Developing and Evaluating Quality Bilingual Practices in Higher Education

This book provides an overview and evaluation of the quality of bilingual education found in internationalised higher education institutions. Its authors focus on the multifaceted roles that language(s) play in these growing multilingual spaces and analyse and identify the many factors that account for quality multilingual degree programmes. The chapters cover themes such as language policy, quality assurance tools and indicators of quality and the authors approach issues of quality from very different and complementary perspectives, adopting for example, temporal, evaluative and developmental positioning, and taking micro, meso and macro level perspectives, while still keeping sight of the local realities, practices and possibilities. The contributions are written by authors working in Brazil, Finland, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK and have implications for researchers, education coordinators, practitioners and other stakeholders who are looking to design, launch and evaluate new programmes in any higher education context worldwide.

This book approaches the complexities of HE language realities from a multitude of perspectives, providing both practical examples and theoretical background that will help HEIs tackle the issues they face. Insightful reading for anyone striving to deliver quality bi- and multilingual higher education and hoping to do it responsibly., What an important publication! It provides both theoretical frameworks and conceptual approaches for establishing and assessing quality in internationalisation. By also applying these in contexts and cases, authors challenge us to re-think our assumptions about languages, teaching, and learning in our internationalization endeavours as well as the range and character of our international programmes. My colleagues need to read this, but I will send it to the Dean of Education first!, This volume deftly addresses a topic of great currency on the bilingual research agenda: how to enact quality assurance in higher education multilingual programmes. It does so by pooling the insights of well-recognized scholars and offering a multi-pronged approach to the topic: from policy to practice to professional development. A must-read tour de force for anyone interested in the set-up, development, or reinforcement of quality multilingual programmes in higher education institutions., Rubio-Alcalá and Coyle’s newly published volume is an interesting and engaging read that provides first-hand examples of primarily European tertiary contexts and their success and struggles with the adoption of bilingual practices. As a whole, this well written collection of a foreword, introduction and nine unique chapters, works to fill the gap in scholarship relating to developing and evaluating quality multilingual practices at the post-secondary level., This book is a highly valuable and pertinent contribution to the field [...] It will surely become a yardstick for future research into bilingual education at tertiary level.

Fernando D. Rubio Alcalá is Head of Language Policy at the University of Huelva, Spain. His main research field is foreign language acquisition, with a particular focus on multilingualism in tertiary education and the influence of affective factors in foreign language teaching and learning.Do Coyle is Professor of Language Education and Classroom Pedagogies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her specific research interests lie in plurilingual learning and cross-disciplinary networks, as well as professional learning in schools, visual learning (including the role of video conferencing and digital communication) and community sustainability through technological advancement.