The Impact of COVID-19 on the Internationalization of Higher Education: A Critical, Multilingual Review of the Literature and the Field

• In Event: Exploring the dynamics and outcomes of exchanges and internationalization

Proposal

Introduction
This paper provides a systematic multilingual literature review on the impact of COVID-19 on the internationalization of higher education. Researchers reviewed peer-reviewed scholarship in English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, French, German, Georgian, and Greek published by October 2022. The multilingual and global scope of the literature review allows researchers to understand how COVID has affected internationalization by examining the data and methods employed for analysis, the key themes related to COVID-19’s impact on internationalization, co-occurrences of key themes, and differentiated patterns and trends by language and country or region.

Data and Methods
The researchers used a standardized search string (including keywords related to COVID-19, internationalization, and higher education) to identify the relevant literature in major databases in each language. They conducted one round of screening by title and abstract and then full texts, followed by further coding of the geographic focus, data and methods, internationalization activity, key themes, and actor focus of the articles. The languages of literature examined were determined based on the language proficiency of the research team, and there are at least two researchers proficient in any language of the articles included for full study to ensure a reasonable degree of interrater reliability.

This study included 377 English, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish articles for full review, focusing on 45 countries and regions. Among the included articles, 180 are in English, 143 in Chinese, 42 in Russian, and 12 in Spanish. The top ten countries and regions discussed in the literature (by order of frequency) are China (162), the U.S. (50), Global (49), Russia (36), Australia (22), the UK (12), Canada (7), Europe (5), Japan (4), Mexico (4), Spain (4), and Taiwan (4).

Findings
An initial analysis shows that although international student mobility, especially inbound mobility (51%), remains the most widely discussed activity within the literature, virtual mobility (e.g., Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), virtual exchange, and virtual education (24%) and internationalization at home (14%) are the next two most common topics, indicating a shifting trend toward internationalization beyond physical mobility. Most of the literature remains focused on students, higher education institutions, and faculty and staff as the primary actors of internationalization, with much less attention to governments, regional actors, and professional associations.

In terms of data and methods, the top three most common data and methods are quantitative (22%), qualitative (19%), and not empirical (19%). Primary data collection studies including all three types of methods (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods) account for almost half of all the articles (48%). Multilingual comparison reveals notable trends in different preferences for methods: for example, the English scholarship examined is predominantly empirical, with more than 60% of the studies based on primary data collection. Meanwhile, the Chinese literature is highly descriptive, with 32% of the articles written as descriptive case studies. While the Russian scholarship exhibits a similar preference for empirical studies, secondary data analysis is much more common in the Russian literature than the Chinese and the English literature.

The top five themes emerged from the literature are online learning (41%), lived experiences (26%%), teaching and pedagogy (24%), health and wellbeing (20%), and student enrollment (20%). Cross tabulating the key themes and activities of internationalization reveals that articles discussing virtual mobility primarily focused on teaching and pedagogy and online learning infrastructure. In addition, articles that discuss inbound student mobility are primarily concerned with the lived experiences and health and wellbeing of students.

Comparison of key themes between core Anglophone, Europe, and China shows that the literature on core Anglophone countries have more focus on the lived experience of students, while the literature on China has more focus on online learning, digitization, and teaching and pedagogy, and the literature on Europe also tend to focus on online learning, digitization, lived experience of students, and teaching and pedagogy. Comparison of key themes between the global north and the global south shows that the literature on global south has much more focus on online learning, while the literature on global north has more focus on student enrolment and recruitment.

Discussion
The multilingual literature review suggests that the field of internationalization remains mostly focused on students as the key actors, and international student mobility as the key focus, even though the definition of “what counts” as internationalization is expanding into different areas, such as research collaboration, COIL, internationalization at home, etc. Therefore, the existing knowledge on internationalization still reflects a fairly narrow emphasis and understanding of the rapidly changing landscape of internationalization.

However, the literature does suggest that the field has been responsive to addressing change. For example, this systematic review identified many studies addressing challenges that universities faced in the wake of COVID and how such experiences are informing universities’ efforts to change the status quo. Meanwhile, we also see emerging topics and responsiveness to issues rarely addressed in the past, such as the sustainable development goals (SDGSs) and mental health and wellbeing.

Finally, conducting a multilingual literature review has added to our understanding of how internationalization is studied (and not studied) in different parts of the world. The differentiated emphasis on themes and internationalization activities by language and country focus has expanded our understanding of how national and regional contexts and academic culture all influence the understanding of internationalization. Meanwhile, our review also suggests that internationalization, a topic, and practice that inherently promotes and even embraces the integration of global perspectives, is still limited in many ways. Knowledge and research on internationalization continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by English, and the English literature still primarily focuses on the core Anglophone countries. The rapidly growing body of Chinese scholarship provides a new space to explore the topic of internationalization, but its focus remains primarily on China itself. It may be worthwhile to further explore the potential connections and disconnections between Chinese and English literature as the two largest bodies of knowledge on internationalization.

Authors

• Elizabeth Buckner, University of Toronto OISE

• Maia Gelashvili, Boston College

• Marianthi Kontelli, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

• Adriana Marroquin, University of Toronto

• Ekaterina Minaeva, Boston College, Lynch School of Edu

• Bingran Zeng, Boston College

• You Zhang, OISE, University of Toronto