Abstract English Medium Instruction (EMI) has rapidly become an important part of higher education in many countries around the world. While the number of EMI programmes and institutions has increased, professional development programme (PDP) opportunities for EMI lecturers and their effectiveness are not yet well designed or closely aligned with local contexts. This research aims to develop an English Medium Instruction Professional Development Programme (EMI‐PDP) based on the lived experiences of EMI lecturers. A qualitative case study was conducted using semi‐structured interviews with 30 Turkish native‐speaking EMI lecturers from many different disciplines. Data was further supplemented by institutional documents. NVivo was used to analyse the qualitative data through multiple cycles of open, axial and pattern coding, creating categories and design principles for surveys as a grounding methodology. The data analysis results show that for EMI lecturers, professional growth is a dynamic integration of linguistic, pedagogical and intercultural competencies and that each of these competencies has developed through their institutional context. Additionally, the data highlighted key challenges faced by EMI lecturers, including inadequate institutional support, inadequate pedagogical training, linguistic anxiety and a strong desire for continued collaborative, reflective and ongoing professional learning. Using this information, a complete EMI‐PDP was created, containing six modules covering the major areas of competency development, pedagogical approaches, practical tools and institutional support. This programme is intended as a theoretically based prototype ‐based on research evidence‐that can be tested in pilot projects and refined afterwards. It has not been tested using empirical methods. This study concludes that EMI professionalization in Turkiye requires enhancement of language as well as a new vision for teaching as a reflective, collaborative and human‐centred endeavour. Context and implications Rationale for this study: EMI has expanded rapidly in Turkish higher education, yet lecturers receive little systematic professional development. This study develops a grounded, context‐informed EMI PD programme based on 30 lecturers' lived experiences. Why the new findings matter: The study reveals that EMI competence is multidimensional and context‐embedded, and that sustainable PD should be collaborative, reflective and institutionally anchored rather than imported or generic. Implications for practitioners, policy‐makers and researchers: The developed six‐module PDP provides practitioners with a framework for using this as a professional development opportunity. For university administrators and/or policy‐makers (especially in Turkiye under YÖK governance), the findings suggest that institutions should implement long‐term, sustainable professional development systems and processes, rather than solely relying on ‘one‐shot’ language workshops. For researchers, this study demonstrates the utility of grounded design as a bridge between qualitative research and programme development. The developed PDP can be reasonably expected to be transferred to other non‐Anglophone EMI contexts (especially in the Middle East, East Asia and continental Europe), where similar structural gaps exist.
Birgün et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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