Informed Consent and the Research Process: Following Rules or Striking Balances?

Gaining informed consent from people being researched is central to ethical research practice. There are, however, several factors that make the issue of informed consent problematic, especially in research involving members of groups that are commonly characterised as \'vulnerable\' such as children and people with learning disabilities. This paper reports on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which was concerned to identify and disseminate best practice in relation to informed consent in research with six such groups. The context for the study is the increased attention that is being paid to the issue of informed consent in research, not least because of the broad changes taking place in research governance and regulation in the UK. The project involved the analysis of researchers\' views and experiences of informed consent. The paper focuses on two particular difficulties inherent in the processes of gaining and maintaining informed consent. The first of these is that there is no consensus amongst researchers concerning what comprises \'informed consent\'. The second is that there is no consensus about whether the same sets of principles and procedures are equally applicable to research among different groups and to research conducted within different methodological frameworks. In exploring both these difficulties we draw on our findings to highlight the nature of these issues and some of our participants\' responses to them. These issues have relevance to wider debates about the role of guidelines and regulation for ethical practice. We found that study participants were generally less in favour of guidelines that regulate the way research is conducted and more in favour of guidelines that help researchers to strike balances between the conflicting pressures that inevitably occur in research.Informed Consent; Research Ethics; Regulation of Research; Research Governance; Professional Guidelines

Conceptualizations of language errors, standards, norms and nativeness in English for research publication purposes: An analysis of journal submission guidelines

Adherence to standards in English for research publication purposes (ERPP) can be a substantial barrier for second language (L2) writers and is an area of renewed debate in L2 writing research. This study presents a qualitative text analysis of author guidelines in 210 leading academic journals across 27 disciplines. It explores conceptualizations of language errors, standards, norms and nativeness in journal submission guidelines, and identifies key concepts related to so-called error-free writing. Findings indicate that most of the journal guidelines are inflexible in their acceptance of variant uses of English. Some guidelines state a requirement of meeting an unclear standard of good English, sometimes described as American or British English. Many guidelines specifically position L2 writers as deficient of native standards, which raises ethical considerations of access to publication in top journals. This study leads to a discussion of a need to re-conceptualize error-free writing in ERPP, and to decouple it from concepts such as nativeness. It focuses on a need to relax some author guidelines to encourage all authors to write using an English that can easily be understood by a broad, heterogeneous, global, and multilingual audience

English language teaching and English-medium instruction

The role of English language teaching (ELT) in English-medium instruction (EMI) can vary widely depending on education policy objectives and teachers’ responses to EMI students’ language and learning needs. In this paper, we provide a narrative review of a growing number of studies reporting language-related challenges as the foremost barrier to successful implementation of EMI. Such research highlights the fundamental roles that English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes have in the provision of targeted language support for EMI students. Based on this review, we set a future research agenda, calling for explorations into the efficacy of English language programs for supporting EMI students to reach educational outcomes. We also call for explorations of greater collaboration between English language practitioners and content lecturers to ensure the right type of language support is being provided to students. The paper ends with a discussion for the need to reposition EAP as English for Specific Academic Purposes to ensure students’ specific academic needs are met. Essentially, universities offering EMI will need to account for their unique institutional characteristics to ensure ELT provision is central in organizational and curricular structures; otherwise, they may be setting their own students up to fail

Conceptualizations of language errors, standards, norms and nativeness in English for research publication purposes: An analysis of journal submission guidelines

Adherence to standards in English for research publication purposes (ERPP) can be a substantial barrier for second language (L2) writers and is an area of renewed debate in L2 writing research. This study presents a qualitative text analysis of author guidelines in 210 leading academic journals across 27 disciplines. It explores conceptualizations of language errors, standards, norms and nativeness in journal submission guidelines, and identifies key concepts related to so-called error-free writing. Findings indicate that most of the journal guidelines are inflexible in their acceptance of variant uses of English. Some guidelines state a requirement of meeting an unclear standard of good English, sometimes described as American or British English. Many guidelines specifically position L2 writers as deficient of native standards, which raises ethical considerations of access to publication in top journals. This study leads to a discussion of a need to re-conceptualize error-free writing in ERPP, and to decouple it from concepts such as nativeness. It focuses on a need to relax some author guidelines to encourage all authors to write using an English that can easily be understood by a broad, heterogeneous, global, and multilingual audience

Japan's English medium instruction initiatives and the globalization of higher education

