A brief CV

David Marsh PhD has contributed to Finnish educational innovation over three decades.  He has professional experience in 45 countries, contributed to 175 publications, and received 5 degrees from the United Kingdom, Finland and Spain. He co-launched Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) under the auspices of the European Commission in the early 1990s.  He is currently engaged with developing models for bilingual education environments in schools, and universities.  Co-authored publications relevant to this conference include Content and Language Integrated Learning (Cambridge University Press 2010); Teaching through English in Higher Education: Realizing Internationalization in Practice (IOHE 2017); Shaping the Future: A Framework for Building CLIL Environments in Higher Education (UdeG 2019);  Implementing Internationalization of Academia: Teaching, Learning and Research through English (UdeG 2019); Managing Research & Higher Education Contexts through English (ECF 2019). His current work-in-progress is The Children of Cyberspace: Towards a New Understanding, due for publication in 2021.

Innovate Bilingual Education School Classrooms

Generation Z students have often experienced high exposure to integrated technologies.  This influences how their minds process and use information. These are technologically astute young people who generate their own cultures and habits of learning, which can cross traditional boundaries of time, space, form and geography.  Generations Y and Z are part of a profound technological and cultural leap, which, in turn invites an educational leap.  

When we teach these young people through bilingual education, we have opportunities not commonplace in monolingual education. These are increasingly being realized in high-impact schools and classes.  Teachers strive to both accommodate the benefits of digital lifestyles, and to create innovative forms of teaching and learning environments which align to what we now know about bilingual thinking, mind and brain. 

The main driving force for success is often a combination of understanding what needs to be done alongside how to do it. This presentation will describe some of these with a focus on innovation, integration and inspiration.

Successful Bilingual Education within a University Ecosystem

Whereas the objectives may differ, universities adopting bilingual education practices face the same question: Does the adoption of an additional language such as English require change management, support mechanisms, and possibly the professional development of academic staff?

To address this question, this presentation describes a Key Development Indicator (KDI). The matrix involves twenty actions that need consideration if bilingual education is to be successfully embedded in teaching, learning and research practices. The university is viewed as an ecosystem where change of one type leads to impact and possibly the need for change in another. The actions primarily involve governance, management, and praxis. 

Distinction is drawn between the essentially monolingual praxis of EMI (English as the Medium of Instruction) and bilingual praxis (CLIL – Content and Language Integrated Learning). EMI is considered prone to failure in most contexts, including higher education in English-speaking countries.

Developed in Finland and applied in European and North American higher education, the KDI matrix serves as a key support process for both start-up and ongoing implementation of tertiary level bilingual education.