faculty-governance
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- PaperTESOL Quarterly17 Jul 2026
Tracing the Change in the Status of a Language Teacher in University Governance through English Medium Instruction
Ikuya Aizawa, Yuka Akiyama
A longitudinal case study at a Japanese university shows that a top-down English medium instruction (EMI) policy elevated a language teacher's status from being dismissed as a distraction to a recognized collaborator in faculty governance. The teacher gained access to institutional leadership through collaboration with a senior content teacher, leading to formal EMI support and repositioning language support as integral to engineering education. Process tracing reveals how EMI catalyzed cultural change and transformed faculty decision-making.
Original abstract
This article examines how a top‐down English medium instruction (EMI) decision changed a language teacher's status and participation in faculty governance in a graduate engineering school at a national university in Japan. Using a longitudinal single‐case design, the study follows one language teacher across the period from policy announcement to early rollout of EMI implementation. Data comprise three milestone interviews, audio‐recorded research‐practice meetings, reflective journals and implementation documents. Two main findings emerged. First, EMI acted as a catalyst for cultural change by raising the status of the language teacher in a setting where language support had been dismissed as a distraction from “real” engineering. Second, EMI granted the language teacher access to collaborate with a senior content teacher, who served as a gatekeeper to institutional leadership. This collaboration resulted in the formal establishment of EMI support provision and repositioned language support as a recognized component of engineering education. We found that EMI transformed not only the teacher's participation in governance but also faculty‐wide decision‐making processes. The study demonstrates how process tracing can document the decision‐making mechanisms that contribute to institutional cultural change during a faculty‐level transition to EMI.