A Letter to the Editors: What Can Critical Mean to International Education Praxis? Proposal

• In Event: The Journal of Global Higher Education: Insight from the First Issue of an Independent, Open-Access, and Community-run Scholarly Journal

Proposal

This paper highlights the important but challenging work of translating theory-to-practice in order to ensure that international education frameworks keep pace with the rapidly evolving needs of international educators. It is grounded in the equity-driven lens for internationalization (George Mwangi & Yao, 2021) that the authors of this paper developed with the intention of being used to develop and analyze internationalization-focused higher education research. Yet, in our work over the years, we have found international education practitioners consistently asking us how they can engage the framework in their daily praxis, and further, what is our advice for bringing a critical epistemological standpoint to their internationalization work. As tenured academics, while we strive for developing research that is actionable, we recognize the constraints, pressures, and lack of professional protection that practitioners experience particularly in our current sociopolitical times when constructs like “equity” and “inclusion” are under attack in the United States and other parts of the world.

This paper is our attempt at bridging the theory-to-practice gap by applying and revising our equity-driven lens for internationalization to praxis. The original application of the lens included four guiding principles or lenses: defining the sociohistorical context, understanding contemporary forces of globalization, integrating equity-driven theoretical perspectives, and de/constructing internationalization. In adapting the lens for application to practice, we added a fifth lens: building communities of critical praxis and scholarship. Throughout the article we offer specific strategies for international educators to consider as they bring criticality to their praxis and call for greater partnership and co-conspiratorship within the critical international education and internationalization community.

Beyond the article itself, in this symposium we will address the importance of the Journal of Global Higher Education as a space for publishing work that is geared towards and accessible to diverse audiences. Our manuscript, a letter to the editors and international educators, does not fit within the bounds of a traditional academic journal article’s structure. Despite its theoretical contribution to extending our original framework and the direct implications it has to education practice, it would not likely have been published in many academic journal outlets. The Journal of Global Higher Education has envisioned and enacted a much needed transformative approach to academic publishing, which is also in alignment with the CIES 2026 conference’s call to re-examine education in a divided world.

Authors

• Chrystal A. George Mwangi, George Mason University

• Christina W Yao