English-Medium Instruction in International Bio-Science Engineering Programs in Vietnam: Incentivization, Support, and Discretion in a Context of Academic Consolidation

Abstract

Abstract This study analyzes how English-medium instruction (EMI) content lecturers in Vietnam navigate opportunities and challenges of incentivization, institutional support, and disciplinary autonomy in a context of transnational academic expansion. It reports on interview data with bio-engineering lecturers from five universities. Findings show that, despite the lecturers’ understanding of the institutional importance of prestigious international programs, the necessary linguistic and pedagogical support systems are rarely in place. Lecturers detail their struggles in a setting marked by the presence of personal incentives but a lack of training needed to reach language proficiency standards or feel confident about managing interaction and knowledge transfer. They describe difficulties preparing for classes, report extraneous workloads, and occasionally redact teaching materials to safeguard comprehension. Viewing the lecturers through the lens of Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy (1980), we bring into focus their highly informed, agentive behavior, highlighting how lecturers conceptualize students’ linguistic and academic needs, and identify pedagogical strategies to overcome language-related and other barriers in EMI. Two forms of mutual entanglement are stressed: (i) lecturer needs and student needs and (ii) subject teaching and language learning.