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1. Diagram of the possible types of case study research and their related generalizations, following Bassey (2003).
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This thesis presents an investigation of undergraduate student learning with respect to physics lectures attended in English and Swedish. The work studies three connected areas: student learning patterns, bilingual scientific literacy and disciplinary discourse.
Twenty-two physics students at two Swedish universities attended lectures in both Engl...
Citations
... Nevertheless, there do exist some studies based on beliefs. EMI stakeholders (teachers, students and management teams) tend to consider that, although learning content through the foreign language complicates the process (Airey, 2009), there is no negative impact on content learning. In fact, the Basque teaching staff involved in EMI courses also widely believe that content is learnt as well as in L1 classes (Doiz, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2011, 2013b. ...
... Another issue found in EMI in Basque institutions has to do with content teachers' reluctance to act as language teachers, a trend observed in many other EMI contexts (Airey, 2009). Doiz and Lasagabaster (2021) investigated how teachers tackle language issues in their classes and found that EMI teachers of history focused on vocabulary, whilst not a single case of attention to grammar was found in 12 two-hour sessions of three different history subjects delivered at the UBC. ...
... This idea is congruent with the language demands of technical content subject CLIL, as students need to solve tasks related to the discipline and work with advanced specialised texts in a foreign language. They also need to develop multimodal proficiency, as technical disciplines represent content not only through language but also through different representation modes like graphs, diagrams, and mathematical formulae (compare Airey, 2009). Coyle and Meyer's (2021) pluriliteracies teaching for deeper learning (PTDL) model not only emphasises this demand for the development of subject literacies and plurimodal skills but also takes into account the need for learners "to be able to successfully and adequately communicate knowledge across cultures and languages" (Coyle & Meyer, 2021, p. 41). ...
Whilst researchers agree that the integration of content and language goals is the operative principle behind any successful CLIL programme, there is an ongoing debate over how we can best conceptualise this integration for practical use. A promising way of integrating content and language goals in CLIL teaching is foregrounding the subject/pluriliteracies skills relevant to the respective CLIL subjects, and using them as a guide to offer targeted language support and multimodal scaffolding measures. Yet the content teachers typically involved in CLIL programmes in Austria are seldom trained in subject literacy education or foreign language teaching methodology, which makes the task of translating a content and language integrated model into CLIL practice especially demanding. This becomes even more challenging at Austrian technical colleges, where CLIL programmes typically focus on highly specialised technical content subjects in which cognitive demand is high in terms of both content and language. To support teachers at technical colleges in implementing an integrated CLIL model, this project aims at developing a CLIL lesson planning tool that operationalises subject literacy for the context of technical colleges. Following a design-based research (DBR) approach, the tool is designed in collaboration with two novice CLIL teachers and tested in their respective subjects recycling technology and control engineering. Both the process and the outcome of this project offer new insights into CLIL lesson planning and vocational CLIL in general. The lesson planning tool itself holds the potential to improve CLIL practice in the often-neglected context of vocational CLIL, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice.
... However, if given extra time, both Shaw and McMillion (2008) and Mežek (2013) found that Swedish university students in biology performed at a similar level to that of British L1 students. Finally, Airey (2009) found that some first-year students had considerable difficulties speaking about disciplinary concepts in English; however, his investigation focused on students' experience attending lectures rather than reading, which is the focus of the current study. ...
... In the present study, a small number of students mentioned assigned reading in English had gotten easier with time. Airey (2009) similarly found that Swedish university students adapted to being taught in English, for example by beginning to read sections of the assigned literature before lectures. However, Airey also found that students adapted in ways that did not necessarily aid their learning, with some using lectures for mechanical note-taking while others ceased to take notes entirely in class. ...
Students around the world are expected to read, comprehend and learn from growing numbers of English texts in higher educational contexts where the official medium of instruction is the local language. Despite this language shift, relatively little attention has been paid to the challenges academic texts in English present for students. The present paper provides insights into first-year university students’ perceptions of and attitudes towards academic reading in English in Sweden through a sequential explanatory design with questionnaires and follow-up interviews. Sweden is often seen as a model country in terms of second-language proficiency in English, but as this study shows, a majority of first-year university students expressed negative attitudes towards academic reading in English. Student responses suggested more than one third of first-year Swedish university students in social science subjects struggled to comprehend and keep up with their assigned reading, with vocabulary and reading speed cited as their biggest challenges. This paper further shows that a considerable number of students entered higher education unaware that they were going to be required to read academic texts in English, with some questioning this common practice. Finally, implications for teachers are discussed.
