DR. PILAR MUR-DUEÑAS PARTICIPATES IN A COLLABORATIVE MEETING OF THE THEMATIC NETWORK IMICLES

Our team member Pilar Mur-Dueñas has attended an online meeting organized by the thematic network IMICLES (“Internationalization and Multilingualism: Strategies for the Integration of Content and Language in Higher Education”) on the 5th of March, 2025. 

It is coordinated by Dr. Noelia Ruiz (Universitat Jaume I) and funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, under the 2024 call for Research Networks (RED2024-154338-T). IMICLES brings together eleven Spanish universities with the common goal of developing strategies for language policies, teacher training, and the internationalization of higher education. It is aligned with the Documento Marco de Política Lingüística para la Internalización de la Universidad Española (CRUE, Bazo et al., 2017). 

The IMICLES kick-off meeting started with an overview of the IMICLES thematic network, and it served to introduce the scope and the goals of the project, which is structured around five clear objectives (to accomplish from the 1st of May, 2025, to the 30th of April, 2027), each coordinated by one or more participating institutions. 

The first objective of this project is to gather information about current language policies and internalization plans that exist at the participating universities, offering a national overview. The second objective is to compile data on the teaching of foreign languages, especially English, to understand its current state and compare practices across institutions in the network. The third objective involves creating a website used to share information about the network’s progress and outcomes. The fourth objective centres on gathering data on the different teacher teaching plans available, for mainly English Medium Instruction in higher education, to review the current state of the programmes, contents, and methodologies. The final objective is to elaborate a framework document that will include a report with findings, good practices, and proposals for language policy and teacher development. It will serve as a guide to future strategies on multilingualism and internationalization in Spanish higher education institutions. 

The research team InterGedi will be working on objective number 4 of the IMICLES project, and will focus on compiling information on training plans, including aspects such as institutional recognition and current pedagogical approaches. This will allow for an understanding of the present practices, serving as the foundation for a shared training programme that promotes innovative pedagogies for teaching English content in specialized areas. This objective will be coordinated by Mireia Trench (UPF, GREILI), Mª José Luzón (Unizar, GENCI), and Pilar Mur (Unizar, InterGedi), who will collaborate on data collection and the development of the common programme.  

This first meeting has been a great opportunity to get to know the goals and structure of the IMICLES network, as well as to exchange viewpoints and experiences with peer colleagues from the universities involved. This has been only the first of several steps to be taken throughout 2025 and 2026, as the project sets the foundations for further collaborative research practices and shared reflections on foreign language policy and teaching practices in higher education in Spain.