Pedagogy in Teaching through English Medium Instruction—Academics’ Cases in a Chinese University

Wanting Sun, Jinghe Han (), Christina Curry and Kay Carroll
Additional contact information
Wanting Sun: School of Education, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia
Jinghe Han: School of Education, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia
Christina Curry: School of Education, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia
Kay Carroll: School of Education, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 14, 1-16

Abstract: As a result of two decades of development, the trajectory of English medium instruction (EMI) research has moved from the identification of problems towards a focus on pedagogy. In response to studies in the literature claiming that the dominant approach in EMI pedagogy is the direct transmission of knowledge, and calls for research investigating classroom discourse in EMI teaching, this study explores the pedagogical features enacted by bilingual EMI academics in a Chinese university’s EMI program. The participants were four academics who were teaching a subject in parallel across both EMI and CMI student cohorts. The research employs Paulo Freire’s framework of dialogic teaching as the theoretical lens and focused on investigating moments in which the EMI lecturers ‘dialogued’, engaged, and/or interacted with students in their EMI classes. This research found that, in spite of their varied disciplines, the lecturers mostly implemented expository teaching in their EMI and CMI classes in general. The efforts of individual academics in relation to intellectual equality, the wellbeing of students, and the encouragement of critical thinking through dialogue and interaction were identified. However, due to the academics positioning themselves as experts in subject knowledge, the tendency in their teaching was characterized as monologic rather than dialogic. This research contests a major theme in the literature, which is that the academics’ English (EMI teaching), in reference to their first language (L1), is not the major contributor to their pedagogical approach.

Keywords: dialogic pedagogy; English medium instruction; Chinese medium instruction; intellectual equality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/14/10942/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/14/10942/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:14:p:10942-:d:1192578

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().