English teachers' evaluation of a preschool bilingualism program in terms of English language teaching and beliefs about bilingualism benefits

This case study illuminated an English-Turkish bilingual program at preschool level in Türkiye by investigating the evaluative views of English teachers about English language teaching in the bilingual program and explored their beliefs about bilingualism benefits. Program evaluation scale data (N=83) and interview data (N=12) were collected from preschool and primary-level English teachers at a private chain college in Türkiye. As a result, the program aims, curriculum, language teaching approaches and methods, implementation, materials, assessment were described. It was indicated that the teachers were highly positive about the general characteristics, objectives of the program, but moderately positive about the content, assessment, learning and teaching processes. The English teachers reported that the program had linguistic, academic, emotional, social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, economic, identity-development advantages. However, it had problems about overloaded content, materials, teaching processes, teacher efficacy-related recruitment problems. The teachers' suggestions were revision in materials, improvement in teaching and learning processes, age-appropriate, simplified language and content, teacher qualifications improvement and affordable program prices to reach more children. Regarding bilingualism benefits beliefs, the teachers believed that bilingualism had cognitive, social, cultural, emotional, academic, economic, linguistic, identity development benefits. When they compared children at primary level, the teachers observed cognitive, social, identity, linguistic, emotional, psychological and cultural benefits differences in favor of the bilingual children. As the first study evaluating a bilingual program in Türkiye, this research depicted the preschool bilingual education in Türkiye by taking a private chain school as a case, evaluated it and investigated the English teachers' bilingualism benefits beliefs.