This paper investigates the structural barriers that international staff face in contributing to curriculum development within Finnish higher educational institutions, with a particular focus on Tampere University (TAU), where the authors’ pedagogical development and teaching practices are situated. Despite TAU’s strategic commitments to internationalization, the study demonstrates how institutional practices and power dynamics systematically hinder inclusive curriculum processes.

The research addresses the question:

How do international staff experience and navigate barriers to academic agency in curriculum development, and what structural changes are necessary to enable fair participation?

The objective is to critically examine how hidden curricula, language politics, and hierarchical governance converge to constrain the agency of international academics in curriculum planning and reform. Drawing on the authors' lived experience as international staff across different career stages over the last decade, spanning European and Asian university contexts, as well as a collaborative pedagogical course project, this paper integrates thematic reflections with theoretical insights to propose actionable institutional reforms.

The conceptual framework integrates four core elements:

• academic agency (Annala et al., 2023; Annala & Mäkinen, 2017), exploring how structures and roles enable or supress participation in curriculum reform;
• hidden curriculum (Lee, et al., 2023; Koutsouris, et al., 2021), capturing the unspoken norms and informal practices that shape inclusion and exclusion;
• the internationalization paradox (Tight, 2022; Khan, 2022), signifying the contradiction between the global recruitment of academic staff and their limited integration into decision-making processes; and
• social justice theory (Quinlan, 2014; Wrigley, 2018), offering a way to reflect on fairness in how decisions are made and how resources are shared in curriculum work. Wrigley (2017) highlights that for knowledge to truly support social justice, it must question inequality, draw on the everyday knowledge of marginalized groups, and challenge the dominant ideas that often shape academic disciplines.

This paper echos to the growing tension between institutional commitments to internationalization and the everyday realities of academic exclusion (Stein, 2017; Curaj, et al., 2020). As English-medium instruction (EMI) expands, particularly across the Nordic region, where countries like Finland are at the forefront of implementing EMI in higher education (Airey et al., 2017), universities are increasingly confronted with the contradictions embedded in their internal governance (Lehtimaja, et al., 2021). While internationalization strategies highlight inclusivity and global competence (Tampere University, 2023), institutional practices remain anchored in local linguistics and cultural norms that systematically exclude non-Finnish staff (Jousilahti, et al., 2022). This contradiction is intensified by the most recent Finnish government’s budget proposal (Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 2026), which advances self-financing models for international programmes and further deepens inequality by replying on tuition-based access for non-EU/EEA students. These developments not only challenge the credibility of internationalization discourse but also expose the structural conditions that marginalize those expected to implement its ideals.

In addition, one particular condition worhty to mention is the persistent of informal "hyvä veli" networks (Yle, 2016), a historical term referring to elite and circles that hold behind-the-scenes influence over opportunities and decision-making sectors, including business, politics, and education. These unspoken yet powerful norms continue to shape exclusionary practices affecting international staff. As Finnish academic leadership increasingly shifts toward managerial models under ongoing university reforms, it becomes more urgent to examine how such deeply rooted practices endure within restructured governance systems (Kohtamäki, 2019).

By uncovering the disconnectedness between policy and practice, this study calls for a more critical examination of how inclusion is materially justified in curriculum processes. It contributes to curriculum research by demonstrating how access, participation, and recognition in higher educational structures are shaped by rooted norms of language, culture, and power.

This study employs a qualitative and reflexive methodological approach grounded in thematic synthesis. Reflexivity is central to the epistemological orientation of this study. We adopt Francisco et al. (2023)'s framing of reflexivity as a continuous, collaborative, and multifaceted practice through which researchers critically evaluate how their subjectivity and context shape the research. The authors’ personal reflexivity serves as both data and analytic lens, grounded in lived experiences as international academics navigating curriculum structures in Finnish higher education. These reflections enabled a critical examination of assumptions, and the positionality of the authors that shaped the analyses. In parallel, interpersonal reflexivity was integral to the collaborative case study, requiring attention to power dynamics and institutional asymmetries within the team. Differences in academic backgrounds, roles, and linguistic access were surfaced and examined through collective dialogue. This dialogic process not only enhanced analytical depth but also demonstrated how reflexive engagement can support inclusive knowledge production. Methodological decisions including coding strategy, theme generation, and interpretation were made transparently. Themes emerged through recurrent alignment with theoretical constructs and structural concerns, ensuring conceptual coherence and analytical rigor. Two primary sources inform the study: 1. Autoethnographic reflection from a pedagogical curriculum development course (TAU-KAS.PEY.020, Autumn 2025), including structured reflections on meetings, teaching roles, and institutional processes. These serve as first-person accounts of navigating curriculum decisions as international staff educators. 2. Collaborative case study, developed in a multicultural group presentation, which analyzed a case of exclusion in curriculum reform and produced a multi-layered solution framework. This offered both triangulation and a comparative lens across disciplines and institutional roles. Together, these sources underwent thematic synthesis. Four central barriers were identified: (1) language exclusion; (2) lack of transparency; (3) hierarchical decision-making; and (4) reduced agency and engagement. These were interpreted through the theoretical frameworks to build an argument grounded in empirical reflection and conceptual depth. The study’s strength lies in its reflexive methodology and the authors’ diverse international backgrounds, which offer situated insights into curriculum governance. However, as the reflections are contextually bound to Tampere University and shaped by mid-career academic perspectives, broader organizational stages and voices from other cultural or international contexts are not yet captured. Future research aim to incorporate longitudinal and cross-institutional studies to build comparative understanding and support more generalizable reform strategies.

Findings reveal a mismatch between the internationalization discourse and the realities experienced by international staff. The use of Finnish in curriculum meetings, lack of formalized decision pathways, implicit hierarchical norms, and unclear teaching allocations collectively diminish academic agency. These conditions reproduce a hidden curriculum that marginalizes international staff, despite their expertise and commitment. The paper proposes multi-level institutional reforms: • reinforced multilingual practices and language policies (Airey, 2024; Hultgren, et al., 2014; Tieteentekijät, 2024); • transparent curriculum governance processes (Bovill, et al., 2011; Shay, 2015); • structured orientation and mentoring for new staff (Gappa, et al., 2007; Kim, 2017); • fair workload allocation (Kenny and Fluck, 2014; Kenny, 2018); and • inclusive and menaingful co-creation of curricula (Biesta, 2015; Matthews, 2017). These suggested reforms align with European goals for inclusive and globally competent higher education (European Commission, 2017). The study contributes to curriculum theory by demonstrating how institutional culture, not just policy, shapes fairness in higher education. It offers a transferable framework for evaluating and improving academic agency in diverse university contexts.

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