English as a Medium of Instruction in European Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities for Europe and the UK

在过去的几十年里，非英语欧洲的高等教育机构在英语教学项目上的增幅超过了1000%(Wächter和MaiWorm，2014)。但为什么各国突然决定将教育系统的语言从学生的母语，无论是法语、荷兰语还是其他语言，改为学生不太熟悉的语言，因为他们清楚地知道，许多学生将很难理解所教的内容，因此可能会减少对学习过程的参与。(Macaro 2018：290)。这个项目旨在通过将语言学和政治学的最新进展结合起来，进一步了解英语作为媒介(EMI)为什么会发生。语言学家通常不参与学术治理，尽管政治科学有关于治理心态的既定文献，可以解释社会和政治世界中的行动和条件如何产生一定的--有时是意想不到的--结果。另一方面，政治学家通常不把语言作为他们的分析对象。通过在语言学和政治学的接口工作，该项目将极大地促进我们对EMI的理解。由于EMI不仅对非英语国家的欧洲，而且对英国都具有深远的经济、教育、专业和社会影响，而且它的增长预计将继续下去，因此找出为什么会发生这种情况的必要性既紧迫又巨大。为了探索EMI和学术治理之间的联系，首席研究员将领导一个由三名博士后研究助理组成的团队。采用政治学的理论和方法框架，该小组将在欧洲三个已知提供不同EMI数量的地区的高等教育机构进行六项深入的案例研究，探索机构和国家高等教育政策和文件，并采访整个大学以及国家和国际层面的决策者。我们还将对欧洲的15所高等教育机构进行跨案例比较，以探索EMI与国家和机构属性之间的联系，如英语水平、人口规模、国际招生战略、欧洲融合倡议等。结合案例和跨案例的方法，我们将使我们能够达成对背景敏感的理解和EMI发生的一般模型，以及它如何与当代学术治理中的优先事项相关联。我们还将探索欧洲各地不同的EMI模式，以便为EMI框架的发展提供信息，该框架将确保EMI的交付不会对教学、学习和更广泛的社会产生不利影响。该项目的结果将是理论和实践的。从理论上讲，该项目将产生一种批判性的理解，即具体治理形式的实施可能会--可能是无意的--导致跨国机构--这里是大学--的语言变化。因为世界各地的高等教育都在进行改革--甚至是百代教育改革(Broucker and De Wit 2015；Macaro et al.2018年)，这些发现具有全球相关性。实际上，该项目将设计出解决EMI问题的创新方案，以造福于欧洲和英国。将制定一个“最佳实践”框架，并在整个欧洲高等教育中推广。这将为英国学术英语行业开辟新的就业和咨询机会铺平道路，该行业在为留学生在英国学习做准备方面拥有成熟的专业知识。这些专业知识可以被重新用于不断扩大的百代市场。由于EMI不仅在欧洲，而且在世界各地都在增长，该项目带来的机会是巨大的、全球性的，远远超出了该项目的生命周期。

In the past few decades, higher education institutions in non-Anglophone Europe have seen a dramatic increase by more than 1,000% in English-taught programmes (Wächter and Maiworm 2014). But why do countries suddenly decide to change the language of their educational system from students' home language, whether French, Dutch or something else, to one that students know less well, 'knowing full well that many students will struggle to understand what is being taught, and might engage less with the learning process as a result?' (Macaro 2018: 290).This project aims to further knowledge on why English as a Medium (EMI) happens by bringing together the state of the art in Linguistics and Political Science. Linguists have typically not engaged with academic governance despite Political Science having an established literature on governmentality that can explain how actions and conditions in the social and political world have certain - sometimes unintended - outcomes. Political scientists, on the other hand, have typically not had language as their object of analysis. By working in the interface of Linguistics and Political Science, the project will significantly advance our understandings of EMI. As EMI has profound economic, educational, professional and societal consequences, not only for non-Anglophone Europe, but for the UK, and its growth is expected to continue, the need for finding out why it happens is both pressing and immense.To explore the link between EMI and academic governance, the Principal Investigator will lead a team of three Post-Doctoral Research Associates. Adopting theoretical and methodological frames from Political Science, the team will conduct six in-depth case studies in higher education institutions in three regions in Europe that are known to differ in the amount of EMI offered, exploring institutional and national higher educational policies and documents and interviewing decision makers across the university and at national and international level. We will also conduct a cross-case comparison of 15 higher education institutions in Europe to explore the links between EMI and national and institutional attributes, such as levels of English proficiency, population size, international recruitment strategies, European convergence initiatives, etc. In combination, the in-case and cross-case approach will enable us to arrive at both a contextually sensitive understanding and a generalisable model of why EMI happens and how it relates to priorities in contemporary academic governance. We will also explore different models of EMI across Europe in order to inform the development of a 'best practice' framework that will ensure that EMI is delivered without adverse effects on teaching, learning and wider society.The outcomes of the project will be both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, the project will generate a critical understanding of how the implementation of specific forms of governance might lead - perhaps unintentionally - to language shift in transnational institutions, here universities. As reforms - and indeed EMI - are happening in higher education across the world (Broucker and De Wit 2015; Macaro et al. 2018), the findings are of global relevance. Practically, the project will devise innovative solutions to EMI to the mutual benefit of Europe and the UK. A 'best practice' framework will be developed and rolled out across European higher education. This will pave the way for opening up new employment and consultancy opportunities for the UK English for Academic Purposes industry, which has a well-established expertise in preparing overseas students for study in the UK. This expertise can be repurposed for an expanding EMI market. As EMI is in growth not just in Europe but across the world, the opportunities opened up by the project are vast and global in scale and extend far beyond the project's lifetime.