AILA Research Network: English as a Medium of Education, Multilingualism and the SDGs: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

AILA Research Network: English as a Medium of Education, Multilingualism and the SDGs: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion 

  1. Convenors: Kyria Finardi, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil (kyria.finardi@gmail.com), Marina Orsini-Jones, Coventry University, UK, (lsx008@coventry.ac.uk), Azirah Hashim, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia (azirahh@um.edu.my)
  2. Goal:  To promote research on Virtual Exchange (VE) and English (and other languages) as a medium of education (EME) that contributes to the development of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular to SDG 4- quality of education, SDG 5 - gender equality and SDG 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions. The ReN also aims at facilitating a North-South dialogue supporting the decolonization of the ELT curricula.
  3. Motivation/inspiration: As its starting point, the ReN drew on AILA’s endorsed principles and guidelinesand on collaborative work of AILA regional associations to better reflect the global linguistic diversity within AILA. Recent sociopolitical events have demonstrated the critical importance for more inclusive, regional/global collaboration and multilingual perspectives in applied linguistics and that education, access to information and academic knowledge are available to all and used to develop EDI and SDGs.
  4. Events: The ReN was created in 2021 and introduced at the 2021 AILA conference symposium 83 and, in 2022, in these AILA affiliates events:

BAAL 2022, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

MAAL 2022, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

In 2021, it had its first symposium (SYMP83), Language Teacher Education, Intercultural Communicative Competence and the Web 4.0: Scaling up with Virtual Exchange.

In 2023, it organised symposium 93, EME – English as a Medium of Education, Multilingualism, VE and the SDGs: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at AILA 2023 with 15 papers and presenters from different continents:

      1. Integrating Service-Learning into Virtual Exchange: Supporting Inclusivity through Intergenerational Dialogue by Carolin Fuchs and Hannah Ferguson
      2. Multilingual perspectives and practices of English medium education students in Spain and China by Jennifer Ament and Mengjia Zhang
      3. Critical Internationalisation at Home through Critical Virtual Exchange by Cristina Biondo Salomão, Gustavo Primo, Mirjam Hauck and Müge Satar
      4. The use of teletandem sessions in the syllabus of a Letters course in Brazil to enhance students' sensitivity to other culturesby Francisco José Quaresma De Figueiredo
      5. ViVEXELT: a UK-Vietnam EDI-inspired project to develop e-competencies During the COVID 19 Pandemic and co-create SDG-inspired lesson plans for teaching speaking onlineby Marina Orsini-Jones, Jenny Wells, and Thuy Bui Thi Ngoc
      6. Applied linguistics and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Equity, diversity and inclusionby Azirah Hashim
      7. Decolonizing English Language Teaching (ELT) through Virtual Exchange (VE)by Carlos Hildeblando and Elisa Prado Có
      8. Pluriecological and synergic visions for applied linguistics: Pedagogical possibilities for language diversity and inclusionby Yecid Ortega
      9. A Digital Shift: The Use of New Technologies for Language (Teacher) Education in Brazilby Gabriel Amorim
      10. Internationalisation of the curriculum, English medium instruction and global competence: higher education students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the impact of a teaching interventionby Sonia Mas-Alcolea and Lidia Gallego-Balsa
      11. Educational Decolonisation and Decolonising Education? Recent developments of Language Policies in selected countries of the SADC-region by Michael Kretzer
      12. Virtual Exchange: an innovative inclusive Third Space for the promotion of global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and culture’s contribution to sustainable developmentby Ana Vivian Fernández Peraza and Yumiko Furumura
      13. Complying with the SDGS by fostering Respect for Linguistic Diversity - Language Resources of Plurilingual Heritage Speakers in a Multilingual Countryby Andrea Wehrli
      14. English as a medium of instruction during the pandemic: Affordances and challenges for professors in a global South contextby Eduardo Diniz De Figueiredo and  Fabia Carla Rossoni
      15. English Language Education Policy in Bangladesh-Policy, Ideology and Inequalityby Tania Hossain

For AILA 2024, the ReN is organizing its 2nd symposium - Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Sustainability: EME, VE and Multilingualism - with 16 accepted papers from different continents.

