Internationalizing the Content of Higher Education - a need for further development of the curriculum perspective

Author(s):

Monne WihlborgLennart Svensson

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 02A, Developing Internationalism in Higher Education (Part 1)

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-10

11:15-12:45

Room:

B2 213

Chair:

Barbara Zamorski

Contribution

Internationalisation of higher education is a current theme in research on and politics of higher education. Both at national and institutional levels, in many countries, internationalisation is stated to be an educational goal. The theme in this paper is related to present developments of and concerns about the growing border-crossing activities that take place between nations and their systems of Higher Education. Higher education is expected to be grounded in research, research to be an international activity, and the universities to have an international orientation also in their education of students. The dominant discourse on internationalisation of higher education in research and research based discussions have up till now been from political, economic and organisational perspectives. There is also a tendency to place internationalisation within the frame of globalisation and the increasing trade in educational services worldwide. We do not dispute that this research is helpful to clarify some main political and economic conditions for and ways of organising higher education. However, this research does not give much basis for internationalising the teaching and learning in higher education. There is a need of addressing questions about the internationalising of the content of education. In some previous empirical studies we have found that the didactical realisation of internationalisation as an educational goal is very elusive. The concrete content considered to represent internationalisation seems to be rather haphazardly included in teaching and learning. There is also a tendency to look at what is considered to be general knowledge and general human qualities as what represents internationalisation without considering cultural differences. There is a lack of development of internationalisation in higher education when it comes to teaching and learning intercultural knowledge and competencies. There is no institutionalised curriculum thinking as a basis for developing internationalisation of the education. The concrete thinking is very much restricted to organisational and administrative aspects of the education. The thinking about educational content and learning outcomes is much idealised and general and not developed into clarifying and useful specifications underpinned by curriculum theory. In this article we present and discuss this situation and some conditions for a curriculum approach to internationalisation of higher education, arguing that the curriculum aspect must become a more prominent part in internationalising higher education.

Method

In order to understand the phenomenon of internationalisation of higher education from a pedagogical perspective, the present authors raised questions about how the intentions of internationalisation of higher educations were realised. There seemed to be a need for to conduct and investigate the issue using a qualitative approach. Some empirical studies of the nurse education in Sweden were conducted between 2000 and 2005, aiming at describing the phenomenon of internationalization as experienced by teachers and students. The nurse education within higher education was chosen as an example where internationalization has been emphasized as goal over a long time (HsV 1998:16R; SFS 1992:1434; SFS 1993:100; Jarvis, 1996). It is an education well suited for discussions about universal human conditions, cultural differences and intercultural relations important as parts of the education content and resulting capabilities. Both interviews with students and teachers and a survey study with teachers were carried out. This article draws on the results of analyses of these interviews with students and teachers as well as the survey study with teachers (Wihlborg, 1999 [study I], 2004a [study II], 2004b [study III]; Wihlborg, 2005; Svensson & Wihlborg, 2007 [study IV]).

Expected Outcomes

Globalization and the need for curricula change will become the great challenge in higher education worldwide in the decades to come, a change that many other authors also mention as important (Wells et al., 1998; Urry, 2005; Mesterhauser, 1998). What is called for is a curriculum theory involving rationales for internationalised teaching and learning and changes in scholarly approach. A curriculum approach to internationalization is important for several reasons. The main reason is that the practice would be able to critically reflect on what is meant by internationalized teaching and learning, and for what reasons and by what claims concrete interpretations of curricular objectives of internationalization are made. What and how students learn and why the knowledge achieved is of importance would then become open to reflect on, and in turn, open up for the possibility to problemise what features to change or support and promote in practice. Our conclusion is that, though internationalization of higher education is highly emphasized by writers in the educational sphere, no discourse has yet been established investigating the phenomenon from a curriculum perspective, or by describing the phenomenon in didactical terms involving teachers ways of ‘handling teaching and learning’ of aspects of internationalisation in practice, and an understanding of the phenomenon in relation to curricular objectives stated for higher education. De Vitas and Case (2003) discussion of the internationalisation agenda in UK higher education as well as the studies of specific courses aiming at internationalisation, referred to above, illustrate the lack of comprehensive curriculum thinking. This is also in line with our more detailed results from the Swedish nurse education. We argue that the development of a theoretical basis for internationalisation is one of the important pedagogical challenges for the 21st century.We end this presentation by suggesting some main characteristics of a curriculum approach to the understanding of internationalization. We suggest that the concept of learning environment is very important because internationalization in relation to globalization in an educational perspective entails a widening of the environmental opportunities for learning. Here it is important to consider variation in access in an external way but also that what becomes the learning context to the individual learner is dependent on what is used by the learner and that the learning context also includes the learner’s experience and capabilities. The language issue is here of a special relevance since the language of communication both represents an opportunity for learning and a limitation of opportunities for learning in varying degrees for different learners. Conscious decisions should be taken in relation to global, regional and local conditions and democratically based aims of education concerning language as well as the internationalisation of subject matter content of higher education. In the empirical studies referred to above, four main areas of internationalization were found: similarities and differences in formalities of educational systems, exchanges of students and teachers, medical/technical knowledge and intercultural knowledge. A main challenge to educational and didactic thinking and theory development concerns how the two first areas, formalities and exchanges, are related to different effects and to the two other areas identified, discipline knowledge (medical/technical in our example) and intercultural knowledge, and also how these latter areas, discipline knowledge and intercultural knowledge, are related to each other. It is this kind of comprehensive knowledge that can give a basis for internationalizing higher education in more than an adaptive way in relation to globalization and/or as more than a wishful policy.

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Author Information

Monne Wihlborg

Lund University

Lund

186

Lennart Svensson

Lund university

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