Embracing Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Access in EMI-TNHE: Towards a Social Justice-Centered Reframing of English Language Teaching

Abstract

This editorial piece is the introduction of our special issue on English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and transnational higher education (TNHE). In this piece, we argue for a centering of diversity, inclusion, equity and access in EMI-TMHE as part of a larger agenda to create a more socially just field of English language teaching.

“Does Chinese philosophy count as philosophy?”: decolonial awareness and practices in international English medium instruction programs

“…Even though the informants were unaware of Asia as Method and Epistemologies of the South , their decolonial awareness and decolonialization practices were in line with Chen’s and Santos’s ideas. The findings of this study indicate that in rare instances, such as the program included in this study, an EMI program neither imposes English-language hegemony nor epistemic oppression of Anglo-European-centric knowledge production, but rather enables teachers and international students to construct a decolonialized space of disciplinary knowledge construction (Dafouz and Smit, 2021 ; De Costa et al., 2021 ). When viewed as a strategy to internationalize higher education, EMI programs of the kind can be used as a decolonial-informed bridge between inward- and outward-oriented strategies for knowledge innovation and dissemination (Wu, 2019 ).…”

“…With the rate of international student enrollment as a well-recognized index of internationalization, universities in non-Anglophone countries are increasingly striving to develop English as a medium of instruction (EMI) programs to attract international students (Kuroda, 2014 ; Macaro et al, 2021 ). A growing body of EMI-related research has focused on problematizing the hegemonic role of English in European and Asian universities (e.g., Dafouz and Smit, 2021 ; Galloway et al, 2020 ); these studies have primarily focused on the tension between a monolingual English-only language policy at the institutional level and the translingual practices of teachers and students at the interpersonal level and the difficult-to-achieve balance between teaching and learning English for academic purposes and discipline-specific content knowledge mediated in English (De Costa et al, 2021 ; Jablonkai and Hou, 2021 ). Even though the “E” in EMI has been critically examined in multi- and trans-lingual pedagogies, the existing literature largely failed to address the potential risks of epistemic injustice in the internationalization of EMI curriculum (Leask, 2015 ; Song, 2021 ).…”

TESOL teacher educators in higher education: A review of studies from 2010 to 2020

“…• Considering the socio-political dimension of language teaching deeply entangled with complex issues of power differentials as well as learner diversity and equity, how can language teacher educators bring such issues to the forefront of their classrooms? For example, how can language teacher educators engage themselves in a critical thinking process to challenge the dominant ideologies and social order to promote critical and equity-oriented LTE (De Costa et al, 2021;Veliz & Veliz-Campos, 2019)? • In the face of the 'publishing game' (Lee, 2014; dominant in the academia, how do language teacher educators in peripheral EFL contexts navigate the potential bias against their research topics and contexts (Yuan, 2017a)?…”

How Does the Language Control of L1 and L2 Writers Develop Over Time in First-Year Composition?

“…In short, L1 and L2 writers attend FYC with very different backgrounds and therefore experience such courses in very different ways. Given that language education in general is a highly lucrative endeavor (De Costa et al, 2021) and that universities benefit from higher tuition paid by international students they actively recruit, there is an ethical imperative for FYC educators to understand L2 writers and offer an inclusive, equitable, and diverse pedagogy that respects their additive contributions while also teaching dominant language forms. To be inclusive and acknowledge diversity, we must understand the language development trajectories and experiences of L2 students and consider whether dominant FYC pedagogies support or subvert their language learning.…”