Prioritizing English-Medium Instruction Teachers’ Needs for Faculty Development and Institutional Support: A Best–Worst Scaling Approach

Abstract

This study explored the prioritization of English-medium instruction (EMI) teachers’ needs for faculty development and institutional support by applying a best–worst scaling approach to an EMI program in Japan. This prioritization is important as EMI programs need management under various constraints (e.g., time, budget, and teachers). This study also investigated how teachers’ needs for institutional support differ by English language competence and EMI teaching experience and their relationship with EMI programs (e.g., full-time or adjunct). Questionnaire surveys administered to 38 EMI teachers revealed that, overall, faculty development (FD) program menus training teaching styles, speaking skills, communication skills, and respecting the diversity of students should be prioritized such that it varies depending on the teachers’ English language competence levels but not their teaching experience. Irrespective of their relationship with EMI programs, the recognition and appreciation of their burdens, efforts, and contributions is most needed. There are noticeable differences based on their position over the necessity of pedagogical guidelines, teaching load, and economic incentive.

Training on English as a Medium of Instruction: Moroccan Public Secondary School Math and Science Teachers

“…Even though it was almost eight years since the implementation of the EMI policy in some Moroccan public secondary schools, only three EMI teachers benefited from a short EMI in-service training. This finding correlated with numerous studies, reporting a shortage of teacher training in different parts of the world such as Japan, Volume 4, Issue 4, 2022 China, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Nepal, and Vietnam (Borg, 2016;Francesca Costa & Coleman, 2012;Dearden et al, 2016;Macaro et al, 2018;Uehara & Kojima, 2021;Yuan, 2019), while it contrasted other studies (F. Costa, 2015;Haines & Van den Hende, 2014) which found that there were universities that provided training courses for EMI teachers in order to enhance their competencies.…”

“…The same situation was found in Japan. Uehara and Kojima (2021) confirmed that training for EMI teachers at the university was unavailable where they worked. Their survey of 38 university teachers and interviews with eight of them also corroborated similar findings.…”

“…However, the training content did not tackle intercultural communication, which was found in other contexts (F. Costa, 2015;Haines & Van den Hende, 2014), especially since Morocco is a multicultural society. In fact, developing intercultural skills were important for EMI teachers because it enabled them to actively and effectively interact with students from different backgrounds (Uehara & Kojima, 2021).…”

“…Despite the effectiveness of training on EMI teachers, the literature revealed that there was a shortage of this training in different parts of the world (Borg, 2016;Costa & Coleman, 2012;Dearden & Akıncıoğlu, 2016;Galloway et al, 2017;Macaro et al, 2018;Uehara & Kojima, 2021;Yuan, 2019). In a systematic review of 83 studies, Macaro et al (2018) confirmed that there is generally a lack of pre-service training for EMI teachers.…”

“…EMI literature instead focused on issues related to elements of EMI, attitudes and motives for EMI, the use of other languages besides English in the EMI classroom (Helm, 2019;Macaro et al, 2018) and difficulties encountered in teaching through English (Diezmas & Barrera, 2021;Thanda et al, 2020), while EMI teachers' professional development received little attention. Studies that examine EMI teachers' professional development, mainly pre-and in-service training, remained scarce (Uehara & Kojima, 2021).…”