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Abstract

This article introduces the special edition entitled ‘Critical reflections on contemporary higher education and developments of and in internationalization’. The articles presented here have resulted from the growing interest in internationalisation among members of the European Educational Research Association Network 22, Research in Higher Education. The authors responded to a special call for papers at the ECER 2016 Conference held at University College, Dublin, taking a critical stance on the phenomenon of internationalisation in relation to higher education. In this special edition, we explore a range of contemporary issues impacting upon European and European-influenced higher education policies, dialogues and practices. Internationalisation is conceptualised as a process where cross-cultural challenges are addressed, deliberative pedagogies are developed, and curriculum and the broader higher education experience is enriched to encourage individual and collective agency and engagement with the complex challenges facing society (Shaffer et al., 2017). The papers explore and critique the conceptual and methodological challenges and possibilities of researching internationalisation. They transcend institutional, disciplinary and national boundaries, and aim to offer new research approaches, analytical tools and frameworks, and a robust critique of ideas around internationalising higher education in Europe and beyond.

Keywords

Higher education internationalisation inclusivity sustainability transformation critical stance

Introduction

This special issue focuses on research into the internationalisation of higher education (HE). The internationalisation of education policy in general, and HE policy in particular, is one of the most significant forces affecting universities across the world. Educational research has always been fundamentally ‘international’ (McCulloch, 2016), with a rich history that is relevant to contemporary realities (Altbach and De Wit, 2015). Globalisation, expansion, massification and privatisation have contributed to internationalisation policies and processes that have radically changed national HE systems (Dobbins and Kwiek, 2017). In Europe and across the world, many universities now focus on internationalisation as a key strategic priority (EUA, 2013; Jones et al., 2016). The Europe 2020 Growth Strategy and its flagship initiatives, launched in 2010 in response to the economic crisis, highlight the importance of smart, sustainable and inclusive European HE as a policy driver.

Nonetheless neoliberal interpretations of internationalisation have become drivers and structuring forces influencing the development of educational policy and the direction(s) of educational research in many contexts (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). HE has increasingly been commodified by governments as a service industry (Connell, 2013; Matthews, 2014) with national policies that regard internationalisation as a means for growth and income generation in the HE sector. This movement, principally driven by broader economic imperatives and competitive factors, has fostered internationalisation strategies that often focus primarily on transnational mobility (both outward and inward, staff and student mobility), with ambitious targets for international staff and student recruitment, and for strategic international partnerships for research and publications. A prestige culture has emerged in which these rather instrumental factors play into the metrics that are regarded as indicators of the success of HE institutions (West and Rich, 2012). As noted by Connell, ‘A first-order effect of the neoliberal turn is to instrumentalize research and teaching. Research that benefits a corporate or organizational interest, or fits a politician’s definition of national priorities, is encouraged’ (Connell, 2013).

In 2013 the European Commission Communication ‘European Higher Education in the World’ called specifically for the development of more comprehensive internationalisation strategies to promote mobility and cooperation between universities, EU member states and non-EU countries, and to enhance the overall quality of European education. Experiencing internationalisation as a dynamic movement, in line with authors such as Marginson (2010), Marginson et al. (2010), Peters and Britez (2010), Peters (2012, 2014), Knight (2014), De Wit et al. (2015), Barnett (2016) and Zhou (2016), we agree that a more comprehensive process is required. However, the results from the Fifth Global Survey of the International Association of Universities suggest that while some HE institutions regard internationalisation as important and aspire to comprehensively increase activity across research, teaching and civic engagement endeavours, other institutions do not prioritise internationalisation (Marinoni and De Wit, 2019). If internationalisation is interpreted as a values-based movement that improves the quality of teaching, learning and research, enhances the experience and understandings of staff and students, and addresses societal issues to improve cross-cultural understanding, inclusion and social justice, then this unevenness of response across the sector is a concern.

