Expatriate and home teachers’ beliefs about English-medium instruction at a Portuguese university

ABSTRACT

English-medium instruction (EMI) has been growing rapidly in higher education institutions worldwide as one of the chief language policy initiatives related to internationalisation. Acknowledging the centrality of teachers in EMI implementation and their role as micro-level actors in language policy and planning, this paper sets out to identify, compare and discuss expatriate and home teachers’ beliefs concerning the benefits and challenges of EMI. To address these aims, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted at a Portuguese higher education institution. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire, which included closed and open-ended questions and submitted to statistical and content analysis. Results suggest that expatriate and home teachers have similar beliefs concerning the challenges of EMI. Still, regarding benefits, expatriate teachers seem to have a more ‘educationalist’ perspective of EMI, whereas home teachers seem to focus on its economic benefits. Implications of these findings for institutional language policy and planning are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• English-medium instruction
• teachers’ beliefs
• home teachers
• expatriate teachers
• internationalisation of higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mónica Lourenço is a Researcher at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, where she is conducting a project on teacher education for global citizenship drawing on the concept of ‘third space’. She has a PhD in Didactics and Teacher Education, an MA in Linguistics and Teaching, and a degree in Modern Languages and Literature (English and German). Her main research interests are plurilingualism in the early years, teacher education, internationalisation of the curriculum, and global citizenship education.

Susana Pinto is a Researcher at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. She concluded her PhD Degree in Didactics and Training, at the University of Aveiro in 2012 with the thesis entitled ‘Languages at the University of Aveiro: discourses and practices’. She has a Master in Language Didactics and a degree in Teaching Portuguese and English. Her research interests centre on language education policies, language policies in scientific research, the development of plurilingual and intercultural competences in higher education, supervision across cultures and on linguistic and cultural diversity.

ORCID

Mónica Lourenço http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8124-2452

Susana Pinto http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7441-4140