Session Information
Session 7C, Internationalisation of Higher Education
Papers
Time:
2005-09-09
09:00-10:30
Room:
Science Theatre C
Chair:
Rosemary Deem
Contribution
Is it possible to talk about global knowledge, or knowledge supporting global understandings, or perhaps cultural change as knowledge in learning about internationalization, or should the question be raised differently? The question raised in a pedagogical sense would concern knowledge and teaching and learning of internationalization. In a phenomenographic sense, internationalization would be concerned with learning by a start in describing the phenomenon of internationalization as to be open for various meanings and understandings, that is, delimited in terms of aspects of internationalization underpinned by the assumption that variations of meanings and understandings would be acknowledged and put in relation with adequate educational content. Waters (2001), discuss the path of globalization through time and its influences in social science, as ranging from the 16th to the 19th centuries. His paper involves "three arenas through which globalizing processes take effect, the economy, the polity and culture" (ibid. p. 22), where he point out the "global idealization and reflexive individuation" of today. He maintain that the "new world chaos" equal "globalizing cultures" (ibid. p. 182), and says; "as material interpendence increases and as political sovereignty is whittled away, trans-national, inter-societal connections eventually become more dense and important than national, intra-social ones. The central features of this acceleration are compression of time and its elimination of space, and an emerging reflexivity or self-conscious intentionality with respect to the globalization process."(ibid. 182).Waters, in characterizing, what he names an "emergent holistic consciousness" refers to Robertson (1992, p. 25-31), who assert that "globalization involves the relativisation of individual and national reference points to general and supranational ones. It therefore involves the establishment of cultural, social and phenomenological linkages between four elements: the individual, the national society, the international system of society and, humanity in large" (Robertson inWaters, 2001, p.183).Globalization is viewed as the overall discourse and internationalization as various discourses concerning all areas relevant for the global process of today, whereas internationalization in higher education is one. In Higher education the major focus concerning ideas/intentions of internationalization has until now been, typologically, a question concerned with higher education/universities described from an organizational level closely linked with economical- political demands and presumptions/assumptions (see Adler, 1997 and Chaffee & Jacobson, 1997 and Sporn, 1996, among others). Universities, in relation to an external international environment, have, as described by Bartell (2003) during the two last decades worldwide "come under increasing pressures to adapt to rapidly changing social, technological, economic and political forces emanating from immediate as well as from broader post-industrial external environment" (ibid. p. 43). Other has discussed academic and organizational climates and cultures in higher education from an organizational level, closely linked with economical, political and approaches in policy (Person & Spencer, 1990; Austin, 1990; Rhoads & Tierney, 1990) , however, very few if any empirical explorative and qualitative investigations concerning internationalisation as interpreted by students and teachers in terms of content, teaching and learning about internationalisation, has been conducted.This paper, is based on the drawings from previous empirical studies (Wihlborg, 1999, 2003, 2004a, 2004b; Svensson & Wihlborg, forthcoming), and concerned with a pedagogical/didactical perspective. An attempt is made to discuss internationalization in higher education. It is the authors' recommendation that the investigation of the empirical studies and the results should be framed and grounded in a discourse, within the continuum process of internationalisation in/of higher education. The results, is an attribute, supporting a beginning, a 'front line' discourse tradition so to speak, emphasizing a pedagogical and didactical perspective concerned with internationalisation of/in higher education.
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