In this special edition, the papers forefront the development of more global perspectives in staff and students as a key priority, not only to satisfy the vision of universities producing high-quality graduates for the global labour market (Harrison, 2015) but also to enable more individuals to develop the values, knowledge, attitudes and skills, dispositions and democratic principles which enable them to co-exist (Council of Europe, 2016: 8) and to make a critically informed, responsible contribution to society. Academic cooperation and exchange has played an essential role in the maintenance of relationships between nations during troubling economic and political periods, and continues to be an important mechanism for keeping communication open and dialogue active (Altbach and De Wit, 2015). However, opportunities for international mobility for collaboration and knowledge exchange are available to a relatively limited number in the academic community. In more holistic, inclusive and sustainable approaches to internationalisation (Shiel and Jones, 2016) transformations in the understandings of the non-mobile majority of the HE community are made possible through advances in technology (Jiang, 2008) and the internationalisation of the curriculum (Leask, 2015) and of the broader HE experience (Robson et al., 2018). Formal and informal curricular and dialogic experiences offer opportunities for ‘internationalisation at home’ across a range of teaching, learning and social activities in culturally diverse settings, enabling individuals to gain international and intercultural mindsets without necessarily going abroad (Beelen and Jones, 2015; Wachter, 2003). Internationalising the outlook and mindsets of students and staff, including those who are not internationally mobile, involves thinking and talking about ‘what we do, and what we are’ (Ball, 2015, cited in Lim, 2016) and the complex range of factors influencing our personal, academic and professional identities (Lim, 2016; Sanderson, 2008). Innovative forms of communication and collaboration across disciplinary, institutional and national borders are needed to reframe more nuanced understandings of internationalisation, for example the relationship between the global and the local, internationalisation and international, and sustainable development in relation to the research, teaching and civic engagement roles of HE institutions (Pashby and De Oliveira Andreotti, 2016).

The aims of this special edition

In this special edition, we explore a range of contemporary issues impacting European and European-influenced HE policies, dialogues and practices. Internationalisation is conceptualised as a process where cross-cultural challenges are addressed and deliberative pedagogies are developed that encourage students to develop critical perspectives on societal issues, and where the curriculum and the broader HE experience are enriched to encourage individual and collective agency and deliberative, democratic engagement with the complex challenges facing society (Shaffer et al., 2017). The rapid movement of ideas, instruments and artefacts across increasingly porous national boundaries produces what Rizvi and Lingard (2010) have described as a dominant global social imaginary, or collective understanding about the means and ends of education. This edition aims to contribute to this movement through co-authored papers that transcend institutional, disciplinary and national boundaries and offer new research approaches, analytical tools and frameworks, and a robust critique of ideas around internationalising HE in Europe and beyond.

The papers presented here have resulted from the growing interest in internationalisation among members of the European Educational Research Association Network 22, Research in Higher Education. The authors responded to a special call for papers at the ECER 2016 Conference held at University College, Dublin, taking a critical stance on the phenomenon of internationalisation in relation to HE. In this special issue, they explore and critique the conceptual and methodological challenges and possibilities of researching internationalisation. A series of interrelated thematic research strands are explored, each linked to inclusive, sustainable HE internationalisation, and fuelled by a common curiosity and passion for a more values-based approach.

Policy drivers

Two of the papers presented in this issue (Wihlborg; Brögger) relate specifically to the Bologna Process and its impacts on current and future research and practice in HE internationalisation. The Bologna Process set out to harmonise European educational programmes with initiatives that attempted to create comparable, compatible and coherent systems of HE in the region (Crosier and Parveva, 2013). Numerous initiatives within and beyond the European HE space indicate the global spread of the influence of Bologna and its implications beyond the boundaries of the signatory countries (Crosier and Parveva, 2013). Wihlborg (this issue) presents a follow-up study to an earlier literature review of the Bologna Process (Wihlborg and Teelken, 2014). The earlier review noted that, considering both the significance of the Bologna Process and the number of papers that engage with it, surprisingly little research has been conducted with a critical and reflective standpoint on the impacts of Bologna. In view of the numerous ways Bologna impacts the conditions for future developments of internationalisation in HE across Europe, structural implications deserve closer attention. Wihlborg’s paper presents an updated position, with a thematic analysis of 38 studies and a specific focus on studies that express diverse critical viewpoints. It explores and problematises emerging concerns and their wider conceptual framing to deepen the reflection on the possible consequences of these trends. Thus, the focus of the analysis of these empirical research studies was concerned with their viewpoints reflecting critically on the Bologna Process as a strong driver of internationalisation in Europe. The analysis considers the expected outcomes affecting the conditions for the future development of the Bologna Process and problematised with the voices of Nussbaum, Gramsci, De Oliveira Andreotti and Souza. The study is positioned within the ongoing debate on the need for reconceptualisation of dominant notions of internationalisation.

