Empowering minds: The role of disciplinary literacies in English-medium internationalised universities
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: As higher education increasingly embraces internationalisation, the surge in demand for English as the medium of education (EME) poses significant challenges for stakeholders. This keynote places disciplinary literacies (DLs), defined as the ability to appropriately participate in the communicative practices of a discipline (Airey, 2011), centre stage as a crucial construct for effective teaching and learning within specific subjects. Despite their critical role in facilitating comprehension and production of discipline-specific practices and texts, their integration into EME settings often remains overlooked, raising concerns about students’ mastery of disciplinary content. Against this backdrop, with the help of the ROAD-MAPPING framework (Dafouz & Smit, 2020) as a conceptual and analytical tool, and drawing on data from the SHIFT research project, I will illustrate how ROAD-MAPPING can be used to examine comprehensively and in a socially situated way the role of DLs in students’ learning experiences. The paper advocates for the importance of supporting students (and lecturers) in the development of DLs in EME underscoring the pivotal role ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes) professionals play in facilitating effective EME implementation.
Source: Language Teaching
Author: Emma Dafouz
Institution: Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4408041151