Are We Really That "Postcolonial"? Perspectives on Internationalization From the Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education (in Times of Crises) (EIHE) Project and the Cases of Scotland and Ireland

• In Event: World Education Research Association–International Research Network Global Ethics in Higher Education

Abstract

This paper compares some of the EIHE country data and findings (comprising survey data, national policy findings and implementation data), broader analyses of higher education policies and internationalization, together with other relevant contextual data in Scotland and Ireland. We situate our readings of contemporary discourses internationalizing higher education against the differential backgrounds of rising popular nationalism in Scotland, on the one hand, and ‘revisionist debates’ (Kennedy 1993) and the demise of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ in Ireland, on the other. Where we see similarities, however, are in the strong national drives to expand educational research in both countries, and to conform to objectivist, ‘evidence-based’ demands for measurement and evaluation, There is an increasingly oppressive and authoritarian ‘audit culture’ within HE institutions and policy institutes, driven by bureaucratic processes of ‘reform’ and the demands of ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). Notable in the case of Ireland is the tendency for educational reforms to follow a ‘samurai’ trajectory of self-colonization (Yoshioka 1995), copying external (specifically, English) metrics and evaluative schemas as benchmarks for ‘internationalizing’ institutional and national higher education reforms.
We engage in particular with two conversations: Andreotti’s exchange with Chris Openshaw and Elizabeth Rata’s (2009) rejection of postcolonial identitarian cultural conformity, calling for more nuanced readings of ‘objectivity’ and ‘criticality’ and Charmaz’s exchange with an Irish researcher, who argues that her use of grounded theory as a method does not reflect the specificity of Ireland as a post-colonial culture, as such. Instead, she sees the commitment to non-objectivist ontology as part and parcel of more general or universal social justice-oriented work:
I’m finding it difficult to see how in any particular way Irish culture impacts on the understanding or use of grounded theory methods. In terms of a fit with Irish culture, one could argue that as a post-colonial nation, Irish culture might be anathema to the objectivist ontology of the classical approach and much more aligned to the context-situated theorizations of the constructivist approach. However a rejection of this ontology and an embracing of the constructivist approach is certainly not unique to Irish culture! (Keane, cited in Charmaz 2014, 1077)
We reflect on Keane’s non-objectivist methodological stance based on emancipatory and social justice objectives and consider the perspective from other critical ontologies, for example indigenous African perspectives. We consider the trajectory of the ‘widening participation’ agenda in the two comparative cases. How does this social justice agenda relate to the broad national contexts of higher education reform and how are they affected by internationalization measures? What can the EIHE data from the Scottish and Irish research sites tell us about experiences and attitudes of, and towards difference, nationalist orientation and culture in the context of internationalization? This paper draws on the methodological strategy of cross-national and case comparisons in order to pose and respond to these questions, and to generate new questions that may be addressed within the broader interests and commitments of the EIHE research group.

Authors

• Dalene M. Swanson, The University of British Columbia

• Su-ming Khoo, Sociology and Political Science, NUI Galway