English-Medium Instruction (EMI) Content-Area Teachers’ (CATs’) Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Scaffoldings: A Vygotskian Perspective

Abstract

As a result of the internationalization of higher education, more content-area courses in tertiary EFL academic environments are now being offered through English-medium instruction (EMI) (e.g., Nunan, 2003). Most studies on EMI in EFL universities still show that students encounter linguistic and non-linguistic difficulties (Huang, 2009) and thus need linguistic, cultural and social assistance from teachers (Huang, 2006). This paper, thus, seeks to demonstrate the usefulness of examining content-area teachers` EMI in EFL contexts from a Vygotskian perspective. In particular, it proposes a new framework for the scaffolding provided for content knowledge (i.e., a multitude of linguistic, conceptual, social, cultural and academic scaffolding) that is more contextually responsive to the EFL higher education context than Pawan`s (2008). Under the impact of internationalization, cultural scaffolding includes the multicultural backgrounds of international students in curriculum design. More importantly, teacher provision of academic scaffolding, in which students` acculturation into university culture or specialists` fields of study, is emphasized (Lea & Street, 2006) through active participation in the communities of practice through engagement, imagination, and alignment (Wenger, 1998). This paper, then, calls for more research on how the internationalization of higher education might impact EMI practice in EFL higher education. Pedagogical suggestions for teacher development are also proposed.