This research explores transnational education from the perspective of (cross)cultural educational encounters between cooperating higher education institutions (HEIs). Transnational higher education (TNHE) refers to all forms of education in which students are located in a country different from that of the awarding institution (UNESCO/Council of Europe, 2001). Distinguishing TNHE from traditional student and staff mobility, Knight & McNamara (2017) highlight that TNHE entails “programmes and providers moving across national borders to deliver higher education programmes and credentials” (p. 1). In practice, TNHE includes a variety of formats, such as short trainings, full degree education, and international branch campuses, involving physical and virtual mobility and different cooperation arrangements. The most common are collaborative TNHE formats, e.g. joint/double degrees, twinning programmes, and locally supported distance programmes (Knight, 2016).

An increasing interest in TNHE has been evident among HEIs in Europe and globally (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016). Generally seen as beneficial for HEIs, TNHE widens opportunities for international learning, skills development, strategic alliances, and income generation. However, TNHE has been criticised for treating “education as a product which can be packaged and sold abroad” (Branch, 2019, p. 23). Previous studies have shown that providing education in another country involves complex processes of cultural contextualisation described as the “translation” of educational concepts (Jordan et al., 2014) while considering the wider sociocultural contexts in which the collaborating HEIs operate. In other words, (cross)cultural dynamics have been emphasised as the key aspect of TNHE (Tran et al., 2023). Critical voices highlight that delivering education across borders – mainly from developed to developing countries – creates unequal power distribution between TNHE ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ (Pyvis, 2011), leading to a form of “cultural hegemony through education” (Ziguras, 2008, p. 44).

Aiming to gain insight into the complex processes of cultural contextualisation in TNHE, this research project examines three cases of transnational pedagogical partnerships between a Finnish university and universities in Palestine, Brazil, and Thailand. The research framework builds on previous scholarship on cultural contextualisation in TNHE (e.g., Caruana & Montgomery, 2015; Ziguras, 2008), institutional cultures in higher education (Tierney & Lanford, 2020; Trowler, 2008), and poststructuralist discourse analysis (Foucault, 2002; Willig, 2013). An analytical concept of teaching and learning cultures is used to refer to the discursive meaning-making processes that guide the ways in which educational processes are understood and organised at an institution.

The research poses two research questions:

1. What are the features of teaching and learning cultures in HEIs located in three national contexts (Palestine, Brazil, and Thailand)?
2. What kinds of change processes are introduced by the transnational pedagogical cooperation and how are those manifested in the (institutional) teaching and learning cultures?

The presentation will give an overview of the findings of the three case studies (Holubek et al., 2022, 2025, and third study in review) and discuss their implications for theory and practice. The research develops an argument for a refocussed approach to researching and practicing TNHE – an approach that steps away from the predominant dichotomised understanding of TNHE. Namely, interactions in TNHE have been portrayed using simplistic notions of education ‘providers’ and ‘receivers’ thus perpetuating the understanding of TNHE as a hierarchical polarised relationship (Djerasimovic, 2014) in which knowledge flows from “putative ‘centres to peripheries’” (Sidhu, 2015, p. 74). Used in parallel with other dichotomies (‘producer-consumer’, ‘exporter-importer’, ‘foreign-local’), this approach gives a simplistic and essentialised lens on TNHE relationships portraying them as inherently static, polarised, and hierarchical (Caruana & Montgomery, 2015; Djerasimovic, 2014; Sidhu & Christie, 2015). The paper calls for a scholarly discussion around (and beyond) the dichotomised approach, hoping to jointly rethink TNHE research and practice for the future.

The research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study on three separate TNHE partnerships established between a Finnish university and universities in Palestine, Brazil, and Thailand. The partners co-organised pedagogical development courses for university teachers (one course in each country). The courses lasted about six months and had a comparable curriculum including topics such as student engagement, learning theories, course development, and pedagogical expertise. This non-degree awarding education aimed to enhance the participants’ pedagogical competence by engaging them in reflection on pedagogical conceptions in academic teaching. As such, the courses created a space of dynamic (cross)cultural encounters drawing on differences and similarities in teaching and learning cultures. Data collected during the implementation of the three courses were analysed in the case studies. Datasets were compiled from reflective texts written by Palestinian, Brazilian, and Thai university teachers (in English) as part of their individual and collaborative assignments during the course. A total of 84 university teachers with different disciplinary backgrounds from the mentioned three countries participated in the courses that were taught by eight Finnish educators. Additionally, a smaller dataset was collected through focus group interviews with 18 Palestinian university teachers. Participation in the research was voluntary and not connected to the study attainment in the pedagogical courses. Datasets were analysed using poststructuralist discourse analysis that aims to identify discourses that the participants draw on when they speak or write about teaching and learning at their institution. A six-stage analysis procedure outlined by Willig (2013, pp. 384–389) was applied, as it allows the researcher to explore the text in relation to variety of ways in which the discursive object and subject positions are constructed. This procedure was used in all three case studies. The poststructuralist discourse approach provides the onto-methodological framing of the research. By constraining or enabling the possible ways of understanding and acting in a specific context, discourses not only represent but actively construct social reality at different levels, including institutional cultures (Berti, 2017; Foucault, 2002). Epistemologically, the data analysis did not focus on perceptions or experiences of individual participants; the focus was on identifying discourses that shape these perceptions and experiences (i.e. discursive construction of teaching and learning cultures).

The three case studies provide thick descriptions of the discursive meaning-making processes at Palestinian, Brazilian, and Thai HEIs during their engagement in TNHE cooperation. Five discourses identified in the first case study, four discourses in the second study, and four discourses in the third study describe the features of teaching and learning cultures in HEIs located in the three national contexts (answering the first research question). These descriptions of multiple, sometimes contrasting discourses illustrate how TNHE encounters become intertwined with other cultural aspects and processes that take place simultaneously inside the HEI (such as the institution’s history, location, communities, organisational structure, and academic disciplines) as well as around the HEI (such as the history of the country, languages, national policies, and international trends). Two mechanisms of this dynamic intertwining were observed across the studies: mechanisms described as diversification and hybridisation of perspectives (addressing the second research question). Namely, TNHE encounters facilitate formulation of alternative discourses in the institutional meaning-making processes thus diversifying the perspectives on teaching and learning. Additionally, TNHE facilitates hybridisation of perspectives combining diverse, sometimes contested perspectives. The term hybridisation draws on an important (postcolonial) notion highlighted by Sidhu (2015) that “hybridity is a useful conceptual tool to challenge and destabilise nationalist histories, to complexify identity politics and interrogate the entire raft of essentialised practices and logics” (p. 76). The studies describe the ways in which perspectives diversify and hybridise, offering a nuanced understanding of what TNHE scholarship refers to as cultural contextualisation processes, or more specifically, the cultural and educational processes taking place in TNHE encounters. Moreover, diversification and hybridisation challenge the simplistic dichotomised understanding of TNHE offering new empirical and theoretical directions for researching and practicing TNHE as spaces of dynamic, pluralistic and multi-voiced encounters.

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