VietTESOL International Convention 2026

In response to Vietnam’s English-as-a-Second-Language policy, the development of university lecturers’ pedagogical readiness for English-medium instruction (EMI) has been provided with greater attention. Existing EMI research in Vietnam, however, has largely conceptualized readiness as an individual matter, primarily emphasizing lecturers’ language proficiency and pedagogical competence through survey-based or perception-oriented approaches (Ngo, 2019; Tri & Moskovsky, 2019; Vo, 2023; Vu & Burns, 2014). Such perspectives may overlook the complex realities in which EMI is enacted in higher education.
This study, drawing on an ecological perspective, reconceptualizes pedagogical readiness as a situated and contextually mediated process shaped by interacting factors across policy, institutional, pedagogical, and classroom domains. Adopting a qualitative multi-site case study design, the study employs semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, post-observation reflections, and policy or institutional documents to examine how lecturers negotiate EMI practices across different higher education settings in Vietnam.
Findings indicate that lecturers’ readiness for EMI is shaped by interconnected tensions across these ecological perspectives. At the policy level, a gap exists between national aspirations to promote English as a second language and the perceived social or occupational demand for English, contributing to uneven lecturer engagement with EMI. Institutionally, universities’ ambitions for EMI often remain insufficiently matched by sustained investment in lecturer preparedness. At the pedagogical and classroom levels, rigid curricula, assessment pressures, students’ fragmented English foundations, and disciplinary demands frequently constrain lecturers’ readiness, prompting adaptive practices such as translanguaging, scaffolding, and instructional simplification.