Co‐Teaching in a Virtual Intensive Study Language Programme: Insights From Team Ethnography

ABSTRACT

As virtual study abroad becomes an increasingly important form of international education, little is known about how transnational teaching is organised and sustained across institutions. Using activity theory as an analytical framework and team ethnography as methodology, this study examines a virtual intensive study (VIS) programme delivered through collaboration between home‐ and host‐country teachers during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The dataset consists of four lesson recordings, 10 student interviews, two teacher focus group interviews, 21 sets of field notes and programme artefacts. The findings show that VIS generated educational, personal and social benefits and enhanced student engagement, speaking confidence and intercultural awareness. The virtual format broadened access and inclusivity and created opportunities for meaningful language use. The study also identifies systematic tension across the activity system. Interpreted as contradictions, these tensions both constrained and stimulated programme development. The concept of knotworking further illuminates how participants responded through distributed coordination, continually negotiated roles, reconfigured teacher agency across institutional and geographical boundaries, and creatively mobilised resources to sustain learning. The study extends research on virtual exchange and study abroad by shifting attention from learner outcomes to the organisational dynamics of transnational teaching. It argues that the effectiveness of virtual international education depends less on technological affordances than on the design, coordination and institutional support of the activity system. These findings position VIS not simply as a substitute for physical mobility, but as a distinctive model of inclusive and distributed international language education.