Medium of instruction policies and language practices, ideologies and institutional divides: voices of teachers and students in a private university in Bangladesh

Abstract

The increasing use of English as a medium of instruction (MOI) in polities across the world has drawn attention of language policy and planning scholars and researchers. Increasingly, research on medium on instruction policy and practice focuses on how macro-level policies are translated into action by “actors” including teachers and students in the micro context. However, there has been limited research on teachers’ and students’ language practices and ideologies that potentially reproduce divisive medium of instruction policies for different sectors of education. This article reports a case study involving teachers and students in a private university in Bangladesh to demonstrate how national MOI policies provide the context to actors in the micro context to construct identities of languages and institutions by means of “othering”. Higher education in Bangladesh is divided between public and private sectors and the divide is marked by MOI—English and Bangla in the former and English only in the latter. Based on our analysis of interview data, we argue that through their language practices and beliefs students and teachers constructed hierarchies of languages and institutions following the rules of self- and other-representation and thereby perpetuated the macro-level divide. We suggest implications of the macro-level MOI policies and micro-level practices for students’ content knowledge and English proficiency development in a globalizing world where English is widely believed to hold immense potential for individuals and societies because of its role in human capital development.