International Student Otherness: Pedagogies, Differences, and Uncertainties?

• In Event: Problematizing International Field Experiences: Do They Promote Intercultural Competence or Reinforce Euro-Western Privilege and Ethnocentrism?

Abstract

Internationalization is a key strategic focus in higher education in many countries. Universities clamor for cross-cultural and cross-national collaborative relationships with students, professors, departments, and courses. Yet what does this mean for the students: do they embark on what might be seen as ‘tourist’ curricula? What are the intended, and even more importantly the unintended, outcomes of these collaborations, from cross-cultural, experiential or intricately personal perspectives? What pedagogies, differences and uncertainties do they face? In this paper we engage critically with the notion of students’ subject formations in relation to often dramatically different higher education spaces and places in which they become entwined on study abroad or international student experiences. We use philosophy as a method to examine international students’ experiences of Otherness, through Julia Kristeva’s (1991) theory of the subject in process and her notions of the foreigner and the foreigner within. We expose what might also be seen as moments of ‘darkness’ (Bengtsen & Barnett, 2017) in the internationalization of higher education. Through our own students’ experiences we posit this internationalization as placing students in complex situations with and as Others, subjected to, and affected by wider encounters of the relationships, materialities, forces and energies within these spaces (Barad, 2003; Bennett, 2010).

We argue for reconceptualizing internationalization in higher education ECE programs. Critical explications of the complexities of students’ experiences expose the risks of isolation, limitations, or ‘crises’ (Stone, 2004), within what are arguably intended as educative cross-cultural experiences that promote inclusion and intercultural understanding. The paper raises aspects of cross-cultural Otherness that we argue are in urgent need of diverse articulations and approaches, and in particular, cannot be dealt with by one or another, homogeneous design, strategy or practice. Rather, critical theoretical engagements with the nuanced, diverse and intimate aspects of cultural Otherness are crucial, in this climate of increasing opportunities and pathways for students’ international study experiences.

Authors

• Sonja Arndt, University of Waikato

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland