Sustainable Multilingualism in Higher Education

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is motivated by our concern that multilingualism in higher education is at risk globally, for a variety of reasons. The rise of English as a de facto global lingua franca has facilitated the global flow of ideas, people, and goods, but it has also undermined the existence of regional and national languages in many contexts. In the context of higher education, academic researchers have been disseminating their research findings through publishing in the medium of English, limiting the use of regional or national languages as the media for academic communication. The adoption of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in contexts where English is not commonly used (e.g., China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam) further causes regional and national languages to be less valued. In many universities, funding support for language programs, especially those to do with languages other than English, has been cut, causing many language programs to be closed down. In contrast, language learning researchers have become increasingly critical about the monolingual bias in second language acquisition research, and problematized the assumption that the monolingual native speaker variety of the target language should be idealized as the norm for language learners to attain. Some researchers contend that language learning should be conceptualized as a dynamic process for language learners to learn additional languages and transform them into their expanding linguistic repertoire, in which languages are all considered as resources. As higher education institutions attract students with diverse linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds, higher education plays a vital role in promoting the learning and use of multiple languages, as well as sustaining the vitality of these languages as important resources for the communities in different contexts. Therefore, we need concerted efforts to address these critical issues in the pursuit of sustainable multilingualism in higher education, so that students may have opportunities to develop multilingual competence, and use their linguistic resources to enhance their educational experience in the medium of a language other than their own. To achieve these ends, we invite the following types of submissions to the Special Issue:

1. Rigorous scope reviews and analyses of conceptual and empirical studies on multilingualism to derive well-informed, evidence-driven guidance for promoting sustainable multilingualism in higher education.
2. Critical examinations of relevant policy and curriculum development to inform and refine policy and curriculum initiatives for promoting sustainable multilingualism in higher education. Conceptualizations of policy and curriculum as something other than texts (i.e., as process) are welcomed.
3. Studies on university students’ learning and use of multiple languages, including those on student-related factors, that help reveal insights into their sustainable efforts for learning and using multiple languages.
4. Studies on pedagogical strategies in promoting the learning and use of university students’ diverse linguistic resources (e.g., the use of L1 in EMI contexts) to enhance their learning.
5. Research on the professional development of teachers who play a critical role in promoting sustainable multilingualism in higher education.

We hope that the Special Issue will become an intellectual platform for colleagues to explore and identify informed strategies to promote the learning and use of multiple languages in higher education institutions, so that they can be transformed into sites where multilingualism can be sustained.

Prof. Dr. Xuesong (Andy) Gao
Prof. Dr. Yawen Han
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• higher education
• language learning
• multilingualism
• pedagogy
• language policy