The project specifically addresses the internationalization agenda of the Council of Europe with the underlying rationale to modernize higher education (HE) through design and implementation of innovative transnational practices which will allow for transparency, transferability of academic staff qualifications, and mutual trust. HE internationalization has been implemented through a rapid increase of English-medium instruction (EMI) programs across Europe, which has raised concerns regarding (1) the linguistic competencies of non-native English speaking lecturers and (2) the implications of EMI for the instructional quality, international faculty and student recruitment, as well as local student retention at HE institutions in non-anglophone countries. Consequently, lecturers’ English proficiency is under scrutiny and universities are developing language policies for quality assurance, which are enforced by implementation of internal assessment procedures and EMI training support.
Thus far, assessment procedures such as these have been developed and used only locally, at institutional level. Despite their purpose to address the local needs of lecturers in established positions, these procedures seem to overlook issues related to lecture mobility, i.e. they fail to identify lecturer needs which may be occurring transnationally and could collectively be addressed. Some European universities have expressed interests in using transnational assessment procedures, while local lecturers have expressed the need to use their certification results for job and grant applications outside their institutions.
However, we are unsure about the transferability of EMI language competencies across different European contexts since these contexts have not been examined comparatively in terms of their EMI goals and needs, as well as their language policy perceptions. Moreover, though some existing certification scales are named based on the CEFR (e.g., certification procedures at Aalborg University, University of Southern Denmark, University of Freiburg), none of these current certification assessment scales has undergone standardized alignment procedures with the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), or other more-widely known scales, so results cannot be used transparently beyond the local institution.
Therefore, the project aims to lay the foundations for a common framework for EMI quality assurance and support, on the basis of which we can adapt local language certification and EMI training for transparency in transnational uses. The specific objectives of the proposed project are to (1) identify and differentiate between the transnational and the local EMI administrative and instructional needs of partner universities, (2) align a locally-used assessment scale with the Council of Europe's CEFR, which will allow for standardization of results, (3) compare the characteristics of the language used in teaching across different EMI contexts in HE, and (4) use the results for policy negotiations regarding EMI lecturer requirements and support. The long-term objective of TAEC is to provide the groundwork for an EMI quality assurance framework which could be applicable across European universities beyond the partner universities involved in the project.
For that purpose 18 researchers and 2 administrators from five different universities will participate in 3 teams, each working on activities associated with a specific intellectual output, i.e. EMI framework, linking assessment to CEFR, and EMI Handbook.
Data collection will involve university-wide lecturer, management, and student surveys, followed by interviews with lecturers and management, and EMI classroom observations. A panel of 15-20 judges will be recruited to participate in a three-day standard-setting workshop to align local assessment to the CEFR scale. 20-minute EMI lectures will be video-r