1st Edition
Critical Perspectives on Teaching in the Multilingual University
This book critically and reflectively engages with the ‘Language Problem’ in the contemporary multilingual university. It paints a complex picture of the lived multilingual realities of teachers and students in universities across geographies such as Pakistan, Timor-Leste, South Korea, Bangladesh, Somaliland, Afghanistan, Fiji, Colombia, and the UK (including Northern Ireland) and focuses on three overall analytic themes: language and colonial epistemologies, language policies and practices, and language and research.
Globalisation, global knowledge economy, and neoliberal governance has significantly impacted higher education by elevating colonial languages, particularly English, to a global academic lingua franca. Universities now collaborate and compete globally, with English emerging as the dominant language for education and research. The imposition, or uncritical adoption, of English poses profound political, cultural, and epistemic challenges for those who have to use the language in everyday university administration, research, and teaching and also intertwines with issues of race, gender, coloniality, and social class. This volume addresses this as higher education’s multifaceted Language Problem which requires interdisciplinary collaboration and critical debate, and ultimately aims towards understanding multilingualism in higher education across both the Global North and South.
The contributions to this book continue to remind us of the coloniality of language and of the linguistic stratification that governs epistemological structures and power relations in the academy. It will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and practitioners of higher education, applied linguistics, education policy and politics, and sociology of education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Teaching in Higher Education.
Introduction: Critical perspectives on teaching in the multilingual university
Ibrar Bhatt, Khawla Badwan and Mbulungeni Madiba
1. Whither epistemic (in)justice? English medium instruction in conflict-affected contexts
Kevin Kester and Sin-Yi Chang
2. Epistemic outcomes of English medium instruction in a South Korean higher education institution
Dylan G. Williams and Juup Stelma
3. Indigenous students’ agency vis-à-vis the practices of recognition and invisibilization in a multilingual university
José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia and Norbella Miranda
4. Overt and symbolic linguistic violence: plantation ideology and language reclamation in Northern Ireland
Alison MacKenzie, Mel Engman and Orla McGurk
5. Beyond coloniality and monolingualism: decolonial reflections on languages education / Mas allá de la colonialidad y el monolingüismo: reflexiones decoloniales sobre la enseñanza de lenguas
Laura Gurney and Eugenia Demuro
6. Linguistic ecology of Bangladeshi higher education: A translanguaging perspective
Abu Saleh Mohammad Rafi and Anne-Marie Morgan
7. Celebratory or guilty multilingualism? English medium instruction challenges, pedagogical choices, and teacher agency in Pakistan
Syed Abdul Manan, Liaquat Ali Channa and Sham Haidar
8. The scramble for EMI: lessons from postcolonial ‘old EMI’ universities
Fiona Willans
9. Conceptualising multilingualism in higher education in Timor-Leste: the case of petroleum studies
Trent Newman
10. Contortion, loss and moments for joy: insights into writing groups for international doctoral students
Fawzia Haeri Mazanderani, Emily Danvers, Tamsin Hinton-Smith and Rebecca Webb
11. Opening up spaces for researching multilingually in higher education
Nahed Arafat and Jane Woodin
Biography
Ibrar Bhatt is Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Education & Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK). His research interests encompass literacy studies, higher education, and digitalisation. His prior work includes A Semiotics of Muslimness in China (sole-authored), The Epistemology of Deceit (co-edited), Academics Writing: The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation (co-authored); Assignments as Controversies: Digital Literacy & Writing in Classroom Practice (sole-authored), as well as many published research articles on similar subjects. He is founder and convener of the Multilingual University Network of the Society for Research into Higher Education, Executive Editor for the journal Teaching in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives, and on the Editorial Board for the journal Postdigital Science & Education.
Khawla Badwan is Reader in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK. Her research expertise includes language education, language and social justice, intercultural communication, literacy debates and reimagining sustainability discourses in education. She is the author of ‘Language in a Globalised World: Social Justice Perspectives on Mobility and Contact’ (2021).
Mbulungeni Madiba is Dean of the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
