Perspectives on English Medium Instruction Practices in Vietnamese Universities: Introduction

Internationalisation and English medium education in Vietnamese universities: Professional role transformation among English language lecturers

“…This inappropriate foregrounding of English creates a discourse of ‘internationalisation-as-EMI’ which is pervading many HEIs in the region (Bradford 2019) and neglects important educational objectives, such as building international and intercultural understanding and skills of interaction, by sidelining the agenda of internationalising the curriculum itself (Leask 2008, 2015). Thus, it risks omission of ‘the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum’ (Beelen et al, 2015: 69), or alternatively integrating only Western English-dominant cultural dimensions at the expense of regional and world-wide ones, since ‘it is not just the language and the content that are imported, but also ways of thinking and understanding the world’ (Barnett and Pham 2022: 5). At the same time, internationalisation-as-EMI sidelines discourses of ‘learner-centred internationalisation’ (Coelen, 2016), which aim to provide an environment conducive to ‘learning outcomes associated with international awareness and intercultural competence’ (Coelen 2016: 40).…”