... Students need to develop diverse literacy skills such as mathematical, scientific, and reading literacies to be able to utilize the language of science in physics classes. A coherent physics understanding demands the construction of content and practical knowledge in various forms: the use and development of visual or mathematical models, the manipulation of materials necessary to design experiments, the collection and analysis of data, the making of explanations using scientific language, and so on (Airey, 2009). To this end, students are able to actively think, apply and explain about various forms of knowledge related to scientific, cultural and social issues in society. ...
Bu kitap, eğitim bilimleri ve öğretmen yetiştirme temel alanına özgü alt disiplin alanları ile ilgili çalışmaları bir araya getirerek, bilim insanlarının güncel araştırmalarını sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu alanın akademisyenleri tarafından gelen yoğun talebi doğrultusunda bir seri şekline dönüşmüştür. Kitabımız, özellikle eğitim bilimleri ve öğretmen yetiştirme alanında araştırma yapmak isteyen akademisyenlere ilham kaynağı olmayı hedeflemektedir. Ayrıca, okurlar için faydalı bir kaynak olarak da kullanılabileceğini düşünüyoruz. Kitabın ortaya çıkmasında yazılarıyla katkı sunan yazarlara ve hazırlanmasında emeği geçen herkese teşekkür ederiz.
... Several empirical studies have provided evidence supporting the effectiveness of CILL. In a study conducted by Airey (2009), it was found that students in a CILL environment exhibited a better understanding of subject content, increased motivation, and improved language proficiency. Similarly, Dalton-Puffer's (2007) research concluded that students in CLIL classes performed better in both content knowledge and language proficiency tests compared to students in traditional language classes. ...
... The increased motivation and appreciation for real-world applicability underscore the power of the CILL approach in making language learning a more engaging and relevant process. The observation that students also improved their understanding of academic content while learning English supports the dualfocused nature of the CILL approach, where both language and content learning are achieved simultaneously (Airey, 2009). ...
This paper explores the effect of the Content and Integrated Language Learning (CILL) approach on teaching English in Turkish universities. The pedagogical shift from the traditional methods of language teaching to innovative strategies such as CILL has been widely discussed in the field of second language acquisition. This study evaluates the impact of CILL on student outcomes, engagement, and retention in English courses. Through both qualitative and quantitative data collected from a sample of Turkish university students, this paper provides substantial evidence to support the benefits of CILL in a higher education context.
... However, the Chatbot keeps bombarding us with a long response when we question that the net force is zero in the highest point. Correct and incorrect statements are mixed in the answer: Statements (7), (11), (12) and (14) repeat the claim that the net force is zero, while (8) repeats that gravity is the only force acting on it, and (9)-(11) invokes the idea that 'inertia' balances gravity. Although, as teachers, we may have encountered students tempted by 'inertial' forces, in our experience, this is more common the context of circular motion [7]. ...
... This brings us to the fourth finding, which emanates from the previous ones. The behaviour of reflecting and reproducing disciplinary language without understanding its content on a disciplinary level is sometimes referred to as discourse imitation [8,9]. The chatbot clearly fits the reflection and reproduction of this description. ...
... It is important to note here that discourse imitation can also be seen as a part of the learning process, which with time leads to an 'Eureka!' moment, when the student finally gleans the meaning of the words they have been saying all along [8]. What made us as teachers experience the discussion with the Chatbot as particularly unusual and at times frustrating, is that we implicitly assumed that we are talking to a student and were on some level expecting of them certain behaviours that we did not come to see, such as admission of confusion, admission of incomplete understanding of a concept, and a certain sense of humility, when a contradiction is pointed out to them. ...
We present a case study of a conversation between ourselves and an artificial intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT. We asked the chatbot to respond to a basic physics question that will be familiar to most physics teachers: 'A teddy bear is thrown into the air. What is its acceleration in the highest point?' The chatbot's responses, while linguistically quite advanced, were unreliable in their correctness and often full of contradictions. We then attempted to engage in Socratic dialogue with the chatbot to resolve the errors and contradictions, but with little success. We found that ChatGPT is not yet good enough to be used as a cheating tool for physics students or as a physics tutor. However, we found it quite reliable in generating incorrect responses on which physics teachers could train assessment of student responses.
