Navaporn Snodin

1. English-medium instruction (EMI) has become a central feature of the internationalisation of higher education, particularly in professional fields such as medicine where access to global knowled...

Purpose: In contexts where heteronormativity remains deeply embedded in educational environments, LGBTQ students often encounter significant challenges in expressing their identities and exercising agency. This qualitative study aims to explore how three Thai LGBTQ university students navigate their identities within intercultural communication settings shaped by cultural expectations, power asymmetries and normative discourses. Design/methodology/approach: Grounded in Positioning Theory and a poststructuralist view of agency, the research draws on snake interviews and semi-structured interviews to capture participants’ evolving narratives. Findings: Findings reveal how participants engage in both self-positioning and interactive positioning to assert their identities and negotiate belonging in school, university, online intercultural exchanges and international student camps. Students’ agency is expressed through subtle resistance to binary gender norms, strategic self-disclosure and inspiration drawn from LGBTQ role models. While constraints persist, especially in culturally conservative encounters, university spaces and peer support emerged as enabling contexts for identity affirmation and agentive action. Originality/value: This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how discourse, identity and agency intersect in intercultural experiences, and calls for more inclusive practices that empower LGBTQ students to participate fully and authentically in global learning environments.

This chapter discusses the linguistic inequality in Higher Education and argues that the root cause for such injustice is the lack of understanding of the natural effects of language contact and language change as well as the lack of awareness of the distinction between a native, a foreign language, and a lingua franca. World Englishes (WE), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and English as an International Language (EIL) are nowadays accepted globally as an academic discipline, but certain users of English are still seen by the vast majority, especially by certain English users at the elite end of the social and professional spectrum, as an unsuccessful attempt to use English like its natives or ‘deficient’ versions of ‘proper’ standard native English. Language ideologies permeating higher education often place native varieties of English at the top of a linguistic hierarchy and exclude other Englishes as well as other languages. This chapter will identify some of the imminent challenges in relation to linguistic injustices and inequalities within Higher Education caused by certain language ideologies with evidence drawn from personal narrative histories and empirical studies by myself and others. This chapter uses the autobiographical narrative method, also known as personal narrative, in which I reflect on my own life to capture complexities and hidden or invisible stories that characterise my experience working in Thai higher education and my transitions to British higher education. I will conclude the chapter by exploring how we can address the issues of linguistic inequality in Higher Education.

British higher education is linguistically and culturally diverse, but its diverse nature is largely under-theorised and under-researched. There is a slender body of work that has been produced about international academics within UK higher education. The main objective of this review is to understand the current state of affairs of the academic mobility research in the British context focusing on academics of non-UK origin within UK higher education. The authors introduced the scoping review methodology employed in this article and outlined eleven research publications included in this review. Three key themes that emerged from original research published between 2012 and 2022 were presented. The review reveals that the research agenda is currently focused on cultural and social adaptation challenges international academics encounter and their perceptions towards career progression within UK HE. The second most well-researched theme relates to experiences of communicating in English as a non-native in the context where English is a dominant language. The article ends with recommendations to future researchers about knowledge gaps and practical recommendations to relevant stakeholders.

