scholarly journals English as a medium of instruction and internationalization at Danish universities: Status, perspectives, and implications for higher education executives

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Klarissa Lueg

This paper discusses possible policies to handle English as a medium of instruction for higher education (HE) in Denmark. It summarizes the de-facto status of the institutionalization of English as a lingua franca and EMI in Europe and relates the findings to the status quo of the academic and political discussion about EMI in Denmark. This discussion is classified into three typical approaches: the progressive, the conservative, and the radical conservative. The distinction is supplemented with the results of the author’s own recent study on EMI and the introduction of a fourth perspective: the ‘cautiously progressive perspective’. This perspective supports further introduction of EMI, on condition that careful attention must be given to the way EMI is implemented. Possible lines of reactions, implications, and recommendations are introduced. These are relevant for university teachers that wish to encourage their students to participate in EMI classes and for university management and administration in order to provide the necessary conditions for a reasonable EMI use. They could further provide value for potential employers that support EMI education, especially in the field of communication.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Cierpich-Kozieł ◽  
Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld

In Poland, Englishization is subsumed under the concept of internationalization, which is considered a nationwide tendency of the development of the higher education sector. It is highly recommended to use English as a lingua franca of research and scientific communication, and it is common to implement programmes using English as a medium of instruction (EMI). Therefore, one of the key aspects discussed in this paper concerns the equalization of the status of Polish and English as languages of instruction. Other ‘tangible’ exponents of this English-Polish ‘alliance’ are to be seen in the area of job competition procedures, which have to be stated in both Polish and English. Emphasis is also placed on the development of English versions of university websites.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Jackson

A new kind of gender equality ideology is rising in popularity in Western societies. While emphasising gender equality for the next generation, this new ideology sees feminism in a pragmatic and simplistic way, as nonthreatening to the status quo, in politics, popular culture, and economy. In the economic sphere, Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” has become well known for aiming to guide women to succeed alongside men in the workplace by changing their behaviours and attitudes. Its recommendations for women have impacted perspectives in the non- rofit and start-up worlds, arts, and more. However, there are some limitations to the kind of feminist thinking exemplified by Lean In. This article critically examines Lean In as a discourse or ideology in relation to higher education within and outside Western societies. I argue first that such ideology employs a deficiency model of gender equality that makes women accountable for sexism by focusing on internal rather than external change. Second, I argue that such discourses essentialize gender. Third, I argue that it is not easy to translate the advice given to women across international contexts, as Lean In reflects cultural conceptions of the workplace.


Author(s):  
Kazuko Yokoyama ◽  
Sarah Louisa Birchley

This research is based on an extended study of Japanese self-initiated expatriate entrepreneurs (SIEEs) in Asia. Since 2015 the authors have explored various factors that influence SIEEs when setting up enterprises overseas, including the ability to take initiative; support and encouragement from family, a well-defined career anchor and exposure to overseas in the exploration stage of one’s career. An emerging trend is the desire to engage in social development activities, which has seen increasing numbers of Japanese leave well-paid companies at home to work in NGOs in developing countries. An extension of this can be seen in Japanese who choose to become self-initiated expatriate social entrepreneurs. This article focuses specifically on cases collected in Cambodia and attempts to explain how and why Japanese decide to become self-initiated expatriate social entrepreneurs in Cambodia using the concept of mindsets; entrepreneurial, social, sustainable and global. Initial research shows that some of these individuals exemplify the definition of sustainable entrepreneurship as they are creative and question the status quo in order to seek new opportunities for societal improvement ( Bornstein, 2007 ) and have multiple mindsets behind their actions. This research paper shares the context, characteristics, and outcomes of Japanese self-initiated expatriate social entrepreneurs in Cambodia and concludes by suggesting how knowledge of these SIEEs can be used in higher education contexts in Japan to improve entrepreneurship education.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 845-880
Author(s):  
Kieran O'Halloran

Abstract I model a critical posthumanist pedagogy that uses text analysis software and is aimed at higher education students. A key purpose of the pedagogy is to help students enhance empathetic, critical and independent thinking. For their project assignment, the student chooses an unfamiliar campaign seeking to eliminate suffering and extend rights. They gather all texts from the campaign website into a corpus, which thus represents the campaign writ large. Then they use appropriate software to ascertain, efficiently and rigorously, common campaign concerns across this corpus. This puts students in a position to discern any significant concerns in the campaign corpus that are not addressed in text(s) supporting the status quo which the campaign opposes. Should significant omissions be found, students critically evaluate the status quo text(s) from the campaign’s perspective. Since this perspective derives from the student identifying (at least temporarily) with software generated data, it is a posthuman subjectivity. Engaging digitally and empathetically with a campaign’s data at scale for creation of a posthuman subjectivity can broaden awareness of disadvantage, discrimination, and suffering as well as expand horizons. Moreover, at the end of the assignment, the student is expected to formulate their own position vis-à-vis the previously unfamiliar campaign. Conditions have been created then for the student to enhance independent thinking too.


2020 ◽  
Vol 113 (10) ◽  
pp. e51-e57
Author(s):  
Eric Milou

When so many students fail higher education mathematics courses every year and many more students pass courses that do not prepare them for their future, we need innovative approaches to fixing this significant dilemma.


1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
K. Edward Renner ◽  
Ronald J. Skibbens

Similar to the 1960s, higher education is once again in a period of rapid social chance in which new demands and expectations are being made on colleges and universities. This time, however, new money is not available for the transition to be achieved though additional growth. In this paper, the methodology of Position Description Analysis is presented using Dalhousie University as a case study. Position Description Analysis is a tool for assessing the discrepancy between the status quo and the specializations needed for colleges and universities to meet the new demands and expectations which are being made of them. It is concluded that there is a need for dramatic realignement of fields of specialization in order to shift from the emphases of the past to those of the future. However, because the faculty higher in the 1960s are now tenure, but no due to retire until after the year 2000, higher education must find internal strategies for chance or face externally imposed solution to their current lack of flexibility.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-72
Author(s):  
Nashwa Nashaat-Sobhy ◽  
Davinia Sánchez-Garcia

In this chapter we analyzed lecturers’ attitudes towards using English in European Higher Education settings. Twenty-eight university teachers were brought together from thirteen universities across six European countries for an online training for teachers in English Medium Instruction (EMI) settings. The lecturers’ written exchanges about English as an academic Lingua Franca (ELF) in one of the training modules were the target of our study. These exchanges (110 posts) were coded and analyzed using Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory, which is a model of evaluation within the general theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics. In this framework, affect, judgement and appreciation are regarded as regions (types) of feelings in interpersonal language that reflect attitude (positive or negative). The results showed that teachers’ exchanges about ELF are interwoven with other types of English, in which they discussed different stakeholders and aspects of English, towards which their attitudes vary, which points to the multidimensionality of attitudes towards EMI. The results also show that appreciation and judgment regions were used more than affect in their language when discussing the use of English in Higher Education (HE).


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