Abstract
English-medium instruction (EMI) is highly intertwined with the quest for internationalization of higher education (IHE) worldwide (Macaro et al., 2021). Despite the assumed benefits of EMI (Galloway et al., 2020), it seems that the policymaking and implementation of EMI have not been grounded on solid empirical evidence. English-Medium Instruction and the Internationalization of Universities, edited by Hugo Bowles and Amanda Murphy, is a must-read book that gathers empirical findings on EMI practice and IHE development from various contexts, providing deep insights into the prevailing challenges. Meanwhile, it opens the scholarly conversation to benefit stakeholders practically by providing specific suggestions regarding culture and identity, student support, teacher education and power relations.
This volume demonstrates the global EMI phenomenon and presents stakeholders’ concerns through presenting robust data generated in Japan, China, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Ethiopia and Mexico. The authors emphasize the need for decision-makers to understand stakeholders’ perceptions and obtain strong evidence before EMI implementation. In Chapter 1, Bowles and Murphy clearly overview the current studies on IHE and EMI, building a solid rationale for the volume's empirical studies to explore and revisit the link between IHE and EMI. They further problematize the top-down policy and question EMI implementation, highlighting valuable proposals for policymakers, administrators and teachers.
Starting from Asia, in Chapter 2, Aizawa and McKinley unpack Japan's problems of the implicit top-down EMI policy by examining key stakeholders’ insights into their challenges during practice. They suggest the government specify the policy and provide explicit guidance to institutions for the future translation of it into the classroom. Wang critically reviews China's language ideology issues regarding the role of English in the internationalization of EMI tertiary education by exploring the public perceptions, media and policy in Chapter 5. Through the lens of English as a lingua franca (ELF), she argues how nativespeakerism and standard English would deepen the imbalanced power relations between native and non-native English-speaking teachers, and even between elite and non-elite students. In Chapter 6, Kaur reveals the challenges that students and academic staff in a Malaysian university encounter when using English in class, causing the use of the first language (L1) and thus excluding international students. Accordingly, early linguistic support to students and continuous professional development to teachers are suggested, which echoes with Galloway and Rose (2021).
Focusing on Europe, in Chapter 3, Gabriëls and Wilkinson present the Netherlands’ public and students’ controversial views of the impacts of EMI policy and practices in higher education, exploring Dutch and non-Dutch students’ varied perceptions of EMI's influence on tertiary education quality and cultural identity further. Meanwhile, in Chapter 8, Haines, Kroese and Guo uncover how switching from Dutch to ELF influences student engagement in extra-curricular activities in the Netherlands. Like those in Malaysia, international students find that the use of Dutch and local students’ reluctance to change to ELF has an excluding effect in the community. However, more data are needed to demonstrate how this language change in informal settings influences the formal curriculum. Lauridsen investigates the connections between the conceptualization of internationalization, policies and academic practices in Danish higher education, stressing to integrate international and intercultural components and appropriate assessment into the formal curriculum in Chapter 9. In Chapter 10, Costa and Mariotti present local Italian and international students’ perspectives, promoting student support to both groups and emphasizing language policy and English assessment reform.
The book involves contributions in Africa and North America. In Chapter 4, Murphy and Mengistu examine Ethiopia's current status of the IHE, revealing the missing national policy and the varied initiatives and practices among universities. They suggest the further definition of internationalization for the country and the inclusion of other languages and cultures as learning resources. As for North America in Chapter 7, Worthman explores Mexican university instructors’ discipline-related perceptions of EMI and IHE and planning for EMI implementation after completing a professional development programme for EMI. For practitioners, it would have been more enriching by including the follow-up classroom data to demonstrate how this programme transforms pedagogical practices.
In the concluding chapter, Valcke reviews the problems and proposals raised in this book. She conceptualizes EMI and English-medium education and highlights the aforementioned gaps between policy and practice. Meanwhile, she calls for stakeholders’ social and moral duties and provides clear guidance to them to ensure inclusiveness and higher education quality when developing global citizens.
This volume addresses the IHE issues caused by top-down and unclear policies. The critical review of various contexts reveals prevailing problematic practices and challenges facing EMI institutions. It closely looks into the sociolinguistic and sociocultural issues related to EMI from the perspectives of the public, tertiary instructors, students and government policies. Nevertheless, this book could further benefit instructors if the volume could involve more longitudinal studies in and out of the classroom, as they may allow the readers to realize how the individual and contextual factors contribute to EMI students’ academic learning (Peng and Xie, 2021).
Overall, through examining stakeholders’ perceptions and policies, this book enables policymakers and school administrators to understand the urgent need for clear guidance, assisting them to formulate policies to initiate and contextualize IHE and EMI. It is also key to instructors, material compilers, curriculum designers and assessment developers who collaborate and prepare students for international challenges. However, more work is required in the classroom to reveal the efficacy of the policies and the feasibility of these proposals to maintain quality education.
