‘Uneven consequences’ of international English-medium-instruction programmes in China: a critical epistemological perspective

ABSTRACT

Critical studies on internationalisation of higher education (IHE) have addressed the uneven global geopolitics of knowledge production as reinforced and reproduced through policy making and mechanism of professional organisations. Yet it remains unknown about the dynamics of epistemic exchanges in between agents at multiple dimensions of IHE, particularly in Asian contexts. Adopting a critical epistemological perspective [Chen, K.-H. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press], the present study examines international and Chinese students’ epistemic practices in mixed English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) Master’s degree programmes in a top-ranked comprehensive university in Shanghai, China. The in-depth student/instructor interviews and ethnographic classroom observation converge to reveal that the EMI curriculum constructs an implicit hegemonic hierarchy among students based on their pre-enrolment possessions of linguistic capital of English and cultural capital concerning Americanised academic norms and discipline-specific knowledge. Given the implicit hegemony, it is also argued that students have developed varied degrees of epistemic awareness and resorted to strategies of inter-referencing and cultural syncretism in order to negotiate diverse epistemic frames of reference with regards (1) English as an academic lingua franca, (2) the epistemic domination of the Global North, and (3) reimagining China and modernity. Practical and conceptual implications on IHE are proposed based on the analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Internationalisation of higher education
• critical epistemology
• Asia as method
• inter-referencing
• cultural syncretism
• EMI

Aknowledgements

The author is very grateful to Professor Angel Lin, Professor Wang Shengyuan and the anonymous reviewer for their inspiring and helpful suggestions and comments. Deep thanks to all the participants in the present study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Studies on academic literacies and language socialisation (Duff 2010; Zappa-Hollman 2007) regard academic (English) discourse as ‘not just an entity but a social, cognitive, and rhetorical process and an accomplishment, a form of enculturation, social practice, positioning, representation, and stance-taking’ (Duff 2010, 170). Academic English socialisation refers to a process by which novices seek competence and membership by using academic English and learning from experienced users in order to develop both academic English and discipline-specific knowledge (Ou and Gu 2018, 3).

Additional information

Funding

The present study is part of the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Young Scholars Project entitled ‘Intercultural identity formation of international students enrolled in EMI Master’s degree programmes in a “Double-First-Class-Project”-enlisted university in China’, which is supported by a research grant from the National Office of Educational Sciences Planning [Project No. EIA180488].