The review recommends piloting low-stakes oral and aural assessments, demonstration-based professional development, the integrated use of English for Today, focused process-writing routines, and low-cost classroom materials. The contribution is a system-level explanation of why the four skills are affected differently and which implementation conditions must accompany reform.

Reframing English Language Education Policy Through Translanguaging: A Conceptual Framework for Multilingual Indonesia

This study aims to highlight the importance of an adaptable English language teaching and learning curriculum as a strategic approach to strengthening English language education policy in Indonesia. Specifically, it seeks to improve students’ English proficiency while preserving local languages and cultural values. This conceptual study employs a descriptive qualitative narrative review to synthesize evidence on translanguaging and English language education policy in Indonesia. The findings indicate that a translanguaging-based English language curriculum should be contextsensitive by accommodating linguistic diversity while maintaining national learning standards. Its implementation requires adaptability in instruction, assessment, and policy to respond effectively to the linguistic dynamics of diverse educational contexts. The study's novelty lies in reconceptualizing translanguaging from a classroom pedagogical approach into a conceptual foundation for English language education policy that reflects Indonesia's multilingual reality. The study concludes that integrating translanguaging into the national curriculum, teacher professional development, and multilingual instructional materials is essential for strengthening the policy in Indonesia. It recommends establishing supportive policy mechanisms, developing an adaptable curriculum, strengthening teacher professional development, and providing flexible learning resources aligned with local contexts.

Ensuring Sustainability of Donor-funded French Language Projects in Tanzania: A Critical Policy Analysis and Implementation Framework

Donor-funded French language projects can expand instructional capacity, professional mobility and regional communication in Tanzania, yet their public value depends less on the duration of external finance than on whether useful functions become embedded in Tanzanian institutions. This critical narrative review integrates evidence from Tanzanian language-in-education research, education policy, foreign-aid scholarship, international development project management, teacher professional learning and implementation-sustainability studies. Literature published from 1 January 1995 to 15 June 2026 was prioritised, with earlier foundational studies retained where necessary. The review finds a distinctive policy opportunity: French is already represented in national curricular provision and has functional relevance in East African regional institutions and peacekeeping, so donor initiatives can reinforce an existing policy and demand environment rather than construct an isolated parallel system. The principal threats to sustainability are nevertheless structural. They include nominal rather than operational country ownership, weak recurrent-financing arrangements, projectised staffing, one-off professional development, insufficient adaptation to Tanzania's Kiswahili-English-French linguistic ecology, urban concentration, dependence on donor-controlled materials or digital platforms, and monitoring systems that privilege activity completion over institutional capability and post-exit outcomes. Evidence across fields indicates that durable effects are more plausible when policy alignment, local decision authority, professional capability, recurrent resources, locally usable materials, stakeholder demand, equity and adaptive monitoring are designed as mutually dependent conditions. On this basis, the review proposes a Tanzanian Sustainability Transition Framework organised around six domains and a staged transition from co-design to post-exit learning. The framework is a synthesis-derived implementation model rather than a validated instrument. Its central policy implication is that donor exit should be treated as an institutional transition problem: projects should progressively transfer functions, authority, recurrent obligations, knowledge assets and accountability to capable Tanzanian actors while preserving the ability to adapt. Prospective evaluation is required to test whether this approach improves sustained provision, equitable access and learner or professional outcomes.

GenAI, policy mediation, and sustainable transformation in China’s foreign language education

Tracing the Change in the Status of a Language Teacher in University Governance through English Medium Instruction

This article examines how a top‐down English medium instruction (EMI) decision changed a language teacher's status and participation in faculty governance in a graduate engineering school at a national university in Japan. Using a longitudinal single‐case design, the study follows one language teacher across the period from policy announcement to early rollout of EMI implementation. Data comprise three milestone interviews, audio‐recorded research‐practice meetings, reflective journals and implementation documents. Two main findings emerged. First, EMI acted as a catalyst for cultural change by raising the status of the language teacher in a setting where language support had been dismissed as a distraction from “real” engineering. Second, EMI granted the language teacher access to collaborate with a senior content teacher, who served as a gatekeeper to institutional leadership. This collaboration resulted in the formal establishment of EMI support provision and repositioned language support as a recognized component of engineering education. We found that EMI transformed not only the teacher's participation in governance but also faculty‐wide decision‐making processes. The study demonstrates how process tracing can document the decision‐making mechanisms that contribute to institutional cultural change during a faculty‐level transition to EMI.