Key claimed benefits of internationalizing higher education (HE) are increased intercultural interaction and awareness with internationally oriented universities aiming to produce graduates who are intercultural or global citizens. Yet, there have been few core strategies presented on how international HE programmes might realize such aims, and more research is needed. Furthermore, English language teaching (ELT) plays a central role in preparation and support for study abroad (SA) and internationalization in English medium education (EME), but has also been slow to incorporate intercultural education and intercultural citizenship. Hence, this study aimed to describe how Thai SA students developed a sense of intercultural citizenship during SA experiences with international HE programmes in Anglophone countries and identify roles ELT in facilitating the preparation for their subsequent SA programmes. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews (n = 14) conducted with students from three Thai universities who had experienced EME overseas education. From qualitative content analysis, findings revealed a range of understandings and responses to intercultural citizenship, English learning, language utilization, and the SA experiences. In addition, a mismatch was identified between ELT preparation and support efforts compared to the multilingual and multicultural reality of international HE.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of the current phenomenon regarding challenges of and potential for increased international recruitment and enhancement of the teaching and learning experience in Thai HE. The focus on what made these people choose Thailand, and their actual perceptions and experiences in Thai universities, are two main foci of this paper.Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative approach through narrative interviews was selected as the researchers did not want to constrain this study with preconceived notions that might unduly steer the findings. During the interviews, detailed notes were taken, and the conversations were taped recorded, and then transcribed and analysed. The analytic approach adopted was a thematic analysis. NVivo qualitative data analysis software (QSR International Pty Ltd Version 11, 2017) was used to help organise and analyse the data.Findings: The findings show that availability of scholarships, word-of-mouth referrals, and geographical and cultural proximity to a home country appear to be important pull factors. A series of interviews with international students from many different cultures, from both developed and developing countries, yielded some surprising insights including strong research support in some disciplines and the fact that academic life is personalised in Thai universities.Research limitations/implications: The findings from this study suggested that engaging returnees as ambassadors, creating links between international student community and home student community before, during and after the education abroad experience could potentially help Thai HE to be more marketable at a global scale. International students have potentials to be future contacts for inducing the flow of international students evident by the social network or word-of-mouth referrals as one of the prominent pull factors.Practical implications: The findings from this paper provide advice and guidance on how values-based, rather than purely numbers-driven strategies can help Thai HEIs across the country to be more attractive to students and to enhance their experience once they come to study in Thai HEIs.Originality/value: This study will make an important critique of current theories of academic mobility that primarily focus on developed countries. Current literature in international education favours native English language countries and overlooks experiences of international students in developing countries. This study will contribute to the existing literature which is lacking in reported perceptions and experiences of international students in Asian countries, particularly the new emerging educational hub in Southeast Asia like Thailand. The paper includes experiences of students from developed countries such as Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the USA, filling in the gap in the current literature that dominantly reports experiences of Asian students in the developed English-speaking countries. Additionally, this study also reports the experiences of international students from the countries that are lesser known in the context of international education, including Cambodia, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda.

This article reports on perceptions and practices in relation to integrating culture into EFL teaching and how course material was designed within the Thai curriculum framework. Thai teachers’ understanding of what constitutes culture, the role it plays in language learning and how such understanding is being translated into pedagogical practices are under investigation. The practice demonstrated an attempt to adapt the Byram’s model to fit local circumstances, policies and needs. The knowledge of everyday cultures of native speakers was promoted, whilst cultures in the prior curriculum merely constituted high cultures such as literature. Potential materials, including newspapers and magazine articles, nonfiction, TV programmes and films were suggested to encourage an ethnographic frame of mind in students. The discussion of a few practical ways in which these materials can be used to promote cultural awareness and how they could be used to facilitate opportunities for language skills practice were provided. Feedback from students include the novelty of the experience, changing perspectives, facilitating better communication, practical and useful knowledge, fun, autonomous learning, critical thinking and empathy towards other cultures.

It is important to gauge and explore current Thai perceptions of and attitudes towards varieties of English. Language attitudes are some of the factors that affect language policy direction and institutional practices, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Thailand, are adopting English as their sole official language in 2015, making such an investigation particularly timely. In Thailand little if any prior research had investigated attitudes. For this questionnaire-based study, research questions investigated which varieties 251 Thai learners of English thought they were actually using; which they saw as their target model; and also explored their attitudes towards different ‘native-speaker’ varieties – pre-work had indicated that such varieties still predominated over alternatives such as ‘English as a Lingua Franca’. Responses were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative keyword and content analysis. Findings indicated strong but diverse perceptions of the nature of varieties, and also said something about the dynamic nature of such perceptions and the attitudes of learners in Thailand. We conclude by suggesting how our findings might relate to the realisation of current language policy and practice in Thailand, and how they might serve as a stepping stone towards investigations of perceptions across ASEAN and beyond.