... English has become the lingua franca of academic communication (Mauranen, 2012;Mauranen et al., 2016) and the dual use of Swedish and English in Swedish higher education is common (Bolton & Kuteeva, 2012;Malmström & Pecorari, 2022;Nordic Council of Ministers, 2007;Young Academy of Sweden, 2022). During the past decade, the number of university courses and programmes with English as the medium of instruction (EMI) has increased (Airey, 2009;Malmström & Pecorari, 2022;Salö, 2010Salö, , 2016. However, in higher education in Sweden, some sort of parallel use of English and the majority language (here Swedish) is most common. ...
... Besides a focus on receptive academic vocabulary knowledge, research relating to students' academic literacy may involve investigations of, for example, their disciplinary literacy (Airey, 2009), their reading strategies (Busby, 2018) or their productive use and knowledge of academic vocabulary (Edgarsson, 2018;Olsson, 2016). Research on academic vocabulary knowledge may correlate vocabulary test scores with other proficiency variables, such as reading or achievement; demographic variables, such as L1 or gender; or behavioral variables, such as spare time reading or gaming. ...
Doctoral dissertation in Language Education (Stockholm University).
This thesis explores Swedish upper secondary school students’ written receptive English academic word knowledge. Academic vocabulary are words that are more frequent in academic than in general discourse without being discipline-specific but frequent across disciplines, for example, however, related, partially and delineate. All the participants belong to study programmes which, according to the curriculum goals (Skolverket, 2013), prepare them for university studies, where English is a common reading language. Despite the university-preparatory goal, the syllabi contain no guidelines about academic English nor academic vocabulary.
The thesis is based on two premises: 1) academic vocabulary is a central component of reading at university, and 2) the curriculum goal of being prepared for university studies presupposes the ability to read literature in English.
The present thesis uses existing and validated tests targeting academic lexis. There are three validity arguments for using academic vocabulary measurements as indicators of students’ predicted academic reading comprehension. First, because reading comprehension largely depends on word knowledge (e.g., Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Grabe & Stoller, 2019), measures of academic word knowledge inform about an essential component of academic reading comprehension. Second, to comprehend an academic text a reader should know 98 percent of the words in a text (e.g., Nation, 2001). In academic texts, approximately 10–14 percent of the words are academic. Thus, without a high degree of academic word knowledge, the 98 percent threshold cannot be reached. Third, if basic word knowledge is lacking, more nuanced knowledge aspects which may be important for academic deep reading are likely lacking too. For this reason, it is worthwhile testing a basic aspect of word knowledge first; to this end, this thesis tests the connection of a word form to its most common meaning.
Based on these premises and validity arguments, the thesis seeks to estimate the academic vocabulary knowledge of students at the beginning and the end of mandatory English instruction. Furthermore, factors that may explain this word knowledge are explored.
The thesis adopts a cross-sectional design where almost 1,000 participants were administered vocabulary tests, questionnaires and a survey of out-of-school English activities. Mainly statistical analyses were used.
The results reveal large variations in academic vocabulary knowledge within and between samples. Significant factors positively related to academic vocabulary are involvement with out-of-school English, age, gender and study programmes. Approximately half of the students leaving mandatory English courses do not reach the minimum threshold score indicating mastery of academic lexis.
Since there are no guidelines in the English syllabi about academic vocabulary knowledge, the outcomes are expected, namely large variations in and, on average, a low level of academic word knowledge. There is a risk that many students falling below the threshold are not sufficiently prepared for taking on university reading tasks. The disruption in constructive alignment between the curriculum goal and the syllabi guidelines should be considered and the thesis suggests a curriculum change where the English mandatory courses for university-preparatory programmes include principled instruction about academic English reading ability of which academic vocabulary knowledge is one central component.
Link: http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:1730999
... (iii) The bulk of research has been in mathematics (see [11] for a systematic review of 15 studies; [12]), business administration [13], and science classrooms [1,3,[14][15][16], while few papers have dealt with humanities, as is the case of the present study. ...
... 83). In Sweden Airey [14] found that students believed they learnt equally well in Swedish and English, but, after watching video footage of actual lectures, they acknowledged that fewer questions were asked and answered in EMI classes. Airey and Linder [15] also observed that among Swedish students the traditional reluctance to ask questions was exacerbated in EMI classes which they find "all the more worrying when we take into account the fact that lecturers see a strong correlation between asking questions and student understanding" (p. ...
