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Article published In: Journal of English-Medium Instruction
Vol. 4:2 (2025) ► pp.145–165

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Redefining faculty preparedness in English-medium instruction

Impact from an innovative professional development initiative in Taiwan

 | The Pennsylvania State University
ORCiD logo with link | The Pennsylvania State University
 | National Taipei University of Technology
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 8 April 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jemi.24006.dor
Abstract
Responding to calls for greater attention to the structure, substance, and scope of English-medium instruction (EMI) faculty professional preparation programs and their impact on teacher instructional practices, this paper explores the design, implementation, and impact of a professional development initiative at a technical university in Taiwan. Based on needs analysis findings and grounded in Vygotskian sociocultural theory, the program was designed and implemented to support faculty development through engendering new forms of teacher reasoning and instructional action. Exemplifying this process of change, an in-depth case study of a faculty-participant’s learning shows how they developed new ways of reasoning about their instructional decisions and teaching their disciplinary content. Analysis of instructional coaching sessions, faculty-produced teaching artifacts, and classroom observations demonstrates how the faculty-participant translated individualized, concept-based instructional support into innovations in their course design and in-class engagement with students. The results foreground the value of conceptualizing EMI faculty development as an individualized, longitudinal process in which responsive instructional support is a catalyst for reasoned, pedagogically sound innovations. More generally, this study offers an alternative definition of EMI professional support that moves beyond preparedness and locates development-the process of creating qualitative change in teacher practices and reasoning-at its core.
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Supporting EMI faculty — The preparedness model and its challenges
    • Context of research
    • Certificate design and components
    • Study aims
  • Methods
    • Focal faculty participant
    • Researcher reflexivity
    • Data sources and analysis procedures
  • Results
    • Getting started: Confronting contradiction and imagining innovation
    • Trying out teaching innovations in circuit theory
    • Reasoning and implementing the term project: Generative AI on large-scale circuits
    • Implementing flipped classroom sessions
    • Impacts and outcomes of reasoned teaching innovation: “If I didn’t join this program”
  • Discussion and implications
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (25)
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