Abstract
The internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions is a process conceived of not as an end in itself but as a means to improve the quality of education, research and services (De Wit and Leask 2015). However, one of the consequences of this phenomenon is that lecturers are often called on to embrace the challenge of teaching their subject through a foreign language without receiving formal training in this, especially in countries where English-taught programs are still in their infancy, such as Italy. With the aim of supporting academic staff in this transition, the Academic Lecturing programme has been set up in a medium-sized public university in the north-east of Italy: it is specifically designed for lecturers who teach their subject through English and aims to raise their awareness of the impact of the internationalisation process on teaching, the more extensive set of skills needed for teaching and learning in English, and the increased heterogeneity of the student population. The purpose of the programme is also to help participants try their hand at new teaching methods and new technologies as a means of making lessons more interactive, thus increasing their accessibility and making them more effective, and to help participants to improve their strategic use of English within their disciplinary field. The professional development programme will be reported in the light of both a brief description of the programme format—a course and a one-to-one support service—and the feedback received from participants in the various editions so far. This feedback will be used to inform the future development of the programme, with a view to encouraging increased collaboration between language specialists and content specialists (Lyster 2017, Wingate 2018), thus further addressing the need for a more integrated use of language and content in university lectures.
Highlights
Elena Borsetto & Ada Bier the various editions so far
A pivotal role is played by university teachers, whose investment is of paramount importance (Dafouz 2018) especially in the light of the expectations surrounding internationalisation: with “a stronger focus on curriculum and learning outcomes [...], the involvement of academics becomes imperative” (De Wit and Hunter 2015, 52-53)
A number of studies have highlighted the fact that teachers would benefit from professional development programmes focussing on teaching methods as well as language improvement, rather than courses that focus on the latter (Klaassen 2001, 2008; Wilkinson 2005; Ball and Lindsay 2013; Doiz et al 2014; Costa 2016, 2017; Bier 2020)
Summary
With regard to university teacher training, in those contexts where English is used as a target language, the universities that first activated professional development programmes, workshops and seminars are located in Northern and Central Europe This is due to the fact that the internationalisation process, and the consequent introduction of EMI courses, initially occurred in those countries (Wächter and Maiworm 2014; Henriksen et al 2018). 88% of EMI program directors criticised their teaching staff’s knowledge of academic English (Wächter and Maiworm 2014, 101) For this reason many professional development programmes offered to Spanish university teachers focus on their language skills, such as the one at the University of the Basque Country, which deals with aspects such as methodology and academic writing, and devotes one third of the thirty hours of the course to improving pronunciation (Ball and Lindsay 2013, 47). The Italian situation, in this respect, mirrors the European North-South division whereby countries in the Nordic region and in Central and Western Europe are the pioneers and leaders in the implementation and running of English-taught programmes (Wächter and Maiworm 2014)
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