Internationalization of higher education is a multifaceted and complicated concept that has received an increasing interest by scholars and researchers in the study of higher education as a discipline. One of the major underlying factors that has shifted the researchers’ attention in the concept of internationalization in post-secondary education is the developments that have occurred recently. De Wit (2019) outlines three of the most salient developments that deeply impacted the field of higher education as massification, the global knowledge economy and reputation and rankings. These recent circumstances that have mainly appeared along with globalization have profoundly shaped the focus of universities towards the trend of internationalization. Altbach (2007) explains that the field of higher education has been going

through a transformation in the 21^st century by facing such key challenges as massification, globalization, marketization, and information technology. In line with these facets, the activity approach is essentially acquired and practiced by the higher education administrators pertaining to internationalization. De Wit (2002) summarizes the activity approach to internationalization with respect to academic and extracurricular activities and practices pursued as well as international mobilities and exchanges. This paradigm can also be phrased as a mobility-oriented approach to internationalization in which quantitative and tangible outputs and indicators of internationalization, such as mobility numbers, agreements, international rankings, and so on are emphasized.

Despite alternate forms of internationalization activities and approaches that have taken rise recently, such as internationalization at home and internationalization of the curriculum (de Wit, 2019), there is also an increasing criticism that is voiced by the researchers studying internationalization of higher education in the literature. To demonstrate, Stein (2021) criticizes the dominant understandings and policies that are implemented at universities for the purpose of internationalization, stating that they employ exploitative activities, profits at maximum capacity, exclusive and disruptive policies, and neo-colonization. Given all these explanations, an urge has emerged for further investigating the notion of internationalization in higher education and related practices and policies under this concept.

The impacts of globalization on Turkey’s higher education institutions have resulted in some grand challenges that universities in Turkey are faced with, such as massification of the universities in the country in line with the increasing demand in access to higher education, internationalization of higher education, competition in research, publications, knowledge production and financial resources of higher education (Akar, 2010). At this point, internationalization of higher education at Turkey’s higher education institutions requires further exploration and examination given that the meaning of internationalization itself is currently evolving and changing. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to explore the perceptions of various stakeholders: university students, international office professionals, and academic staff  at a public university in Ankara towards the policies, practices and strategies of internationalization in the university-context.

The research questions this study aims to answer are the following:

How do the students who have experience of participation in international mobility understand the impact of internationalization on missions of the university?

How do the international office professionals understand the impact of internationalization on missions of the university?

How do the administrative staff who have experience of participation in international mobility perceive the impact of internationalization on missions of the university?

How do the academic staff who have experience in strategy and policy development perceive the impact of internationalization on missions of the university?

Since this study aims to acquire detailed information from the participants who have first-hand experience about internationalization policies, strategies and practices, qualitative research methods deemed the most appropriate choice. More specifically, case study research design will be utilized to acquire detailed information from the participants. The research setting in which the data will be collected is a public state university located in Ankara, Turkey. The research context is determined in line with the researcher’s accessibility to the context as well as the rich information opportunities pertaining to internationalization of higher education. Further justifications behind the selection of a certain university in Ankara will be presented later. The intended group of participants in this study are university students, international office professionals, administrative staff and faculty members who have experience in internationalization both at policy-development and mobility levels. 5 students both at undergraduate and graduate levels, 5 administrative staff, 3 international office professionals and 7 faculty members are intended to be interviewed within this study. For this end, a purposive sampling strategy will be employed to reach out to the individuals with direct knowledge and experience as to the internationalization strategies, policies and practices at the university. Different data collection instruments will be used in this study to garner data from the participants. Primary sources of data in this study will be semi-structured interviews. In order to start conducting interviews, ethical permission will be received from the Human Research Ethics Committee of METU. Besides the interviews, some documentary evidence at the university will also be used. These documents will include all sorts of written and published documents. The data sources are aimed to be triangulated by collecting data from the interviews with students, administrative and academic staff who have had internationalization experience in the university. In accordance with the research design and data collection instruments, data analysis will also be followed accordingly. In order to analyze the data obtained from interview protocols conducted with all four kinds of participants in this study, qualitative data analysis methods will be adopted in this study. Even though there are varied kinds of data analysis methods and strategies, mainly thematic and content analysis strategies will guide the analysis process of the present study.The interviews will be transcribed and coded by the researchers. Two groups of researchers will code the data and the other group’s codes will be compared to calculate and provide inter-rater reliability.

It is expected from the findings of the present study that the perceptions of all participants towards internationalization is very much rooted in a mobility-oriented and conventional approach in which quantitative indicators of internationalization are highlighted. In addition, it may be estimated that the three groups participants may have varying understanding as to the impacts on internationalization of the missions of the university; however, as the prominent estimation, the approach of the participants towards internationalization would be based on activity approach (De Wit, 2002) and that critical paradigms to internationalization are an emerging phenomenon among the university members. In terms of the impacts of internationalization policies and practices on missions of the university, the respondents may highlight different points and remarks regarding the internationalization agenda of the university. That is, the internationalization at the university may refer to different practices, activities and agendas for the students, international office professionals and the faculty members. Moreover, the relationship of internationalization with regard to three missions of the university, namely teaching and learning or education, research and development and service (National Commission on Education, 1994; Rubens et al., 2017), would be differently stated and explained by the three groups of the participants in this study. Despite the differentiations in the participants’ explanations of impacts of internationalization on missions of the study, some common assets in their understanding of internationalization are also expected to be delineated in this study. Overall, the present study aims at delving into one of the highly neglected aspect of internationalization at a public university, in Ankara, Turkey from the perspectives of three groups of participants in that critical approaches to internationalization are needed to be explored and discussed further in the field of higher education and internationalization of higher education.

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