Teacher Competence and Bilingual Pedagogy in Sino-Foreign ESP Programs: Insights from Industrial Design Education in China

Abstract

Sino-foreign cooperative programmes in China increasingly rely on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to connect local learners with global disciplinary discourse. However, ESP quality remains uneven due to misalignments among teacher qualifications, pedagogy, and institutional priorities. This qualitative case study investigates factors influencing bilingual ESP pedagogy in an Industrial Design English course at the Sino-German Institute of Design (IDI). Guided by the Context–Input–Process–Product (CIPP) framework, data were generated through semi-structured interviews with one programme director and two ESP instructors (60–90 minutes each) and analyzed thematically. Three interrelated themes emerged. They are (1) uneven English proficiency and student diversity complicating pacing, differentiation, and participation in English-medium instruction, (2) a disciplinary knowledge gap among ESP teachers, where strong linguistic pedagogical skills do not align with sufficient industrial design literacy, limiting authentic integration of language and content, and (3) pedagogical adjustment under constraint, with teachers relying on translation-heavy, teacher-centered approaches while selectively experimenting with communicative, project-based, and translanguaging strategies. Across themes, institutional factors of workload, materials, and training focused on compliance rather than pedagogy constrained systematic innovation. The study provides evidence that effective bilingual ESP delivery depends on the synergy of linguistic, pedagogical, and disciplinary competence, supported by institutional structures. Practical implications include embedding dual-competence professional development that includes disciplinary immersion and language pedagogy, establishing co-teaching and mentoring between ESP and subject experts, incentivizing bilingual teaching innovation, and curating locally relevant ESP resources that normalize translanguaging. The findings offer a transferable lens for strengthening bilingual ESP within internationalized higher education.