The Role of an MA TESOL Programme in an Overseas EMI Context: Wider Implications of Changing Student Demographics

For anyone committed to a career in TESOL, completing a relevant Masters’ qualification has long been seen as an important professional milestone. In the case of MA TESOL programmes delivered in UK contexts, the admissions criteria usually stipulate that participants should already be teachers and have accumulated a minimum number of years’ teaching experience. The implied epistemological reasoning behind this ruling is clear: if Masters’ participants are to make any meaningful sense of the input they will be exposed to, they first need a contextual peg on which any new knowledge, skills and competencies can be hung.

MA TESOL programmes offered in other educational contexts may no longer conform to this model. As part of the global expansion of EMI, many UK universities are now offering their MA programmes overseas and the participant base in these cases may be markedly different. This change in student demographics naturally has important pedagogic implications for MA course content and delivery. It also throws up some wider questions around the role that MA TESOL programmes should ultimately serve.

In this presentation, I will be considering these issues within the context of a long-standing British MA TESOL programme delivered at an EMI institute in China.