This seminar took place at the Institute of Education, University of London, 4 July 2014 (UCL Institute of Education from 2 December 2014).
Introduction
The Languages in Education Research Centre hosted a one-day seminar on multilingualism in higher education (HE) in English-dominant (ED) and English-medium instructional (EMI) contexts at the Institute of Education. The seminar was coordinated by Siân Preece, Ana Souza and Lin Pan. Forty participants attended the seminar, including eight doctoral students and five international scholars from universities in Canada, Hawai'i and Spain. The overall aim of the seminar was to explore the phenomenon of ‘the multilingual university’ by considering emerging streams of research on bi/multilingualism in the sector. Specific objectives were to:
• bring together researchers, scholars, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in bi/multilingualism and linguistic diversity in the context of HE in ED settings and in EMI contexts in the non-Anglophone world;
• share knowledge about bi/multilingualism and linguistic diversity in the HE sector in the Anglophone world and in EMI university settings elsewhere and to develop the idea of the multilingual university in these settings;
• consider how research on bi/multilingualism can inform policy and practice in HE in ED settings and in EMI contexts and to develop a research agenda that impacts on the public good; and
• launch a research network into bi/multilingualism and linguistic diversity in HE in ED and EMI contexts.
Four speakers presented research into bi/multilingualism in HE under two broad themes: (1) language and identity case studies in UK HE and (2) the medium of instruction in ED and non-ED settings. The papers in each theme were followed by break-out groups in which the participants discussed the key issues that had emerged from the presentations; doctoral students reported on the break-out group discussions in two plenary sessions. The day concluded with a discussant and a final plenary in which a number of emerging issues were identified.
Papers and discussion
The first set of papers was related to the theme of language and identity case studies in UK HE. Li Wei (Birkbeck College) examined transnational identities among Chinese university students in the UK. His paper examined how a group of multilingual male graduates from varied Chinese backgrounds (including international students from mainland China and second generation British Chinese students) formed a social network that drew on their shared linguistic repertoires to negotiate transnational identities and develop understanding of subject knowledge in the context of a university in the UK (Wei & Zhu Hua Reference Wei and Hua2013). Li Wei focused on how social identities and learning beyond the classroom were accomplished using translanguaging (for discussion of translanguaging see Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2013; Garcia & Wei Reference Garcia and Wei2014). He concluded that the translanguaging practices of the participants for study had been a rich resource for facilitating the development of confidence and pride in being multilingual and constructing a transnational identity.
Siân Preece (Institute of Education) examined the disjuncture between ascribed and inhabited identities of a group of linguistic minority undergraduate students who had entered university from widening participation backgrounds. Her paper focused on the intersection of language and social class (Block Reference Block2014) and examined the ways in which the bi-dialectal and multilingual capital of working class linguistic minority students (consisting of 1st, 1.5 and 2nd generation migrants in the UK) was in danger of being erased in the context of UK HE as the students grappled with discourses of ‘upward mobility’, and academic language and literacy practices that they viewed as ‘posh’ (Preece Reference Preece2009, Reference Preece2010) and ‘other’ to their working class habitus. In contrast to Li Wei's paper, Preece illustrated how her participants reproduced a view of their linguistic diversity as a deficiency to be fixed, rather than a resource to be used in educational and other mainstream British institutional settings.
The second set of papers addressed the issue of the medium of instruction in HE in ED and non-ED settings. Joanna McPake (Strathclyde University) addressed the role that HE in ED settings can play in language revitalisation initiatives, focusing on the revitalisation of Gaelic in Scotland. Her paper examined how the Scottish HE sector was responding to the Bòrd na Gaìdhlig's (the national body charged with promoting Gaelic) requirement that publicly funded institutions produce a five-year Gaelic development plan. Besides initiatives to raise the visibility of Gaelic in the university environment through, for example, bilingual signage and webpages in Gaelic, McPake's paper illustrated the challenges that the sector is encountering in Gaelic teacher education (McPake et al. Reference McPake, McLeod, O'Hanlon, Fassetta and Wilson2013), not least because Gaelic is spoken only by a very small percentage of the population in Scotland. These difficulties included insufficient numbers of fluent Gaelic speakers qualified to teach at HE level, the lack of subject texts published in Gaelic in the various disciplines, and the potential impact of the cultural differences between Gaelic and English-encoded world views on the curriculum.
