Introduction: plurilingual expatriate teachers in higher education

ABSTRACT

Higher education institutions have been progressively dealing with issues related to the internationalization of their faculties, in order to increase their position in rankings and their attractiveness in a high competitive market. In such a context, institutions are expected to recruit international students and teachers. This special issue focus on the roles and the impacts of plurilingual expatriate teachers in Higher Education as perceived and described by institutions, colleagues and students, in different contexts (Canada, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland). Under the label ‘international’, synonymous with modernity and attractiveness, English, often portrayed as ‘the language of internationalization’. The aim of this special issue is to pay a closer look not only on the policy of English as academia lingua franca, but also on other linguistic contexts and constellations.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• internationalisation
• expatriate teachers
• English

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education, at the University of Hamburg (Germany). She is also a member of CIDTFF (Research Center for Didactics and Technology in Teacher Education, Portugal). Under Camões – IP, she coordinated the language department of the Portuguese Embassy in Berlin, between 2010 and 2013. Among her research interests are: multilingual and intercultural interaction, plural approaches to teaching and learning of foreign languages and heritage language education.

Patchareerat Yanaprasart, PhD, works at the École de langue et de civilisation françaises, University of Geneva and also teaches at the Swiss Universities of Applied Sciences. Among her research interests and domains of expertise are: language learning and teaching, linguistic integration and migration, language diversity and cross-cultural management in higher education and multinational corporations, intercultural communication and multilingual leadership. Currently, she co-edited a volume entitled Managing plurilingual and intercultural practices in the workplace. The case of multilingual Switzerland (John Benjamins, 2016), a thematic issue Overcoming barriers, bridging boundaries and deconstructing borders in multilingual professional settings: une perspective comparative (vals-asla, 2017).

ORCID

Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7371-3293

Patchareerat Yanaprasart http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7635-7020

Notes

1 We distinguish between multilingualism, as the co-presence of different languages in Higher Education scenarios, and plurilingualism, as the heterogeneous and complex linguistic repertoires of individuals (teachers, students, etc.) (Lüdi, Höchle Meier, and Yanaprasart 2016).