Language is an important element in the struggle for social change and decolonization within South African tertiary education. We explored the relationship between indigenous languages and cocurricular involvement to sense of belonging. Data were collected via a survey of 4210 students that included demographics, cocurricular involvement, and…

The COVID-19 pandemic has notably increased the use of distance education, particularly in Türkiye's higher education English courses. Even after the normalisation process, compulsory English courses in Türkiye, the learners of which receive education in English for general purposes, are still being taught via distance education. Such a practice…

Identity serves as a valuable lens through which to investigate, understand and facilitate teacher learning during curriculum reform. Identity learning is the core process of educational change, with teacher emotion at the heart of professional learning processes. In this study, we traced the 1-year journeys of four Chinese EFL teachers during a…

The #RhodesMustFall (RMF) protests at South African universities (2015--2018) were the publicly visible manifestation of deep epistemic problems in the higher education (HE) sector, particularly around questions of whose knowledges are validated and whether these are reflective of students' lived realities. This exploratory research attempted a…

The current research investigates the lexical coverage of reading passages required for achieving the minimal and optimal levels of reading comprehension in a foreign language. More specifically, the aim of the study is to identify the word frequency bands within the reading passages in the English tests of The Higher Education Institutions…

This paper contributes to the growing scholarship on internationalization of higher education, particularly in non-Western contexts. Literature in non-Western contexts highlights tensions around adopting approaches seen as 'global standard' where these reflect inequalities of power and prestige, shaped by coloniality. Drawing on conclusions from a…

While the notion of an anti-racist curriculum is not new, many higher education instructors have not made the transition from a decolonized curriculum to an equally decolonized pedagogy. From a conceptual standpoint, the transition is understood but the actualization of this cyclical process is, at times, not as smoothly executed. Deconstructing…

The globalisation of higher education and the resultant increase in the cultural and linguistic diversity of the student body has cast the spotlight on English language proficiency as never before. How universities best assess applicants' linguistic suitability for their future degree studies, set appropriate proficiency thresholds, and put in…

The use of English to teach content subjects has been a growing trend in many parts of the world. It is labelled in a variety of ways, such as content-based learning, content and language integrated learning, immersion education, theme-based language teaching, and bilingual education, but it is referred to in this paper as English-medium…

In the shift to English-medium instruction (EMI) in European higher education, policy often runs ahead of research and curricular decisions are taken independent of evidence regarding their suitability for achieving broader educational goals, which may range from internationalisation as a general strategy to English language learning as a more…

Drawing upon a collection of curriculum proposals and reflections and informed by a textual analysis approach, this study investigated how 234 university teachers planned to enact and reform their English-medium instruction courses (n = 66) in an English as a foreign language (EFL) university context. Results reveal that the teachers tend to adopt…

In 2015, then-Higher Education Minister Rodolfo Alarcon said in response to many Cubans' inability to communicate in the international language, English fluency would be required by students as a university exit requirement ("Mastering English," 2015).The purpose of this interpretive qualitative study was to understand the experiences of…

The initial response to COVID-19 exposed widespread racism and Sinophobia across the world, which contributed to a rethinking of equality and diversity in Higher Education (HE) and beyond. Within Modern Languages, much attention has been placed on decolonising the curriculum. The death of George Floyd in 2020 further contributed to an increased…

This study evaluated a draft curriculum designed in a preliminary study to help practitioners of EAP (English for Academic Purposes) overcome affective problems in higher education language classes. Participatory evaluation model was used to evaluate the draft curriculum practiced with six EAP practitioners in a SFL (School of Foreign Languages)…

In open and higher education, digital technologies are increasingly used to enable flexible learning pathways and unbundle programs into separate courses. Whereas technologies have been praised for enhancing the flexibility of curricula, the implications of going digital have yet to be fully explored in curriculum studies. This article aims to…