Resumen de Lectures’ multimodal and multilingual practices and needs across EME sites: implications for professional development

Vicente Beltrán Palanques, Ute Smit

• Addressing the tension inherent in educational research between locally based realities and broader trends, this exploratory study draws on semi-structured interviews to identify English-medium education lecturers’ use of languages, resources and tools in the classroom, and their professional development (PD) needs. The dataset comprises ten lecturers from two universities, one each in Austria and Spain. The qualitative content analysis revealed some differences regarding the roles of English and other languages. Reflecting institutional policies, findings underline the site-specific framing of English mainly as a lingua franca in the Austrian setting vs. as a foreign language in the Spanish one. While all lecturers identify translanguaging as key to overcoming communication barriers and ensuring content accessibility, it is specific to the Austrian context that it is also seen as a resource for enhanced knowledge development. Additionally, all lecturers showed awareness of using multimodal resources to facilitate disciplinary content delivery. For the future, lecturers expressed interest in learning about the implementation of artificial intelligence, and in strategies to promote communication skills and the use of English in the classroom. This study calls for further research to identify lecturers’ discipline and context-specific needs, supporting PD initiatives that are relevant and tailored to effectively strengthen teaching practices.