Conclusion the ways forward

English-medium instruction (henceforth EMI) is defined as the “use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions where the first language of the majority of the population is not English” (Macaro, 2018, p. 1). When the possibility of publishing a title on EMI in K-12 settings became tangible, we have accepted the opportunity almost immediately as we believe that the volume would become valuable resources to researchers, teachers, parents, and students in EMI from different national contexts as well as to take stock of how EMI has been implemented and examined across educational levels. The chapters comprised in the volume address gaps in EMI research in multiple facets, including both qualitative and quantitative research on EMI pedagogy and learning, EMI pedagogy in the STEM classrooms, and shedding light on impact from perspectives of key stakeholders on EMI. The contributors of the volume have not only given timely addition to content and language integrated learning (CLIL) research by moving beyond the secondary settings (e.g., Dalton-Puffer & Nikula, 2014) but also demonstrated researchers’ and educators’ commitment with providing EMI students in English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) contexts with meaningful learning opportunities in both disciplinary literacy and content development via flexible, multimodal EMI pedagogy. Inspired by findings of the empirical studies of the volume, in this concluding chapter we would like to put forward three suggestions to stimulate thinking about how to move on in EMI research and practices in K-12 settings. Copyright © 2025 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.