A Case Study of the Development of Language Education in a Transnational Higher Education Insititution

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Language education and global competencies

Proposal

Part I: Introduction
In recent years, there has been an expansion of transnational education in the higher education sector, the majority of which took place in Asian developing countries, especially China. This article presents a case study focusing on the development of English language teaching program in the transnational education (TNE) program of a Chinese research university. Although both gains and challenges are found in the management and delivery of the courses, this proposal would like to narrow down its research area by focusing on the following questions:
How has the language education policy changed in this Transnational Education Institution (TEI)?
Is the change effective? What are the contributing factors?
What challenges are brought by the change?

Part II: Literature Review
Over the past decades, with the proliferation of TEIs in the worldwide, the importance of research into this less explored area was noticed by many researchers.Both scholars from the sending and host countries of TEIs conducted empirical studies into this field, with the majority coming from the sending country aspect.
Researchers from sending countries were usually teachers from sending universities who were involved in the TEI teaching and management issues. Thus, when investigating transnational higher education, they tended to put their focus on the cooperative teaching mode--how a completely different teaching environment would influence the teachers’ choice of teaching language and method, and how would intensive teaching and cultural differences influence the teaching development and cultural awareness of teachers from the sending universities? Are students satisfied with this kind of teaching mode? (Bambacas, 2008; Seah & Edwards, 2006; Richards& Lee, 2004) In most studies, a sense of great pressure to guarantee the education quality was delivered.
Compared with the transnational education senders, studies conducted by scholars from host countries preferred to look at a different research field. Hot topics for them are usually the change of transnational higher education (in their words, joint degree program) policy from a national or regional scope, the description of current TEI types, and how collaborative teaching might help the educational reform of host universities. From the positive feedback of national education policy and the increasing students in TEIs, it was suggested by these scholars that the opportunity of a potential transnational education market was worth further exploration.(Song, 2010; Knight, 2016; He, 2016)
In a word, the message delivered from both sides suggests that the development of transnational higher education program brings both challenges and opportunities.

Part III. Research Method
With the above discussion taken into consideration, this study intends to conduct an empirical investigation on a seemingly successful TEI from a Chinese research university, by looking at both its challenges and gains in terms of language education.
To gain firsthand information, qualitative data like the changing language education policy written or discussed in its program requirement, staff meeting minutes, and interview with language teachers and students will be collected, as well as quantitative data such as student course evaluation results and exam scores.

Part IV. Findings
The findings of this empirical study will try to answer the research questions:
Q1:How has the language education policy changed in this Transnational Education Institution (TEI)?
The language education policy of this TEI remains to be a collaborative result of sending and host universities. In the beginning phase, the sending university held the dominant status, which resulted in a language education policy that looked like a replicate of the sending school in a different campus. In the second phase, seeing that the teaching results were not satisfying enough, the host university took the leading position, adapting a Chinese way of English language education policy with supporting teaching staff and textbooks all coming from the host country. In the third phase, the language education in this TEI relied on the collaboration between host and sending university with staff from both sides making effort to the delivery of language courses. It is suggested that this collaborative teaching mode would be the most suitable for current situation and students.
Q2: Is the change effective? What are contributing factors?
The gains lie mainly in the adaptation of teaching model and concept. To fulfill students’ need of passing IELTS for a dual degree and adjusting to a full English learning environment, the TNE English program employed an interactive small-size-class teaching mode, an internationalized teaching team and textbooks, the change of which is recognized by both students and teachers.
Q3: What challenges are brought by the change?
The transformation also brings challenges. The first difficulty is curriculum design. The IELTS skills required for the dual degree do not match with students’ academic need of understanding engineering English, thus requiring the curriculum to include both IELTS and EAP training, which challenges both the amount of teaching time and teaching force. The other obstacle is the development of a stable teaching team. Current teaching mode requires teachers to adapt to the British way of teaching environment, while to sustain a stable teaching team, the majority of teachers are Chinese who are used to the traditional way of teaching method. This raises challenges to the recruitment and development of teaching staff.

Part V. Implication
Using an ongoing TEI as the sample, this study will contribute as the firsthand research data to the relevant field, providing useful information for researchers from both sending countries and host countries in different TEIs. Apart from the theoretical contribution, the gains and challenges of this TEI concluded from this investigation would also help its struggling peers to find the correct path towards successful survival in the fiercely competing higher education market.

Author

• Fan Yang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China