“Even the Culture Day is in English”: Teachers' Critical EMI Awareness in Hong Kong

Abstract

With the massive expansion of English medium instruction (EMI) in universities, EMI is now seeking a standing in schools of non-Anglophone countries. While the history of K–12 EMI in postcolonial settings can bear important lessons for other contexts, school-level EMI research focuses on instructional challenges, and critical insights about the dominance of English in postcolonial places are less widely explored. In this study, I examine EMI teachers' perspectives on the ideological and identity-shaping aspects of English in EMI through interviews with 21 teachers in a secondary school in Hong Kong. I also investigate several relevant Hong Kong Education Bureau policy documents (1997–2023). Qualitative content analysis of the documents shows that the policies prioritize English and EMI while mentioning a biliteracy-trilingual policy. In this discursive context, phronetic iterative coding of the interviews indicates that although these EMI teachers express interest in multiculturalism, most of them tend to embrace an instrumental image of English and not to view its political, ideological, and identity-related dimensions as serious concerns. I discuss the implications of these findings for understanding teachers' critical EMI awareness and for critical teacher education around the non-Anglophone world.