Reflections of (Dis)location: What is “Intercultural Communication” in Transnational Higher Education English-Medium Instruction?

Abstract

Debates around the impact of English-medium instruction (EMI) as part of transnational higher education (TNHE) typically focus on macro-level impacts on host country languages, cultures, and economies. Adopting the methodology of institutional ethnographies, this reflective study narrates how I came to find problematic such totalizing narratives of TNHE. The object of my reflections is an undergraduate English elective course, Communicating in the Global Marketplace, first taught on the main campus in Pittsburgh, USA, of a TNHE institution, which I then participated in “(dis)locating” (Edwards and Usher, 1997) to a branch campus in Qatar. The study illustrates how emic perspectives on course design and delivery open up TNHE as a process of meaning-making. Analysis of course artefacts (course descriptions, reading lists, and assignments) from offerings on both campuses point to opportunities educators in the process of TNHE have to question language ideologies in EMI, consider “imagined communities” (Norton and Pavlenko, 2019) when marketing courses for prospective students, and frame both transnational “encounters” (Vora, 2014) and our understanding of what is “intercultural” in transnational EMI.

Embracing Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Access in EMI-TNHE: Towards a Social Justice-Centered Reframing of English Language Teaching

“…Such neglect is also raised in Gajasinghe’s review (2021) of Jenkins and Mauranen’s (2019) edited volume, Linguistic Diversity on the EMI Campus: Insider Accounts of the Use of English and Other Languages in Universities Within Asia, Australasia, and Europe . In a similar vein, Reynolds (2021a) reminds us that: (a) transplanting the curriculum of an undergraduate English elective course, “Communicating in the Global Marketplace,” wholesale from the parent Carnegie Mellon institution in Pittsburgh; and (b) implementing it at its branch campus in Doha, Qatar, is not ideal—a one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach, he warns us, erases and overlooks the rich sociolinguistic lived realities of the student body on its campus: 40% Qatari; 40% transnational migrants who were born and reside in Qatar; and 20% transnational education migrants who come to Qatar to study at Carnegie Mellon.…”

“…However, we cannot revert to a “business-as-usual” mantra with respect to EMI-TNHE. The transnational interconnectivity between institutions in the higher education sector alluded to in the quote above and the articles in this special issue all point to the growing need to develop global citizens (De Costa, forthcoming; Fang and Baker, 2018) with a high degree of intercultural awareness (Reynolds, 2021a). For this lofty aspiration to materialize, EMI-TNHE needs to solidify its commitment to social justice by ensuring that diversity, inclusion, equity and access are preserved and enhanced on university campuses.…”

“…As Harrison and Chen (2021) rightly note, it is ironic that the Chinese students had to deploy the very interactional competence that their EAP classroom was expected to develop in order to negotiate their teacher’s unbending language policy. Perhaps even more disturbing, as both Harrison and Chen (2021), and Reynolds (2021a) alert us to, is how we appear to dismiss the valuable linguistic and cultural resources (Gallagher and Haan, 2018) that students bring to the EMI-TNHE classroom.…”

“…Drawing on Altbach (2007), Yeo and Newton (2021), for example, point out that EMI-TNHE can, at times, invite comparison to the “McDonaldization” of education. Importantly, these neoliberal impulses, which are also addressed in several other pieces (Harrison and Chen, 2021; McKinley et al, 2021; Reynolds, 2021a; Yeo and Newton, 2021) should not be overlooked.…”

“…Specifically, we ask you, the reader, to imagine how issues related to diversity, inclusion, equity and access (DIEA) can be addressed in a reconfigured EMI-TNHE. This reconfiguration in a post-pandemic era takes center stage in our special issue, which comprises four feature articles (Harrison and Chen, 2021; McKinley et al, 2021; Reynolds, 2021a), an interview with Ernesto Macaro (Sahan, 2021), two book reviews (Gajasinghe, 2021; Randez, 2021), a review of a teaching software (Winans, 2021), and two commentaries (Dewey, 2021; Wee, 2021).…”