Brögger’s paper (this issue) explores how two education standards gained a hegemonic status in the Bologna Process and thus gave rise to extensive internationalisation of the European HE curriculum. She analyses how the first education standard, an input-based curriculum that prioritised knowledge content, was transformed into an output-based and objectives-driven curriculum. The second transition from a longitudinal timeframe structure to a block structure based on clearly defined and demarcated modules, compliant with the European Credit Transfer System points, led to the introduction of the outcome-based modular curriculum. The paper adopts a policy-borrowing approach to investigate policy studies (Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2012) and the processual character of the internationalisation of the HE curriculum. It draws on empirical data from a qualitative ethnographic study in a university and a university college in Denmark, together with observations and semi-structured interviews with top- and mid-level managers and professors, and analysis of empirical documents related to the Bologna Process, at governmental and institutional levels.

Brögger offers ‘a poststructuralist critique of knowledge as representation’ and critiques the ‘universalist pretensions’ in HE documentation. Her interpretation of documents as ‘artefacts of modern knowledge practices’ leads to an analysis, not of the documents themselves or what they claim to represent, but rather of the ways in which they ‘constitute an agentic infrastructure allowing certain standards to gain hegemonic power’. The paper illustrates how the process transformed the underlying education policy, the purpose and content of the curriculum. Modularisation made it possible to address the needs of employers within the curriculum. This commodification of the curriculum may be efficient from a marketisation perspective, although this may not always sit comfortably with staff. Brögger suggests that new standards gain power by being circulated through the infrastructures created by the Bologna signatories, making hegemonic power visible.

While it may be impossible to predict quite how geopolitical, economic and demographic realities will shape the future direction of the HE agenda in the current climate, the issue of whether the cooperation and dialogue within and beyond Europe emanating from the Bologna Process can be facilitated and sustained is a significant challenge ahead.

Inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches

The role of dialogue is an important feature of other papers in this edition as a means to advance inter- and trans-disciplinary understandings and learning about internationalisation in and of HE. Innovative and creative research methodologies can provide ‘powerful shared space’ for global networks of researchers of HE internationalisation(s) (Moran et al., 2016), while opening up opportunities for new research perspectives and collaborations. Khoo et al. (this issue) note that research into HE internationalisation is ‘embedded within continuing ambiguity and uncertainty about the systemic changes occurring in HE’. Their paper discusses the potential for ethical ‘bridging’ of the different perspectives of researchers and research stakeholders when conducting research into HE internationalisation(s) by adopting inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborative methodological approaches. Inter- and trans-disciplinarity, they suggest, can provide meta-theoretical means to problematise reductive and disciplinary approaches, both methodologically and as a broader enterprise. They can bridge academic and social dimensions of internationalisation to enable cross-cultural understandings to be developed, fostering openness to cultural and values-based collaborations in a manner that enables shared principles to be established while remaining attentive to problems of power and ethics. The authors bring together a variety of disciplinary and practitioner perspectives to illustrate how research on HE internationalisation(s) can create purposive spaces and structured opportunities for reflexive interactions that can integrate a range of academic disciplines, economies, practices and identities.

Almeida, Robson, Morosini and Baranzeli (this issue) explore the contribution of a UK-Brazil research network to the construction of more equitable and values-based approaches to ‘Internationalization at Home’ (IaH). The paper focuses on the concept of IaH as an alternative, more inclusive discourse to the market-driven agendas underpinning contemporary HE internationalisation strategies. The paper adopts a qualitative, participatory approach to study multiple constructed realities holistically. Drawing on data from HE staff in the UK and Brazil, the paper explores perspectives on what is important to an IaH agenda, to internationalise curricula, and to promote graduate attributes within this agenda. It brings together a range of perspectives from different academic disciplines, research and teaching roles, and senior management and professional service roles, in the private (not-for-profit) and public sectors. It considers the challenges that exist to maintain the positive benefits of internationalisation in volatile political circumstances and in competitive HE environments, putting political and economic rationales in context by highlighting the academic, social and cultural benefits of internationalisation for HE and its communities. It suggests that an IaH agenda should attend to the following dimensions: the institutional or organisational side of internationalisation; the development of teaching and learning and, crucially, the personal experiences of the social actors involved in internationalisation processes.

