Universities going global? Comparative perspectives on the internationalization of postgraduate education in Brazil and Finland

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: Global Engagement

Proposal

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
POSTGRADUATE PROGRAM IN EDUCATION
DISSERTATION ADVISOR: DENISE LEITE

The general objective of this dissertation is to understand, in a comparative manner, the changes that affect university institutionality in the current phase of higher education internationalization, in the contexts of postgraduate education in Brazil and Finland.

Thus, this dissertation’s central question is: what is changing in university institutionality with internationalization, in Brazilian and Finnish contexts of postgraduate education?

Data shows that current academic changes allow for the visualization of different layers of internationalization policies and practices among three distinct levels of institutionality or social fields of action: national policy (macro), educational institution (meso) and academic work (micro). This phenomenon produces institutional reconfigurations (meso) through the answers scholars (micro) devise to policies (macro). Such answers, in turn, are mediated by categories of political action.
In the Finnish case, there is a more consolidated transition of internationalization from individual academic work (micro) to institutional practices (meso), a process that national policy (macro) is now beginning to induce in Brazil.

This dissertation intends to contribute to the emerging scholarship of critical internationalization studies. Its theoretical/conceptual framework weaves the classical approach of higher education studies with concepts from Brazilian social thought, such as dependency, to the understanding of university. Thus, the dissertation is positioned in the ‘radical critique’ branch of internationalization studies, bringing global and social inequalities as structuring features of academic work.

This dissertation is built on a qualitative approach, considering the national contexts of Brazil and Finland as cases for comparison. Each case is addressed by the articulation of three levels, which correspond to different social fields of action: national policy (macro); educational institution (meso); and academic work (micro). The empirical material that supports the dissertation is collected through semi-structured interviews with key informants in the macro (national policy-making units), meso (university management) and micro (postgraduate teachers and students) levels in Finland and in Brazil. In their statements, interviewees discuss models and practices of higher education.

From the qualitative content analysis of interviews, qualitative data is generated by categorization, allowing to perceive dynamics of continuity and change associated with the phenomenon of internationalization. Initially, to characterize the cases, data is interpreted in accordance to ‘background’ categories of comparative education: time; space; language; audiences; interaction; and academic worth. In sequence, ‘categories of political action’ are constructed from the interviews: ontology of the international; global/international ethos; international skills; internationalization militantism; institutional bridging; frontier negotiation. These categories allow for understanding how individuals reconfigure the university’s institutionality by acting in response to national policies which continuously demand them to ‘go global’.

If universities and scholars are now ‘going global’, the first findings, in connection to theory, highlight the fact that they always ‘go global’ from some place, and through some devices. This research seeks to illuminate the categories of political action used by individuals situated in different social fields of action in higher education to effect internationalization, highlighting the differences that exist across nations differentially positioned in the world-system.

The first dataset, involving interviews in Finland, is now under analysis. Research is now in its second phase of data collection, which comprises interviews with key informants in Brazil. By the time of the event, the dissertation timeline will have advanced into analysis and writing.

Author

• Bernardo Sfredo Miorando, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul