Transnational Students’ Epistemic Participation in English-Medium Instruction Programs

Yixi Qiu and Yongyan Zheng ()
Additional contact information
Yixi Qiu: College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, China
Yongyan Zheng: College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 8, 1-11

Abstract: Past research on English-medium instruction (EMI) has primarily focused on language-related challenges with scant attention paid to how language is entangled with epistemic access and epistemic injustice. Informed by the perspective of “epistemic (in)justice”, this study focused on how a cohort of students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds negotiate a more epistemologically effective and equal access to knowledge negotiation in an EMI international relations master’s program in a Chinese university. Data were drawn from classroom observation, semi-structured interviews, and students’ reflexive journals. Qualitative thematic analysis of the data revealed unequal power relations in students’ epistemic participation and their resulting epistemic silence in classroom discussions. By illustrating how students cope with the epistemic challenges by drawing on individual-cognitive and social-cognitive resources, the findings suggest potential strategies for transnational students to counter the hegemony of English in EMI learning contexts. Implications for decoloniality in EMI education are discussed.

Keywords: English-medium instruction; epistemic (in)justice; transnational students; epistemic challenges; epistemic strategies (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/2071-1050/15/8/6478/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/8/6478/ (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:8:p:6478-:d:1120771

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 ().