... Most of the display questions in our corpus were closed-ended, or started out as open-ended in a chain of questions that led to a closed-ended question, requiring a simple short answer by the students. Furthermore, despite the lack of complexity of the potential student response and the fact that the lecturers quite frequently provided cues to the answer, the students' responses to the display questions were short or were not provided, as found in other EMI settings where students' unwillingness to ask questions seems to be exacerbated by linguistic limitations and their fear of speaking in front of the class [14,15,19,20,29]. In addition, finally, referential questions which normally dealt with students' opinions, personal habits and thoughts did not trigger more lengthy contributions in our study either. ...
Teacher-led questions not only guide meaning-making interactions but they also scaffold students’ learning, and this is especially important in English-medium instruction (EMI). Due to the scant literature on this topic in higher education, this article analyses what type of questions EMI history lecturers pose and whether they are subject to individual differences. The study is based on 12 two-hour lectures whose transcriptions were analysed by three researchers. The results showed that instructional or content question types were much more commonplace than regulative questions (related to classroom procedures). Confirmation check, display and referential questions, which belong in the instructional category, were not posed to fulfil their intended pedagogic goals, a limitation accentuated by students’ trend to provide short responses. These results reveal the need to design teacher training courses aimed at developing teachers’ interactional abilities. Since questioning practices varied considerably between lecturers, customized training sessions should also be considered.
... In this sense, there is a hot debate on whether academic literacies in English-speaking HEIs should be adapted when used in non-Anglophone national contexts, or simply 'imported' for the sake of developing global graduate skills in the student population (see also Internationalisation and Glocalisation). Some research has shown that EMEMUS students may not be receiving enough support to develop appropriate academic skills for a number of reasons (Airey, 2009;Bradford & Brown, 2018a;Breeze & Dafouz, 2017). Firstly, lecturers often believe that language issues are beyond their teaching expertise and/or pedagogical training (Airey, 2009;Fortanet-Gómez, 2013;Kuteeva & Airey, 2014). ...
... Some research has shown that EMEMUS students may not be receiving enough support to develop appropriate academic skills for a number of reasons (Airey, 2009;Bradford & Brown, 2018a;Breeze & Dafouz, 2017). Firstly, lecturers often believe that language issues are beyond their teaching expertise and/or pedagogical training (Airey, 2009;Fortanet-Gómez, 2013;Kuteeva & Airey, 2014). Secondly, content teachers assume that such students are 'already pro cient in the L2, as they are often requested to take language exams upon university entrance' (Breeze & Dafouz, 2017, p. 82) and, consequently, do not need disciplinary language guidance. ...
... An example of disciplinary discernment involves extracting information from a particular cosmological representation, for example the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) (Fig. 2). Understanding the colours in the representation, the pattern, the overall shape and various nuances requires a high level of disciplinary discernment, to not only extract meaning from what is "obvious" but also what is appresented-hidden information that is not necessarily explicit (Airey, 2009;Linder, 2013). For example, a cosmologist would appreciate that the CMB surrounds us, and this presentation has mapped the CMB into a projection, and would know that the pattern or anisotropies relate to intrinsic temperature fluctuations (Ade et al., 2011;Mather et al., 1990;Peebles, 1993;Penzias & Wilson, 1965;Spergel et al., 2003), and are the "seeds" for large-scale structure formation. ...
Modern astronomy as a field of inquiry may be shaped by what we consider the “scientific” ways of knowing. However, the history of astronomy as a human endeavour dates back millennia before the “modern” notions of “science”. This long history means that astronomy is, at its core, built on a rich cultural diversity and history. This offers a rich potential that, while having been examined in various studies, has yet to be explored from a contextual pedagogical perspective. This paper offers an initial exploratory theoretical perspective on how social semiotics can be used to inform a conceptual framework. This approach not only brings notions of culture into the teaching and learning of astronomy but uses culture as the starting point in a way that does justice to the cultural diversity of the discipline and the world. In doing so, this paper develops two frameworks: (i) the Conceptual Framework for Culture in Astronomy Education and (ii) the Pedagogical Framework for Culture in Astronomy Education, both of these offer a novel approach to astronomy education.
