Anna Dillon

Global skilled labour migration has grown greatly in recent years (OECD 2024b) and increased teacher migration is part of this phenomenon. The advent of the global education industry (Lubienski, St...

Affective factors in reading are increasingly recognized, but little is known about how reading confidence and enjoyment are associated with primary students' reading comprehension through reading engagement. This study investigated the association between these affective constructs and reading comprehension among primary school students, guided by Guthrie and Wigfield's model of reading motivation and engagement. The sample included 27,448 students who participated in the PIRLS 2021 reading literacy test in the United Arab Emirates. Controlling for gender and home learning resources, multiple linear regression analysis revealed that reading confidence was the variable most strongly and positively associated with reading comprehension, followed by reading engagement. Notably, reading enjoyment showed a counterintuitive negative conditional association with reading comprehension; however, mediation analysis indicated a significant indirect association between reading enjoyment and reading comprehension through reading engagement. These findings highlight the central associations between reading confidence, reading engagement, and reading comprehension, with implications for reading literacy instruction in the UAE and other countries.

The current study contributes to recent scholarly debates that question the suitability of EAP as academic writing support in EMI contexts. Two authentic cases of EAP in EMI were explored to gain an insight into the strengths and challenges perceived by stakeholders. Using a theoretical framework for genre knowledge as a guiding principle we interviewed graduates and EAP teachers from two universities -one in Finland and one in the UAE - to enrich our understanding of academic writing practices in these two distinct contexts. Thematic and theoretical analysis identified infrastructure as a key area of concern since it led to several pedagogical implications. These two authentic examples of EMI contexts indicate a need for EAP teachers to draw from current genre knowledge scholarship to provide pedagogical practices and activities that raise graduates’ awareness of the features of genre knowledge, and so provide solid academic writing practices for our graduate students.

This study explores multilingual graduate students’ expectations of and experiences of participating in writing retreats as a form of academic writing support. The literature acknowledges that graduate students within English Medium Education in Multilingual University Settings (EMEMUS) often encounter challenges in developing academic writing practices. A particular concern is that English for Academic Purposes courses may not always provide sufficient support given the complexities of teaching and learning academic writing, particularly through the lens of genre knowledge. Although previous research has highlighted the benefits of writing retreats for experienced scholars, considerably less is known about their potential to support multilingual graduates in English-medium contexts. This study addresses that gap, by exploring writing retreats involving nine multilingual graduate students in English-medium programmes in Finland and the United Arab Emirates. Data were collected from multiple sources including semi-structured interviews, daily intentions and reflections, and field notes which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings indicate that participants valued the retreats for the emotional support, shared learning moments, and awareness of self and writing habits. Participants also described the retreats as providing an informal, situated learning environment in which they felt comfortable discussing writing-related challenges with peers. The study contributes to socio-cultural perspectives of academic writing by illustrating how writing retreats may create opportunities for multilingual writers to articulate tacit understandings of genre through collaborative reflection, making metacognitive thinking more explicit.

This paper is a brief report on attending to a pedagogical moment of wonder as a researcher. It illuminates how a co-teaching pair in an Emirati kindergarten enacted a translanguaging pedagogy while facilitating emergent writing in both Arabic and English. This paper resulted from a 20-minute excerpt observed in one classroom, which showed the co-teachers skillfully co-teaching in an equitable manner which drew on the linguistic resources of children and teachers. It highlights the need for researchers to be prepared for moments that glow during data collection, in order to highlight unexpected effective practices. It offers recommendations to researchers and practitioners regarding implications for practice in relation to enacting a translanguaging pedagogy with young learners, as well being prepared to attend to creative and critical moments that stand out from the more common features of the data.

This chapter presents illustrative case studies of transnational children’s knowledge and experiences of their home variety of English as an element of their identities as Cross Cultural Kids (CCKs). Taking transnational Irish children as a case in point, there are approximately 15,000 self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) of Irish nationality in the Arabian Gulf, and with bilateral relationships between Ireland and countries in the Arabian Gulf on the increase, the number of Irish SIEs, and therefore CCKs, is likely to increase in the coming years. CCKs experience transnational lifestyles which can have a deep impact on the development of individual and group cultural-historical identity. Part of these identities includes the language or language variety spoken. As a minority and yet long-established variety of English, Irish English has a number of distinctive lexico-grammatical features and a range of regional accents. Through the voices of teenagers living across the Arabian Gulf, this study explores how Irish children experience and understand Irish English in their past, present, and future lives, paving the way for a deeper understanding of how the use of a minority variety of English may affect the identities of CCKs.

This brief research report explores the language choices of Emirati fathers when sharing reading with their young children, and discusses how implicit plurilingual family language policies may be expressed through these choices. Participants’ responses were shared via WhatsApp messages following on from workshops provided by the team which offered tips for sharing reading. Fathers’ reported language choices for communicating via shared reading prompted the authors to reflect on these practices and situate them within a larger discussion on plurilingualism and the ways in books may be shared within plurilingual homes. The language choices of Emirati fathers demonstrate a range of implicit family language policies. They allude to translanguaging and plurilingual practices, which become enacted policies within the home. With some children wishing to read in English, others wishing to read in Arabic, some fathers reading in Emirati Arabic and combinations of all of those languages and language varieties, and only a few of them reading the book in the language within which it was originally printed, it seems like a translanguaging stance is being taken for communication within homes, as plurilingual repertoires are being actively harnessed through this shared reading.

English-medium instruction (EMI), and more broadly English-medium education (EME), is growing in leaps and bounds in multilingual university settings globally. Despite the phenomenon of EMI affecting all stakeholders in any given university, research concerning EMI pedagogical and sociolinguistic issues most often occupies the attention of applied linguists alone. This study aims to open up research on EMI to include interdisciplinary perspectives from faculty members in the disciplines of applied linguistics, education and media studies. The study takes the form of a collaborative autoethnography whereby the authors, as participants, reflect on their experiences and perceptions of EMI in their respective disciplines in the context of higher education in the United Arab Emirates. Findings revealed both similarities and differences between approaches and experiences of EMI across disciplines. Drawing on the findings, open sharing and discussion of EMI struggles and triumphs is recommended together with critical awareness of decolonisation in educationscapes and teacher agency in EMI classrooms.