Prof-teaching: an English-medium instruction professional development program with a digital, linguistic and pedagogical approach

Abstract

The increase of English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education has encouraged institutions to provide their academic staff with professional development courses. In this paper, we present the case study of Prof-teaching, a comprehensive EMI teacher training program at a Spanish university with a digital, linguistic and pedagogical approach. The main objective is to determine if the program meets the needs of the institution's current and prospective EMI lecturers. For this purpose, the university context, the key factors that promoted the program, and the objectives and components of its three modules are described. Then, a survey is conducted to gather demographic data and information about Prof-teaching participants' experience, motivation, needs and challenges in relation to EMI. Among the most interesting results was that experienced EMI lecturers claimed that pedagogical training was more important than developing linguistic competence, whereas inexperienced teachers were more concerned with their level of English. In general, the findings of the survey and final course evaluation questionnaires provide evidence of the benefits of the Prof-teaching EMI professional development program. The paper highlights the importance of collaborative efforts among university units to implement EMI teacher training initiatives, as well as conducting periodic needs analysis and quality evaluations. In addition, it is recommended that programs provide lecturers with support technology and that they include mentoring schemes with previously trained EMI content lecturers who already have experience in teaching their subjects in English.

Designing and Implementing a Professional Programme for ICLHE Teachers: Beyond Linguistic and Communicative Competence

“…These remarks seem to be in line with previous work on EMI teacher training programmes and their evaluation in different cultural contexts (e.g. Guarda & Helm, 2011;Morell et al, 2020). Guarda and Helm (2011) reported findings in an Italian context in which a participant stated that "'I have discovered new teaching pathways', which seems to be in line with those reported above by colleagues at our institution.…”

“…There is still a lot of work ahead in developing ICLHE's lecturers support and training at our institution. It is our intention to develop a community of practice that meets and shares experiences in line with suggestions provided by Fortanet-Gómez (2020) and Morell et al (2020), among others. We believe that creating trainees' digital production portfolios can also be an interesting learning experience for ICLHE lecturers who can then apply such resources and principles in their own English-medium teaching context.…”

Japanese Professors’ Experiences in Teaching Sport for Development in Online English-Medium Courses

“…In addition, professional development should focus on digital tools for faculty who teach in an EMP. Morell et al (2022) suggest that professors should be trained to gain knowledge and skills (in relation to examples of machine translation, style guidelines, phrase-banks, spelling and grammar check) of information technology resources to produce better quality materials and increase their self-confidence when they prepare and teach lessons in online platforms. A review by Querol-Julián and Crawford Camiciottoli (2019) suggests that the role of technology and online learning in EMPs will only increase in the future, so it is important that EMP instructors are provided the necessary professional development in these technologies.…”

The professionalization of English medium instruction lecturer: content and certification

“…It is defined as being about the ability to make various modalities work together to produce comprehensible meaning (Costa and Mair, 2022). The study of Morell et al (2022a) found that the coordination of multiple modalities in addition to language can provide additional support for students to comprehend not only the content but also the language of instruction. Instructors who coordinated spoken and written language, graphic elements, gestures, and body language were more successful in constructing their concepts and making the classroom more cohesive (Morell et al, 2022b).…”