Integrating language and knowledge-building through video-enhanced observation in English Medium Instruction

Tom Morton (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

This talk presents a brief overview and preliminary results of the project “Integrating language and knowledge-building through video-enhanced observation in EMI”. The project starts from the assumption that professional development for EMI practitioners can and should engage with their disciplinary knowledge-building practices, which can then be linked to the communicative resources used to enact them. The project draws on Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), a sociological framework for the exploration and enhancement of knowledge building practices. Three dimensions of LCT (Semantics, Autonomy and Specialization) are used to analyze video-recordings of teaching and interviews with lecturers teaching a range of academic subjects in English medium higher education. In the final stage of the project, the findings from these studies will be used to develop tools for the professional development of EMI lecturers based on video-enhanced observation, using the app “VEO”.

Unveiling Business Students' Perspectives on Disciplinary Literacies in English-Medium Education: Findings from the SHIFT Project

Emma Dafouz and Elena Orduna

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The international nature of the business world has led to an increasing emphasis on English-medium education (EME) within higher education institutions. The concept of disciplinary literacies (DLs) emerges in these settings as a critical component of effective teaching, learning and subject-specific communication. However, the oversight in adequately addressing such DLs in some EME contexts may hinder students’ ability to effectively comprehend and produce discipline-specific texts and raises concerns about their satisfactory learning of disciplinary content.

Drawing on a rich data set which includes a student survey, different focus groups as well as student oral and written outputs collected over a three-year period, the SHIFT project aims to place students centre stage to discuss their own perspectives and experiences of DLs development. Our research contributes to move forward in the conceptualization and pedagogy of DLs in EME while emphasizing the importance of empowering business students biliteracies in a glocalized world.

MIME – Multilingualism in International Music Education: a new domain for ICLHE research

Miya Komori-Glatz & Ute Smit

Vienna University of Economics and Business & University of Vienna

Despite being a field that has long attracted international students, the discipline of music and the performing arts has been somewhat neglected by ICLHE research. We aim to address this gap by conducting a study into teaching and learning at a well-known music university in Austria. Comprising a student survey (n=31) and 12 semi-structured interviews with teachers, students and university management, this study examines the roles of English, German and other languages in university policy and practice as well as stakeholder beliefs. Our key finding is that the domains (and especially certain sub-domains) of classical music and music education are shaped by an underlying assumption of multilingualism and that both teachers and students are generally willing and able to engage in flexible language use that supports the students’ musical development. Additionally, we noted that different languages play various roles in disciplinary literacy and knowledge-building in classical music education, suggesting a more differentiated approach to ICLHE.

EMI development through national and international projects at CLC

PUT Professor Liliana Szczuka-Dorna, PhD & Katarzyna Matuszak, PhD

Poznan University of Technology, Centre of Languages and Communication

The paper presents different English Medium Instruction (EMI) activities developed during the realization of national and international projects by the Centre of Languages and Communication (CLC) at Poznan University of Technology (PUT). The authors focus on the following projects: NAWA (Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange), BADGE (Becoming a Digital Global Engineer) and EUNICE (European University for Customized Education). Moreover, the contribution of the Work Packages (Intellectual Outputs) is described giving priority to the challenges of academic teachers. The views of academics are examined with a thorough analysis of their expectations towards the methodology of teaching content courses in English. The results of the projects and academic teachers’ feedback are likely to change the attitude towards EMI at PUT.

Approaching disciplinary literacies in ICLHE from a multimodal perspective

Fortanet-Gómez, Inmaculada & Ruiz-Madrid, Noelia

GRAPE, Universitat Jaume I

Though there is much research developed on and about ICLHE and disciplinary literacies, only a few studies deal with this topic from a multimodal perspective, and many of them have been authored by members of GRAPE (Group for Research on Academic and Professional English). Discourse is inherently multimodal and includes language (i.e., verbal) and other semiotic (i.e., non-verbal) resources (Kress, 2010). It is natural to change from one mode to another in what has been called transemiotizing (Lin, 2019).  Therefore, there is a need to integrate multimodal literacy in the classroom (Lim and Tan-Chia, 2023), especially when the teaching and learning of integrated content and language are at play. This integration of multimodal literacy may mean pedagogical readjustments in teachers’ multimodal discourse and the way materials are presented to the students. Taking as a point of departure the multimodal analysis of the teachers’ discourse (Bernad-Mechó, 2021,2022; Ruiz-Madrid & Fortanet Gómez, 2019; Costa & Boggio, forth.), our contribution will present research conducted on the materials used in the ICLHE classroom (Ruiz-Madrid, 2021; Fortanet-Gómez & Edo-Marzá, 2022; Ruiz-Garrido & Fortanet-Gómez, 2022), and on the teachers’ (Beltrán-Palanques, 2021; Edo-Marzá & Fortanet-Gómez, forth.) and the students’ perspective (Edo-Marzá, forth) on how those materials are used. The ultimate objective of all this research is to make teachers and students aware not only of the multimodal affordances but also of their pedagogical value, by adopting a multimodal literacy perspective in the ICLHE classroom.