School internationalization in Taiwan: constructing assessment indicators and future application

The study addresses how to conceptualize and measure internationalization in Taiwan’s elementary and secondary schools, a domain where prior work has largely focused on higher education. With globalization intensifying, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education (MOE) issued White Paper 2.0 (2020) emphasizing school internationalization, curriculum, and exchanges to nurture world citizens and expand global connections. The paper notes that higher education indicators are not fully applicable to K-12 contexts and that validated indicators for elementary and secondary schools have been lacking. It therefore aims to construct and validate a six-dimension indicator system aligned with MOE guidance: internationalization goals, campus internationalization, personnel internationalization, administration internationalization, curricula internationalization, and international partnerships, and to evaluate implementation across different school characteristics. Research questions: (1) Do the developed indicators of school internationalization demonstrate validity and reliability for assessing the implementation of school internationalization? (2) How has the performance of school internationalization been related to different school characteristics?

Internationalization is framed as integrating international and intercultural dimensions into institutional functions (Knight, 2004; Paige, 2005). Prior research and tools largely target higher education, emphasizing governance, students, faculty, curriculum, and research (e.g., Gao, 2019; Knight & de Wit, 1999; Krause et al., 2005). For K-12, contexts differ due to compulsory schooling and limited mobility, requiring adaptations such as virtual mobility and support services suitable for schools (Yemini, 2014; Yemini & Cohen, 2016). Taiwan’s MOE (2021) articulated six executive dimensions—internationalization goals, campus internationalization, personnel, administration, curricula, and international partnerships—but lacked validated indicators. The review synthesizes higher-education frameworks and K-12 adaptations to specify dimension definitions: (a) Internationalization goals: school identity, vision, strategies, and leadership commitment; (b) Campus internationalization: infrastructure and visible bilingual/multilingual environments; (c) Personnel internationalization: policies, professional development, and incentives for staff to build intercultural competence; (d) Administration internationalization: international support services, bilingual documentation, databases, and collaboration mechanisms; (e) Curricula internationalization: embedding international, intercultural, and global dimensions in curriculum, outcomes, pedagogy, and assessment aligned with Taiwan’s 12-year guidelines; (f) International partnerships: establishing cooperative agreements, exchange opportunities, and virtual mobility. The review highlights the Western-centered nature of prior tools and the need for localized, validated indicators for K-12.

Design: Three-phase development and validation. Phase 1: Drafted preliminary indicators based on literature and MOE’s six-dimension framework. Phase 2: Content validation via focus groups to refine wording, clarity, appropriateness, and applicability; indicators were condensed from 30 to 25. Focus group participants included 14 internationalization experts (2 MOE K-12 administrators, 8 regional education bureau members, 4 international education experts) and 35 school managers from elementary and secondary schools across Taiwan (north, central, south, east, offshore islands). Phase 3: Psychometric validation through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) in a pre-test and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a formal survey. Participants and sampling: Education bureaus (n=22) recommended diverse schools by type, location, level, and internationalization status. Of 150 invited, 100 schools participated in the pre-test. The formal survey included 145 schools: public (n=138), private (n=7), regions: north (45), central (34), south (52), east (10), offshore (4); metropolitan (115) and rural (30); levels: elementary (56), junior high (40), high school (49). Measures and procedure: For each indicator, schools rated implementation on a 5-point Likert scale (1=undeveloped, 2=25% developed, 3=50% developed, 4=75% developed, 5=fully developed). EFA (SPSS v28) assessed factor structure; prerequisites: KMO ≥ 0.5 and significant Bartlett’s test. CFA (Amos v28) evaluated model fit using RMSEA, CFI, TLI, and SRMR (Hu & Bentler, 1995; Steiger, 1990) and examined convergent/discriminant validity via AVE and composite/construct reliability (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Modification indices informed theoretically justified correlations among select error terms to improve fit. Comparative analyses (ANOVA) tested differences by school type, educational level, and location. Model refinement: Original model fit: RMSEA=0.097, CFI=0.895, TLI=0.874, SRMR=0.0627. Successive additions of theoretically supported correlated errors (items 15↔25; 9↔21; 4↔11) improved fit to RMSEA=0.089, CFI=0.921, TLI=0.902, SRMR=0.0594 (Model 4). Final scale: EFA supported a 6-dimension, 20-item structure with retained items: 1,2 (internationalization goals); 4,5 (campus); 7 (personnel); 8–13,15 (administration); 16–18 (curriculum); 21–25 (partnerships). Loadings ranged approximately 0.405–0.898 (see Table 3 in paper).

• Validated indicator system: A six-dimension, 20-item scale (internationalization goals; campus; personnel; administration; curricula; partnerships) was validated for Taiwan’s elementary and secondary schools.
• Model fit (CFA, final Model 4): RMSEA=0.089; CFI=0.921; TLI=0.902; SRMR=0.0594.
• Reliability and convergent validity: Composite reliability for all dimensions >0.75; AVE values: goals 0.85, campus 0.68, personnel 0.51, administration 0.62, curriculum 0.74, partnerships 0.59 (all ≥0.50).
• Discriminant validity: Inter-construct correlations were assessed; the system was suggested to have discriminant validity per the paper’s criterion.
• Descriptive performance (means, N=145): Internationalization goals M=3.61 (SD=1.31) highest; campus M=2.52 (SD=1.30) and administration M=2.99 (SD=1.18) relatively lower; personnel M=3.10 (SD=1.13); curriculum M=3.19 (SD=1.14); partnerships M=3.24 (SD=1.29); total internationalization M=3.13 (SD=1.07).
• ANOVA by school characteristics: • School type (public vs private): No significant differences across all dimensions (e.g., goals F(1,143)=0.15, p=0.702; campus F=0.72, p=0.398; personnel F=1.31, p=0.255; administration F=0.07, p=0.794; curricula F=0.21, p=0.648; partnerships F=2.78, p=0.098). • Educational level: Significant effects for campus (F(2,142)=3.49, p=0.033) and partnerships (F(2,142)=8.34, p<0.001). High schools outperformed middle schools on campus internationalization (M=2.80 vs 2.08) and outperformed middle and elementary on partnerships (M=3.82 vs 2.88 and 3.00). • School location: Significant effects for goals (F(1,143)=4.20, p=0.042) and partnerships (F(1,143)=15.69, p<0.001). Metropolitan schools scored higher than rural on goals (M=3.73 vs 3.18) and partnerships (M=3.45 vs 2.45).
• Practical insight: Campus and administration internationalization lag, potentially due to funding constraints and administrative language capacity; virtual/online exchanges can expand opportunities for younger students.

The study demonstrates that a six-dimension, 20-item indicator system reliably and validly measures internationalization in Taiwan’s K-12 schools, addressing the gap left by higher-education-centric frameworks. The validated structure aligns with and operationalizes MOE’s six dimensions, providing actionable measures for schools. Findings show that, while schools have articulated goals and strategies (highest scores), implementation related to campus environments and administrative services is less developed, implying resource and capacity constraints. Comparative results clarify where support may be most impactful: high schools and metropolitan schools are further along—likely due to greater language proficiency, experience, and access to partners—whereas middle/elementary and rural schools lag, especially on partnerships. This supports shifting some partnership activity to virtual mobility to bypass age and travel constraints and underscores the need to build administrative and language capacities. The results answer RQ1 by evidencing validity and reliability (acceptable CFA fit, AVE, reliability metrics) and RQ2 by documenting systematic differences across educational level and location but not school type, suggesting system-level equity between public and private schools in Taiwan and highlighting contextual factors as drivers of variation. The study also reframes traditional higher-education notions of mobility for K-12 by emphasizing virtual engagement and localized, school-based visioning and strategies.

The paper offers the first empirically validated internationalization indicator system tailored to Taiwan’s elementary and secondary schools. It advances a localized, school-based approach that can guide schools in planning, self-assessing, and improving internationalization across goals, campus environment, personnel, administration, curriculum, and partnerships. The tool can support classification of schools’ internationalization levels using primary versus selective indicators and inform targeted capacity building. For policy and practice, results highlight the need to prioritize resources for campus and administrative internationalization and to bolster administrators’ language and intercultural capacities. Although developed in Taiwan, the framework can inform similar contexts (e.g., East Asian systems with centralized curricula and high-stakes examinations), provided careful adaptation to national curriculum guidelines and local needs. Future work could refine the indicators for different national contexts, develop implementation toolkits, and longitudinally track schools’ progress.

• Sample composition: The lack of significant differences by school type may be influenced by a disproportionate number of public versus private schools (few private school respondents).
• Generalizability and contextualization: Indicators require adaptation to each country’s curricular guidelines and specific context; transfer beyond Taiwan should be done cautiously.
• Developmental constraints: Slower progress in campus and administrative internationalization may reflect funding and capacity limitations, affecting overall implementation levels, particularly in rural schools.