Leading in English for Academic Purposes (EAP)
This is a structured but highly flexible course for leaders in the EAP field. It will give you a rare opportunity to engage deeply with peers and build a community of practice, sharing expertise on the four areas of TEAP criteria. Through online interactions, you will work together in personalised ‘constructive alignment’ (Biggs, 1999) on prompts of your collective choosing.
The course is for people who have a significant amount of EAP experience and day-to-day responsibility. Perhaps you occupy a demanding leadership role and do not have time for a full-time course. Nevertheless, you might feel you would benefit greatly from an opportunity to develop your practice and apply EAP theory with a cohort of peers.
This course will provide structure, accountability and motivation, guiding you on an exploration of your chosen prompts. Your learning from the course will feed into your work at your institution and your work will feed into your learning. In the spirit of a socio-constructivist approach, you will benefit from both the expertise of your peers and the expertise of facilitating staff.
Course content
The course consists of four phases, each corresponding to one of the four areas of the BALEAP TEAP accreditation criteria: planning and design, teaching and learning, assessment and feedback, and scholarship and development.
During each phase, our staff will orient everyone to the relevant area of BALEAP TEAP criteria, providing resources and a roadmap for engagement. Participants will form small groups, negotiating 'prompts' that will guide their learning. You will be encouraged to tailor your own journey, aligning both structure and subject to your needs.
Time commitment, structure and dates
This course is designed with busy EAP practitioners in mind and has a low minimum time-commitment. You will be expected to attend:
- two full-day online sessions at the beginning and end of the course (Thursday 12th March 2026 and Thursday 12th November 2026. Dates for 2027 will be released later this year.)
- six two-hour online sessions.
However, beyond this minimum requirement, your group can tailor the level of engagement to suit the needs and time-constraints of its members.
The six two-hour sessions will take place at regular intervals in between March and November. All sessions will be facilitated by a senior member of our teaching staff.
The sessions proved highly relevant to both my present practice and career development. Being able to align my day-to-day working practice closely with my activities on the course means it has had a very positive impact.
Assessment and accreditation
Assessment will be dialogic and ongoing, driven by you as participants. You will receive constructive feedback from expert peers, thereby gaining insight into how to continue developing your EAP practices.
This course is not formally accredited. However, you will gain professional insights and a deeper understanding of TEAP criteria. You will also build a community of practice with respected peers. All this will help you on the path towards BALEAP TEAP accreditation, if this is something you are pursuing.
Group size
In total, the number of people on the course will be between 16 and 20. However, you will usually be working in smaller groups of four or five people. These smaller groups may rotate throughout the year.
We will need a minimum of 10 people in order to run this course. We will let applicants know whether the course will be running by 11 February 2026.
Eligibility
This course relies on all participants being able to contribute with a high level of expertise. For this reason, we will only accept people who are working at Senior Fellow level (HEA or TEAP). While you do not need to have a formal qualification, you must be able to demonstrate a suitable level of experience.
For more information on the requirements of Senior Fellow level, please consult the BALEAP TEAP handbook.
How and when to apply
2026 applications have now closed. Applications for 2027 will open later this year.
Costs
This course fee for 2026 is £550. (2027 tbc)
We won’t ask you to print or buy any books for this course.
The LEAP course was a great opportunity to further my knowledge and practice of EAP as well as explore leadership models and practices. It was a fantastic opportunity to network with like-minded professionals and engage in meaningful discussions and tasks to develop our expertise. I also appreciate the wide variety of resources we were provided with and the feedback we received on the artefacts we produced. I look forward to continuing the projects I started on this course as well as the professional relationships started with other course participants.