EMI and Beyond: Internationalising Higher Education Curricula in Italy

The contributions to this edited volume present the state of the art on EMI/ICL in Italian higher education, drawing attention to different critical aspects of the teaching/ learning experience and highlighting the perspectives of various educational stakeholders regarding the effectiveness of tertiary study in a second/ additional/foreign language. The chapters draw on a range of methodologies, from multimodal participant observation, to action research, to video-stimulated recall (VSR), to questionnaires and interviews, in presenting studies which examine language policies and practices across various educational settings in Italy and with Italian partner institutions abroad. Overall, the volume suggests that internationalisation of the curriculum – whether in tertiary studies or in school contexts – succeeds best when the form of lessons (the language which acts as a medium of instruction) and the content of lessons (the non-linguistic discipline-specific concepts) are aligned through a counter-balanced approach (Lyster, 2007) to curriculum planning and delivery. Such an integration of content and language (ICL) in planning learning aims and outcomes and in classroom practices requires the strategic support of lecturers through training and monitoring to guarantee the quality of learning in multilingual educational settings.