Towards Critical English Medium Instruction in Post-Soviet Contexts by Abdul Manan, Syed; Hajar, Anas;

Short description:

This pioneering volume brings together established and emerging scholars to explore English Medium Instruction (EMI) through a critical lens across post-Soviet regions, including Central Asian republics and countries like Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Russia.

Long description:

This pioneering volume brings together established and emerging scholars to explore English Medium Instruction (EMI) through a critical lens across post-Soviet regions, including Central Asian republics and countries like Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Russia.

As English rapidly expands within educational spheres across these nations—driven by globalization, neoliberalism, and Englishization, this volume addresses a significant research gap by moving beyond traditional managerial and administrative approaches to EMI. The contributors examine how EMI intersects with five critical dimensions: ideology, policy, identity, social justice, and the politics of English. Rather than focusing solely on technical aspects like language proficiency and teacher training, the volume interrogates how EMI reshapes linguistic hierarchies, influences teacher and learner identities, and potentially perpetuates linguistic imperialism and Eurocentric paradigms. By situating EMI within local sociolinguistic ecologies and cultural contexts, the authors advocate for more equitable, transformative educational practices that acknowledge multilingual repertoires and indigenous knowledge systems. Bringing together empirical data and theoretical analyses of various critical aspects of EMI, the contributors shed light on the nuances, complexities, challenges, and opportunities that these highly diverse multilingual post-Soviet contexts present.

Offering frameworks for recontextualizing EMI within Global South epistemologies, this book will be an essential reading for researchers, educators, and policymakers engaged with language policy, internationalization, multilingual education, and decoloniality.

Table of Contents:

 1. Reframing English Medium Instruction (EMI) through ‘criticality’: Policy, praxis, and future directions in post-Soviet contexts, Syed Abdul Manan and Anas Hajar  2. EMI in Azerbaijan: Unchaining Micro-Level Implementation and Practices from the Upper-Level Policies,Tamilla Mammadova 3. Policies for English language education and English Medium Instruction in Central Asia, Anthony J. Liddicoat and Erkin Mukhammedov 4. “You can’t get around English, you have to go through it”: Estonian students’ navigation of Estonian-medium higher education in English, Kerttu Rozenvalde 5. Towards egalitarian policymaking for EMI in schools: Concerns and future considerations in Kazakhstan, Syed Abdul Manan and Anas Hajar 6. Critically Examining English Medium Instruction (EMI) in Higher Education in Georgia: Policies, Practices, and Sociocultural Implications, Shalva Tabatadze 7. ROAD-MAPPING the Roles of English in Uzbek EMI Universities: Perspectives and Evolving Practices, Anastasiya Bezborodova 8. Navigating Language Policy in Ukrainian Higher Education: The Tension between Ukrainian-Medium and English-Medium Instruction, Ursula Lanvers 9. Teaching English in the Shadows: Schoolteachers’ Emotional Labour and Coping Strategies in Kyrgyzstan’s Private Tutoring Sector, Elianur Gulamidinova, Anas Hajar and Syed Abdul Manan 10. English Language in Russia: From Post-Soviet Boom to Contemporary Ambivalence, Elena Belyaeva