Challenges to Internationalisation of University Programmes: A Systematic Thematic Synthesis of Qualitative Research on Learner-Centred English Medium Instruction (EMI) Pedagogy

Murod Ismailov,Julie Dearden,Thomas K F Chiu,Yukiko Yamamoto,Nigora Djalilova

doi:10.3390/su132212642

Abstract

As many universities in non-Anglophone countries have committed to internationalising their academic programmes, more content courses in Arts and Sciences are being taught in English. When content courses are taught in English in a country where English is not the first language, this is called English Medium Instruction (EMI). Using specific country cases, previous studies have confirmed that an EMI course can pose many challenges to the learning of course content by students. To date, there have been few attempts to examine these challenges through a large-scale qualitative prism, which would be useful for gaining new insights in order to inform policy as well as classroom interventions. In this systematic thematic synthesis we have aimed to identify the obstacles to implementing learner-centred pedagogy in EMI tertiary programmes, focusing on student perspectives. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) and Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies (COREQ) were used to appraise and synthesise 40 empirical articles. The articles included 1769 participants in 20 non-Anglophone countries and jurisdictions. The participants were both local and international non-native English-speaking students enrolled in EMI courses. The synthesis yielded 46 descriptive themes stratified into six analytical domains. The suggested domains are meta/linguistic, instructional, meta/cognitive, socio-cultural, affective, and institutional obstacles. They suggest that students in different regions faced quite similar challenges in their EMI courses. The challenges consist of inadequate use of English by students and lecturers, and a lack of student-centred pedagogy, particularly in teacher–student and student–student interactions. The findings of most learner-centred EMI studies revealed that the main challenges came from English comprehension (the first three suggested domains); fewer studies included factors related to the learning environment (the last three domains). This review can inform university administrators, teaching staff and researchers engaged in internationalising higher education and aid in designing appropriate EMI programmes that offer better learner-centred educational experiences.

Highlights

This article is an open access articleA recent global survey of 907 higher education (HE) institutions from 126 countries has revealed that internationalisation is becoming more common around the world [1], with more universities, especially in non-English speaking countries, prioritising the future sustainability of tertiary programmes offered in English [2]
The six main analytical domains related to the issues and obstacles faced by students during their content learning with English Medium Instruction (EMI) were identified
This study found that despite growing awareness in recent years among EMI scholEMI, we found that the content of quotations from the different studies were often similar, ars about the needs and anxieties of students attending EMI courses in HE, in most of the suggesting that despite varying geographic and institutional contexts [5,51] students often reviewed contexts English Medium Instruction continues to be associated with a teachervoiced similar experiences and concerns [6,12,64,84,86,87]

Summary

Introduction

This article is an open access articleA recent global survey of 907 higher education (HE) institutions from 126 countries has revealed that internationalisation is becoming more common around the world [1], with more universities, especially in non-English speaking countries, prioritising the future sustainability of tertiary programmes offered in English [2]. A few studies have explored the key outcomes of EMI for students, such as second language (L2) improvement and content learning [9,10,11,12,14] These studies have contributed to the growing evidence that EMI may pose significant challenges to students whose first language is not English [13,15]. Despite such important efforts to assess and highlight the role of L2 in content learning (with some studies pointing to the contextspecific nature of implementation [16,17]), from the growing body of learner-focused literature the impression may be given that success in EMI is mainly about students’

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