  1. Publications

Forthcoming:

A special issue in AILA Review on ‘Decolonial approaches to SDGs and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Applied Linguistics’ (2025) with guest editors, Kyria Rebeca Finardi – Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES), Brazil; Marina Orsini-Jones – Coventry University, UK; and Azirah Hashim, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia.

Other publications:

Fuchs, C. & Orsini-Jones (Eds.) (2022) Virtual Exchange: Language Learning and Teaching in and Age of Complexity: Selected Papers from AILA 2021. Special Issue of IJCALLT International Journal of Computer Assisted Language Learning, IGI, https://www.igi-global.com/journals/open-access/table-of-contents/%20international-journal-computer-assisted-language/41023?v=12&iss=3.

Finardi, K., R. & Diniz de Figueiredo, E.  H, (in press). Epistemologies of the Global South and Critical Applied Linguistics from a Latin American Perspective. In C. A. Chapelle, P. L. dos Santos & A. M. Y. Lin (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of applied linguistics, second edition: Critical Applied Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell.

Wimpenny, K.; Finardi, K. R.; & Orsini-Jones, M.; Jacobs, L. (2022). Knowing, Being, Relating and Expressing Through Third Space Global South-North COIL: Digital Inclusion and Equity in International Higher Education. Journal of Studies in International Education. Vol. 26, Issue 2. p. 279-296.https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153221094085

Orsini-Jones, M., Cervero-Carrascosa, A., & Finardi, K. (2021). Digital critical literacy development and intercultural awareness raising ‘in’action,‘on’action and ‘for’ action in ELT. In: C. Smith & G. Zhou (eds), Proceedings of the Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse International Students in Open or Online Learning Environments: Research Symposium. Scholarship at UWindsor. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/itos21/session4/session4/14/

Orsini-Jones, M. & Finardi, K. (2023). Out of the comfort zone: the trouble with virtual exchange. PP. TCB. In J.P. Davies, J. Rattray, A. Tierney, S. Mcgowan, E. Gironnacci, A. Nyamapfene & A. Webb (Eds.) Threshold concepts in the Moment. Brill.

Orsini-Jones, M., Cerveró-Carrascosa, A. & Finardi, K. (2022). A ‘Glocal’ Community of Practice to Support International ELT (English Language Teaching) Students in the UK: Project BMELTET (pp. 306-325). In C. Smith & G. Zhou (Eds.), Successful Teaching Strategies for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse International Students, IGI.

Waterman, J.; Figueiredo, E. H. D. & Finardi, K. R. (2023). Emotions of L2 Learners in Different Contexts and Modes. Studies in English Language Teaching (ISSN 2372-9740, Print and 2329-311X, Online), vol.11, n.2, p.91-113. DOI:https://doi.org/10.22158/selt.v11n2p91

Azirah Hashim & Finardi, K. (forthcoming). Problematizing ‘English’ in EMI: A view from Malaysia and Brazil. In Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini & P. de Costa (Eds.) Critical English Medium Instruction in Higher Education, Cambridge University Press.

Azirah Hashim. (2023). Literacy and Lifelong Learning in the Twenty-First Century: Development of Multilingualism and Multiliteracies in ASEAN. In Lee, W.O., Brown, P., Goodwin, A.L. & Green, A. (eds) International Handbook on Education Development in Asia-Pacific. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2327-1_36-1.

Azirah Hashim. (2024). English-medium instruction (EMI) in Malaysian higher education. In Kingsley Bolton, Werner Botha & Benedict Lin (Eds.)The Routledge Handbook of English-Medium Instruction in Higher Education (Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics).

in ReN: English as a Medium of Education