This article analyzes a recent initiative of Japan’s Ministry of Education, which aims to internationalize higher education in Japan. The large-investment project “Top Global University Project” (TGUP) has emerged to create globally oriented universities, to increase the role of foreign languages in higher education, and to foster global human resources. The TGUP identifies 37 universities: 13 as “top global universities” intended to compete in the top 100 university world rankings and 24 “global traction universities” intended to lead the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Despite the substantial funding behind this initiative, little research has been conducted to evaluate the potential impact of this policy on language planning in higher education in Japan. This paper addresses this gap in its exploration of the TGUP, including key changes from previous internationalization policies. It then presents an analysis of publicly available documents regarding the policy, collected from all 37 of the participant universities. Findings indicate a positive departure from older policy trends and the emergence of flexible, unique forms of English language education in Japan’s universities.</p

English medium higher education in Hong Kong: linguistic challenges of local and non-local students

This research project involved a mixed-methods study investigating language-related challenges of first-year students at an English Medium Instruction (EMI) university in Hong Kong. The two-phased sequential study employed a questionnaire survey and semi-structured student interviews. The survey and interview findings indicate that first-year students face a number of language-related academic challenges during their first year at an EMI university in writing, reading, speaking, and listening, many of which appear to stem from lower levels of vocabulary knowledge in English, unfamiliarity with academic and technical terminology, and limited exposure to varieties of English. Additionally, the findings suggest that these challenges can vary significantly based on background and first language, relating specifically to three different demographic student groups: local Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking students, Putonghua-speaking mainland Chinese students, and non-Chinese speaking local and international students

Introduction to the special issue on English medium instruction: Areas of research needing urgent attention

English medium instruction (EMI), both in higher and secondary education, is now a well-established field of education research and, indeed, many applied linguistics journals are publishing regularly on a variety of EMI topics. Recently, a new journal, Journal of English-Medium Instruction, has been established that is dedicated entirely to this area of academic enquiry. Recent years have also seen several special issues emerge on topics within EMI in journals such as Applied Linguistics Review (published advanced online), System (in 2023), and TESOL Quarterly (in 2018)

English language teaching and English-medium instruction

The role of English language teaching (ELT) in English-medium instruction (EMI) can vary widely depending on education policy objectives and teachers’ responses to EMI students’ language and learning needs. In this paper, we provide a narrative review of a growing number of studies reporting language-related challenges as the foremost barrier to successful implementation of EMI. Such research highlights the fundamental roles that English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes have in the provision of targeted language support for EMI students. Based on this review, we set a future research agenda, calling for explorations into the efficacy of English language programs for supporting EMI students to reach educational outcomes. We also call for explorations of greater collaboration between English language practitioners and content lecturers to ensure the right type of language support is being provided to students. The paper ends with a discussion for the need to reposition EAP as English for Specific Academic Purposes to ensure students’ specific academic needs are met. Essentially, universities offering EMI will need to account for their unique institutional characteristics to ensure ELT provision is central in organizational and curricular structures; otherwise, they may be setting their own students up to fail

The prevalence of pedagogy-related research in applied linguistics:extending the debate

In this article, we respond to the special issue ‘Definitions for Applied Linguistics’, where the past and future of applied linguistics are discussed, and the place of pedagogy in the field’s scope is debated. In the issue, Hellermann (2015) uses data from 1980 to 1984 and 2009 to 2013 to show a shift in the field towards an emerging range of language-related problems, coupled with the declining prominence of pedagogy-related research in the journal. In this article, we extend Hellerman’s work to investigate whether this trend is reflective of other published work in applied linguistics. In our investigation, 336 research papers published in 2015 were analysed from 10 self-identified applied linguistics journals. Data revealed language-pedagogy-related studies constituted 32 per cent of all empirical research, although this representation was unevenly distributed across the journals. Findings suggest a number of practice-oriented journals now take the lion’s share of pedagogical research, allowing other key applied linguistics journals to focus on a diverse range of non-pedagogy-related language problems. Nevertheless, in general, pedagogy remains a key topic in the field

The impact of Global Englishes classroom-based innovation on school-aged language learners' perceptions of English: an exercise in practitioner and researcher partnership

This paper outlines a collaborative research project established via a research partnership within a Global Englishes (GE) theoretical framework. The aim of the quasi-experimental classroom-based study was to examine the effect of a GE curriculum intervention embedded within a general English course in a commercial language school. The study adopted a longitudinal mixed methods design, collecting data from 24 school-aged learners via the English as an International Language Perception Scale at four time points, and via dairies at five time points. Quantitative findings reveal that students' perceptions toward the diversity of English became significantly more positive after the GE intervention with qualitative findings providing further evidence of change in students' attitudes toward the legitimacy of non-standard Englishes. Evidence was not obtained for a significant effect of the intervention on students' perceptions toward the current status of English, strategies for multilingual and multicultural communication, or English speaker identity. In this paper we discuss how researcher and teacher partners collaborated from project inception to the dissemination of the findings, intertwining and leveraging important theoretical, methodological, and professional knowledge throughout the research process. We highlight the importance of partnership research for the bidirectional development of teacher-researcher holistic identities