Biography
Soundous BENKORICHI is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English at ENSB, Algeria. She holds a Master degree in Applied Linguistics and is currently specializes in English-Medium Instruction (EMI), language policy, teacher professional development, higher education, and educational technology. Her current research explores the intersection of EMI implementation, teacher agency, generative Artificial Intelligence in education, and pedagogical innovation within Global South higher education contexts. She has presented research at national and international conferences and is actively engaged in projects examining language education, institutional policy, and AI-enhanced teaching and learning. Her work seeks to develop context-sensitive and ethically informed approaches to integrating emerging technologies into higher education while promoting educational equity and sustainable professional development for university educators.
Conference contributions 1
BRIDGING THE 'TENSION GAP':
A comparative study of institutional EMI policy and teacher agency in the MENA region and Global South
The adoption of large-scale educational policies often prioritizes measurable performance indicators over the complex, localized realities of classroom pedagogy. This study investigates the institutional implementation of English-medium instruction (EMI) in Algerian higher education, providing a critical MENA-region perspective on the global 'Internationalization of Higher Education' (IoHE) movement. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with ten university instructors, this research identifies a persistent 'administrative-pedagogical disconnect.' Findings reveal that when institutions focus primarily on 'rushed' implementation and bureaucratic reporting, they trigger a 'tension gap' that neglects both student engagement and the professional expertise of faculty. This study explores the cognitive and professional negotiation processes instructors undergo when caught between globalized policy demands and the immediate, linguistic-pedagogical requirements of the classroom. Ultimately, this research argues that current institutional adoption models—often mirrored in the Global South—frequently overlook the essential 'human layer' of education. By highlighting the friction between top-down governance and bottom-up instructional enactment, the paper offers a critical critique of metric-driven reform. It concludes that sustainable educational policy must prioritize pedagogical sensitivity and teacher agency to ensure that institutional change translates into meaningful classroom success rather than mere administrative compliance.