EMI teachers’ agency in the context of international education in China: language choice, identity construction, and cultural negotiation

ABSTRACT

English medium instruction (EMI) has now become a ubiquitous education phenomenon due to the driving force of globalization and the prospective socioeconomic benefits associated with English proficiency. Although expanding rapidly in higher education, EMI in secondary education is a much less researched area. Specifically, EMI teachers’ agency in the implementation of EMI has remained relatively less known. This study, informed by an extended framework on teacher agency, seeks to investigate how such agency has been manifested while the EMI teachers address various tensions and contradictions in the course of implementing EMI. Drawing on qualitative interviews and classroom observations in an international high school in Shenzhen, China, it reveals that the participants have exhibited moderately high levels of agency by constructing themselves as translanguagers who orchestrate different languages and meaning-making resources, jugglers of the roles of content teachers and L2 teachers, as well as duty-bond multicultural educators who negotiate the international curriculum to accommodate local educational and cultural mandates. The study calls for reconceptualizing EMI as a translanguaging space for the teachers to act as culturally responsive agents qua multilingual educators featuring multiple identities.

KEYWORDS:

• English Medium Instruction (EMI)
• language teacher agency
• language choice
• identity construction
• cultural negotiation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tao Xiong

Dr. Tao Xiong is Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. His research areas include bilingual education, discourse analysis, language textbook studies, and language teacher education and professional development.

Ziyu Song

Ziyu Song is a postgraduate student in the School of English Education at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. She researches in English as the Medium of Instruction, bilingual education, and teacher professional development.

An Zhou

An Zhou is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland. His research interests focus on leadership theories, teacher leadership and school improvement, teacher professional learning and development, TESOL education, and education policy.

Xiaojia Huang

Dr. Xiaojia Huang is Associate Professor of Foreign Studies at South China Normal University. He researches in bilingual education, C-E translation, and history of high education in modern China.