The implementation of bilingual education is part of an educational trend committed to internationalization that took off in the 2000s and extended to the university level. At the global level, the promotion of languages as tools for international academic communication has become essential, with English, in particular, becoming a lingua franca in both the global scientific community and in higher education.
This is the backdrop for the scoping review just published by a team formed by Víctor Pavón, Javier Ávila and Cynthia Pimentel, researchers in the English and German Philology Department at the University of Cordoba , their document running down two decades of research on bilingual university programs in Europe.
“Our concern in this context was to see, at the European level, what kind of methodologies and pedagogical actions are being carried out in classrooms. We tried to scientifically verify what professors really need, what they are doing, and how it impacts the results,” explained Professor Víctor Pavón.
“Drawing on eight academic databases, we identified 775 scientific articles from indexed journals that describe the implementation of bilingual courses at the university level in Europe,” said researcher Javier Ávila. These works were then analyzed to identify key pedagogical practices. The two approaches used to deliver these courses are EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning); while in EMI only the language of instruction is changed (teaching a History or Biology course in English), based on confidence that the students and professors have sufficient linguistic training, CLIL pays attention to linguistic elements and aims to reinforce students’ skills in order to ensure they have the linguistic capacities necessary to deal with highly complex academic elements.
Although the most widely used approach is EMI, the CLIL approach has been shown to be the most democratic and inclusive (and also the most difficult to implement). “If you apply EMI in a context such as Spain, where students usually lack sufficient linguistic competence, students are left out because they can't continue; they drop out, get frustrated, or quit the class,” says Ávila.
In this regard, the study revealed that the first focus of interest is language, based on the premise that there can be no learning without academic language. Regardless of the methodologies used, which included interesting ones (for example, gamification, inverted learning, project work, the creation and development of teaching materials, and the use of digital technologies), the greatest concern was that language be used appropriately in the classroom. “This is a wake-up call for those who only want to commit to the EMI approach, as the faculty underscored this: first you have to ensure the proper use of academic language,” Pavón stated.
A democratic rebellion so that English leaves no one behind
This study came about within the framework of the CLIL4ALL project, funded by the European Union and in which this UCO team aimed to investigate the implementation of this type of program in Europe, verify it applying scientific parameters, and then propose improvement strategies.
According to Pimentel: “as a result of this systematic review, informed decisions were made making it possible to offer courses attended by UCO students. This is the second part of the project, in which students’ experiences and opinions were taken into account, so that they can be applied to improve the quality of the courses, which may be offered again in the future.”
Reference
Pavón Vázquez, V., Ávila López, J., & Pimentel Velázquez, C. (2026). Exploring the pedagogical dimension for English-taught courses in European higher education: a scoping review. Language Teaching Research , 0 (0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688251410358
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Exploring the pedagogical dimension for English-taught courses in European higher education: a scoping review
28-Jan-2026