Internationalization of Higher Education Curriculum: What Does It Really Mean?

• In Event: Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: Internationalization in Higher Education From the Faculty and Student Perspectives

Abstract

Internationalisation of higher education has ‘come of age’ today and UK universities have either completed or are developing their internationalisation strategies and international curricula. While the content and the discourse of such strategies seem similar across institutions, approaches developed towards internationalisation within and across institutions vary. Using the findings of an empirical study conducted with international postgraduate students and teachers in British higher education this paper depicts that institutional approaches to internationalisation are two-fold; instrumental orientation and pedagogic orientation. It argues that instrumental -orientation promotes marketization and strategic competition while pedagogic orientation leads to epistemic virtues of genuine internationalisation which appreciate diverse world views and ways of creating knowledge of the world within international pedagogic sites.

Author

• Thushari Welikala, The University of Nottingham