English-Medium Instruction in Vietnamese Higher Education: Insights on Student-Centred Pedagogy

Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1981) distinction between the literary genres of epic versus novel and Biglan’s (1973) differentiation between academic disciplines and their paradigms, the book combines theory with classroom observations and interviews with EMI lecturers and students to provide a nuanced interpretation of EMI teaching and learning in different academic disciplines. It highlights how the “novelisation” of EMI courses and its pedagogical practices directly responds to the call for a shift from teacher-centred to student-centred pedagogy, whereby students’ voices and their participation in the teaching process are given primary importance. It also examines two contrasting disciplines, Mathematics and Business, to show how disciplinary differences play out in actual EMI classrooms. Shedding light on the impact of the presence or absence of a disciplinary paradigm, the book advocates for how the research in Vietnam could be applied in analogous educational settings around the globe.

This book is suitable for researchers, postgraduate students, and teacher educators working in applied linguistics, higher education, EMI, and internationalisation of education.