NEW EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES FOR COMPETITIVE LABOUR ENVIRONMENTS: THE PATHWAY IN ENGLISH AT THE UIB

Societies nowadays change at a rapid pace, and the globalization process is one of the main determinants of the characteristics of modern economies. Society’s economic agents and human capital must present an adequate profile and competences to face the new challenges and opportunities that the knowledge economy brings about. Therefore, businessmen/employers and workers actually need not only traditional conceptual knowledge but other competences such as emotional intelligence, digital competences and language competences.
Given the increasing globalization of today’s industry and the crucial importance of the English language in the economic and business world, together with the changes in the educational learning context with the evolution of educational needs and the need to apply and use multimedia technologies in education, the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies (FEE) of the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) has designed a new educational model adapted to the new conditions, focused on the use of competitive educational tools and on the promotion of students’ language skills and competences. This new model, called a curricular Pathway in English, is offered to students as part of the Bachelor Degrees in Economics and Business Administration, with a view to boosting the internationalization of its undergraduate programs.
These language competences and knowledge are demanded by the Balearic business sector because there is a lack of workers with these skills and competences for the international expansion of the tourism firms and markets in other destinations. Furthermore, this new educational model provides an international perspective to these degrees and on completion of the course will increase job prospects for students at both Balearic and international level.
With this new model the Faculty is committed to the mission of training highly competitive young and providing efficient teaching processes. The Pathway in English is a new pilot experience which offers the Faculty’s students the opportunity to study, in English, half of the subjects from the degree courses and to spend a period at a foreign university where they can continue to study in English.
The paper analyzes and evaluates the results of this new educational model and suggests measures to improve the model in the future. The structure of the paper is as follows: first an introduction describing the main features of the Balearic Islands’ economy and human capital; the second section describes the structure, organization and management of the English Pathway and how this new educational model is part of the undergraduate degrees; the third section the resources, methodology and necessary protocols to implement this Pathway in English; next section presents results on the evaluation of this new model for the first year experience (2009-2010), with the students’ and teachers’ opinions and results; and finally, the main conclusions and policy implications.