Student perspectives on internationalisation

HE internationalisation has been described as the process by which HE institutions compete for students globally as well as the processes by which they attempt to prepare students for a globalised world. Social transformation models of internationalisation call for ‘radical reform to curricula’ in order to foster ‘engaged global citizenship’ (Hanson, 2010: 70). Ensuring that the HE experience prepares graduates to be able to live and work in a globally interconnected society is widely recognised as important by both universities and employers (Jones, 2010). The extent to which students embrace opportunities to develop intercultural competences and global perspectives is highly variable (Harrison, 2015). Lehtomäki, Moate and Posti-Ahokas (this issue) explore ‘global responsibility’ in HE students’ cross-cultural dialogues. Their paper investigates conceptions related to global citizenship and the ethical responsibilities of HE institutions in the light of global sustainable development goals. The paper critically reflects on internationalisation from the students’ perspective with key data derived from an analysis of students’ learning assignments. The paper draws on data from a Finnish university, and from student assignments following a purposefully designed, two-day seminar on achieving quality education for all. It explores the experiences of a very diverse cohort of students of cross-cultural dialogue and discusses what has been meaningful in the constitution of cultural practices and communities. The paper highlights challenges for HE institutions to engage students in global issues, to enable them to relate the local to the global, and to reflect upon where the responsibility lies for educational transformation. It profiles differences between, on the one hand, the policy goals of internationalisation emphasising competitiveness, economic growth, employment prospects and economical gains; and, on the other hand, transformative pedagogies that support HE students’ cross-cultural learning, sense of global connectedness (Hanson, 2010) and ability to connect personal understandings to wider debates about education. This paper suggests that nurturing a disposition that values connectedness can help students to make sense of the world and to learn the required knowledge, skills and sense of responsibility to engage in securing a better world (De Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2016; Tikly, 2015).

Concluding remarks

Although many HE institutions give rhetorical commitment to a more socially responsible ideal, the marketisation of HE and of society in general is reflected in the tensions between external, economic and political demands, and internal, academic and social values in HE (Almeida et al., this issue). Altbach and De Wit (2015) caution that we should be realistic that international cooperation and exchange are not guarantees for peace and mutual understanding. However, they continue to be essential mechanisms for keeping communication open and dialogue active. Innovative inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to research are also important means to generate discourse that advances pluralistic, diversal, decolonial and social justice foci, and broadens our cross-cultural understandings and knowledge in order to address emerging societal changes and challenges. This special edition has aimed to contribute to this discourse about the values-driven, non-market social and collective benefits of HE internationalisation (De Wit et al., 2015). Perhaps most crucial in the current geopolitical climate is to maintain the dialogue about whether and how this dynamic movement in European HE can contribute to stability, social cohesion and cultural tolerance (Marginson, 2014: 61). Looking back on Readings’ (1996) problematising on ‘the university in ruins’ and looking into the future, it seems timely to revisit our vision for universities, their social function and their role in the production of ideologies of excellence (Saunders and Ramirez, 2017) and quality, from collaborative, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives, as a microcosm of society.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Sue Robson, PhD, is Emerita Professor of Education in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests include internationalization and professional learning in HE.

Monne Wihlborg, PhD, is Associate Professor in Education in Social Sciences, works at the institution of cross disciplinary Health Sciences, and is an elective member of the Teaching Academy at the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden. She is a co-convener of the European Educational Research Associations in the network Research in Higher Education since 2007 EERA/ECER. Her current research interest involves issues related to the phenomenon of internationalization in and of higher education and epistemological issues concerned with knowledge and professional development. Monne.Wihlborg@med.lu.se

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Internationalisation of higher education: Impacts,challenges and future possibilities

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The aims of this special edition

Policy drivers

Inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches

Student perspectives on internationalisation

Concluding remarks

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

Author biographies

References