How do the contexts of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) affect how we develop materials?

Brief description

EAP is a highly complex activity which demands a wide range of knowledge and skills from us as EAP teachers. We need to move between numerous communities such as the institution, the departments and disciplines of the students we work with. We also need to liaise with people across the university to conduct needs analyses, promote our provision or team teach. Perhaps because of this complexity, EAP as a field has been described as fragmented and lacking a shared knowledge base (Ding and Evans, 2022), which can limit opportunities for us to learn from each other and develop the field. Therefore, a better understanding of what kind of knowledge EAP teachers use, and why and how we use it could help towards understanding each other as a community.  
In this talk I would like to share how I investigated this issue for my PhD project, focusing on the knowledge that 6 EAP teachers in the UK used when doing in-sessional course development. I will explore how the different contexts of each teacher shaped their understanding of the purpose of EAP and how this influenced the design of materials and their delivery in class. I will illustrate my talk with examples of lesson materials, observation notes and interviews with teachers. 
I hope that these examples will stimulate discussion with you at Chalmers about your contexts and how these influence your own EAP practice.