David Block (ICREA,Footnote 1 Universitat de Lleida, Spain) examined the role identity of bilingual subject lecturers required to use English as a third language on EMI programmes (Cots Reference Cots, Doiz, Lasagabaster and Sierra2013; Doiz, Lasagabaster & Sierra Reference Doiz, Lasagabaster, Sierra, Doiz, Lasagabaster and Sierra2013) as a result of the internationalisation policy of bilingual universities in Spain. Block pointed out how this situation has arisen, at least in part, by the neoliberal forces (Block, Gray & Holborrow Reference Block, Gray and Holborrow2012) that have forced Spanish universities to compete against those in the ED world for international students. As the subject lecturers had limited English, the university supplied English language co-teachers. Block explored the impact of tandem teaching on the subject lecturers’ role identity, highlighting a number of problems. These included the erosion of subject lecturer autonomy and associated feelings of role ‘diminishment’, the difficulties for the subject lecturer in ascertaining whether the English language co-teacher (who was not a subject specialist) had conveyed the subject matter precisely to the students, and the potential for the English language co-teacher to disrupt the subject lecturer's aims and intentions by leading the class off topic and correcting the subject lecturer's English in front of the class. Block concluded by urging critique of the spread of EMI in HE in the non-Anglophone world.
Conclusion
Common themes running through the papers were that HE institutions in ED and EMI settings were sites of multilingualism, that the dominant approach to linguistic diversity in these settings to date was to treat linguistic diversity as a problem rather than a resource, that HE had a role to play in language maintenance and the fostering of bi/multilingualism, and that the spread of EMI in the HE sector in the non-Anglophone world was disrupting the local linguistic ecology and social relations in universities and could potentially diminish the quality of teaching and subject lecturer status. A wide range of interesting questions and issues emerged from the participants in response to the papers. These were summed up by Angela Creese (Birmingham University) in her role as discussant as follows:
• How can ‘the multilingual university’ be conceptualised in ED and EMI settings? Would such a conceptualisation need to be multi-layered (e.g. bi/multilingual staff–student population, visibility of bilingualism in institutional documents, webpages etc., availability of bi/multilingual programmes of study and/or programmes combined with foreign language studies, impact on curriculum design and pedagogy). Does the conceptualisation of ‘the multilingual university’ need to differentiate between universities in ED settings and those that offer EMI in the non-Anglophone world?
• Linguistic diversity is a resource that is under-valued and under-utilised in HE in both ED and EMI settings (Phan Le Ha 2013). Generally, the attitude has been one of viewing linguistic diversity as a problem to be fixed. How can we persuade the sector in ED and EMI settings to view bi/multilingualism as an asset? What can be learned from studies of bi/multilingualism in compulsory education and complementary schooling (Leung & Creese Reference Leung and Creese2010; Creese & Blackledge Reference Creese and Blackledge2011)? What could be learned from investigating bi/multilingual research teams in HE in ED and EMI settings?
• Bi/multilingual students form a heterogeneous group that is characterised by asymmetrical social relations both within the context of higher education and in society more widely. This leads to questions about the bi/multilingual population in higher education such as whose linguistic resources are valued in HE and whose are not. How are bi/multilingual students ascribed language identities by their institutions and how do these ascribed identities intersect with other identity ascriptions such as social class, gender and race? How do code switching and translanguaging practices manifest themselves in HE in ED and EMI settings and how do these language practices create affordances and constraints for different groups of bi/multilingual students and staff?
• There is clearly a role for HE to play in language revitalisation, particularly in promoting bilingual education in Scotland. However, a number of questions arise from this project. What is the role of HE in Scotland (and other ED settings) more broadly in the maintenance and revitalisation of the languages in their milieu, particularly the community languages of settled migrant communities? (McPake & Sachdev Reference McPake and Sachdev2010). What is the relationship between language revitalization projects in HE in ED settings, such as the Gaelic initiative in Scotland, and national political agendas?
• The spread of EMI in HE in the non-Anglophone world has generally been a response to internationalisation and a way in which universities in non-ED settings have attempted to compete for international students with universities in ED settings (Phan Le Ha 2013). In some EMI cases, English is being added to an already bilingual setting (as is the case in Spanish–Catalan universities). However, English may become a threat rather than an opportunity in these contexts when EMI is imposed by HE institutions without adequately addressing the professional development needs of subject lecturers (and English language co-teachers) and without considering how to support bilingual instructional strategies. Various questions were raised. How does the requirement to operate in English create affordances and constraints for bi/multilingual students in non-Anglophone settings (e.g. Catalan–Spanish) to participate in classroom proceedings and to acquire sophisticated comprehension of a discipline's subject matter? How is the role identity of the already bi/multilingual subject lecturer affected by the requirement to teach through the medium of English? In cases of tandem teaching, what is the nature of the relationship between the English language support teacher and the subject lecturer?
The theme for the seminar and the questions raised will be further pursued through the maintenance of the research network established through this seminar, an ESRC- (Economic and Social Research Council) funded seminar series on the same topic, the development of ‘The Multilingual University’ website and the publication of an edited volume and a special issue of a journal in due course.
