This work in progress explores ‘geographies of pedagogies' inherent in present internationalisation practices. Over the past 30 years, higher education has become increasingly internationalised through academic mobility (Tzanakou & Henderson, 2021). Within the EU, policies such as the Bologna process are adopted to make this mobility smooth and it is accompanied by a growing use of English as a medium of instruction (Tange & Jæger, 2021). In this development, the English language has gained prominence as the lingua franca of higher education, and especially policy documents often ignore that knowledge production and teaching are situated practices (Adriansen et al. 2023). Some researchers, however, have addressed this by providing personal narratives of how they as international academics have adapted and developed their teaching in foreign countries (Hosein et al. 2018; Rao et al. 2019), by showing how it varies from one country to another, what counts as a ‘good ’student (Simandan, 2002) and by exploring the situatedness of what it means to be a ‘good’ academic (Adriansen et al., 2015). Yet, there is a lack of research that connects individual narratives to provide a conceptual understanding of these geographies of pedagogy. This paper attempts to fill this gap. 

The paper is part of a larger research project exploring how internationalisation affects the perception of quality, relevance and learning in higher education and how these perceptions travel with mobile academics. Based on qualitative interviews with international academics at Danish universities, the aim of this paper is to examine the role of pedagogies in internationalisation of  higher education. 

The analytical backdrop of the study is ‘geographies of science’ (Livingstone, 2003; Meusburger et al. 2010). By recognising science and academic practices as spatially contingent, geographies of science provides our analytical inspiration for questioning universal claims about pedagogies and teaching practices in higher education. The geographies of science, as articulated by Livingstone (2003) and expanded by Meusburger et al. (2010), help us understand scientific knowledge as fundamentally situated, spatial, and uneven. Rather than treating science as universal and placeless, this perspective highlights how particular sites - laboratories, field stations, classrooms, cities, and transnational networks - shape the questions asked, the methods used, and the authority granted to certain actors. It also draws attention to the circulation of knowledge through the mobility of academics and the spatial asymmetries that privilege some institutions or nations over others. Using geographies of science as analytical inspiration makes it possible to analyse scientific practices including pedagogies as a culturally embedded, materially mediated, and geographically contingent practice.

While the ‘geographies of skills’ have been researched in various contexts lately (e.g. Burzynski et al., 2020; Raghuram, 2021; Richardson, 2019), there is little knowledge about the ‘geographies of pedagogy’ – this means how pedagogical practices and what constitutes good teaching are contextual and spatially situated and how language plays into this.

We use ‘geographies of science’ and ‘geography of skills’ to explore the ‘geographies of pedagogies’ that become visible through the experiences of international academics at Danish universities.  We do so by asking the following research questions: 

1. How is the delivery of knowledge in higher education shaped by notions of scientific knowledge as universal, and what role does language play in constructing and sustaining these notions of universalism?

2. How are pedagogical practices culturally situated within higher education contexts and how are some practices constructed as universal while others are marked as particular?

By developing the concept of geographies of pedagogies, the paper aims to contribute to ongoing debates on internationalisation, academic mobility, and the situated nature of teaching and learning in higher education.

This study, which is part of a larger research project, is based on 16 qualitative interviews with international academics from two Danish universities conducted between 2020 and 2022. For this study, we focus on participants who were foreign-born and held PhD degrees from institutions outside Denmark. A few had obtained Danish citizenship. They represented 14 different countries and worked as assistant, associate, or full professors across the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and health fields. To ensure anonymity, we use pseudonyms and in some cases adjusted participants’ gender. Because of Covid-19 restrictions, eight interviews took place online and eight in person. The interviews were conducted by our interdisciplinary research team consisting of two geographers and one anthropologist with varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds, bringing different in/outsider positionalities to the process (Adriansen & Madsen, 2009). Interviews were held in English or German based on participant preference, using a semi-structured guide. We explored participants’ motivations for international mobility, reasons for coming to Denmark, their understandings of international universities and internationalisation, and how they perceived their own positioning within Danish academia. A specific focus was on former teaching experience and the encounter with teaching and students at Danish universities.. Participants were also invited to reflect on their career trajectories, expectations for mobility, and future plans, while comparing experiences across countries and institutions. For in-person interviews, we used the timeline interview method (Adriansen, 2012). This exploratory approach allowed us to capture whole-life mobility narratives. Using large sheets of paper and coloured pencils, we collaboratively mapped key life events and mobility paths. While timelines depict events in temporal sequence, they are not intended to imply linearity. Rather, the visual format enabled participants to revisit and reinterpret their experiences, revealing shifting patterns and narratives. This provided insights into how academics understood their personal histories as well as the educational histories of places where they had lived and worked. To complement these accounts, we conducted instrumental conversations with four Danish academics from three universities. Such informal conversations are common in ethnography (Madden, 2017) and are increasingly recognised as valuable qualitative tools, either alone or alongside interviews (Swain & King, 2022). Our analytical themes emerged through a dialectical process (inspired by Guzman-Valenzuela & Barnett, 2013), combining inductive insights from the data with deductive perspectives from the broader analytical framework.

The findings show that two teaching practices stand out as unusual for the international academics entering Danish academia: oral exams and group work. Patricia, explained: I had never encountered [oral exam] before I came here […]. That was a bit difficult for me at the beginning […] I often find that the internationals [students] have a lot of trouble in the oral exam, whereas the Danes are much more relaxed and not nervous. International academics are expected to assimilate their teaching practice without receiving explicit guidance, as these practices are embedded in the institutional culture and assumed to be self-evident. Patricia continued: There is a huge emphasis on group work. This is a big surprise to me, I have never seen it before, to this extent […] I had a lot of trouble in the beginning. The study also shows how ways of understanding are situated. An example is Ben, who experienced that there are different norms of how to reason in mathematics, even though we think mathematics is universal. When his students did not understand his explanations, they thought it was a language problem and he switched languages. However, it did not help. Ben elaborates: I mean what is universal? I mean you know the proof might look the same but the steps you use [in the process are different]. I didn't have any of the right words. Summing up, this work in progress shows the first lines of ‘geographies of pedagogies' inherent in internationalisation practices. By exploring international academics’ experiences in Danish higher education, we highlight the situatedness of pedagogical practices. The full paper compares and contrasts these pedagogical practices in relation to academics’ mobility patterns, language, and discipline.

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