ABSTRACT
Research-based learning is an intellectually stimulating academic approach, which has gained ground in contemporary higher education curricula. Our article addresses this field and explores contextual viability of implementing research-based Academic English (AE) programmes. Bangladesh, an English as a foreign language (EFL) environment, is the research context; and Research Informed Teaching (RIT), an educational approach of teaching–research integration, is the conceptual base of our study. We collected data from four universities using a learning experience questionnaire completed by students and semi-structured interviews with EFL lecturers. Our critical approach to investigating the context identified three powerful factors, namely learning culture, graduate employability, and academic support provision linked to research-based AE education at Bangladeshi universities. The key lesson we have learned is that the localisation of global evidence through an evaluation of the target context is vital in implementing any research-based language education model. Our findings are Bangladesh higher education specific, but the approach of investigation and the directions are transferrable to other educational contexts.
