This poster presents the overview and the first step of the PhD project Chinese Education at Confucius Institutes in Belgium: A Pedagogical and Socio-Cultural Perspective. In recent decades, the enhanced globalization (Badwan, 2021) and mobility (McWilliams, 2008) have increased the complexity in foreign language classrooms in multilingual contexts (Bonnet & Siemund, 2018). It is thus worthwhile to explore the dynamics among diverse pedagogical and socio-cultural factors in real-life practices of foreign language education. Situating this issue in Belgium, this project investigates Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) education at local Confucius Institutes (CIs), aiming to provide insights into educational approaches at CIs as designed; delivered and received by different stakeholders (administrators, teachers, and learners). In the sections of Project Overview and Research Design of the poster, the key information on the project is summarized. First of all, Research questions identify the scope of the research, probing mainly in the following directions: What are the gaps between actual local educational practices at CIs in Belgium and CIs’ official educational objectives? To what extent does the teaching of CFL at CIs reflect Belgian learners’ socio-cultural backgrounds? What are the pedagogical and managerial practices exerted at CIs in Belgium? How do these pedagogical and managerial practices interact with local socio-cultural contexts? It is evident from the Research questions that the project mainly focuses on the potential misalignment between official objectives and on-site practices of management, teaching, and learning at CIs in Belgium, as well as the interplay of local socio-cultural factors (e.g., language conflicts, language ideology) in such educational contexts. In regard to Methodology, a mixed methods approach is chosen for data collection, in order to tackle the research questions from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. A variety of data collection instruments including ...