Session Information
WERA SES 06 A, Ethics and Internationalization in Higher Education
Symposium
Contribution
Internationalisation of higher education is frequently discussed in relation to a generalized topic of globalisation, which includes political and market regulated flows of people, money, goods and services (Ninnes & Hellstén, 2005). World society theory (Meyer, 2010) provides the conception that political and economic systems are becoming increasingly integrated. Modernisation drives a global academic ecosystem which is converging in internationalization and simultaneously brings about a blurring of definitions without critical inquiry e.g. that internationalization and international education are taken to mean the same thing. It forces higher education (HE) systems toward homogeneity (Andreotti, 2013), a process that may be predicated upon conflicting notions about concurrent international competition on the one hand and collaboration on the other without questioning the net social incentives for the public good. In this presentation we engage with the issues on international higher education imperatives in response to recent educational reforms and their implications for scholarship in the region of northern Europe. These issues bring forth components of an ongoing large comparative research project on ethical internationalization involving 20 universities across the globe (EIHE, 2015) funded by the Academy of Finland. Central to the theme are perspectives on how internationalization has been shaped. Historical accounts of the internationalisation of HE have been framed by organizational and system level perspectives (King, Marginson, & Naidoo, 2013) and are closely linked to economical-political-policy demands. In the past, focus was placed on academic and organizational climates and cultures, viewing education primarily from an administrative perspective, linked to economy, politics and policy. Thus, the social role of universities was scrutinized merely in relation to its external global environment, that is, in terms of its impact on ‘market competition’. Transnational corporations have over time exerted significant control that rise above national borders (King, Marginson & Naidoo, 2013) forcing universities to operate within the knowledge-based economy. Marginson (2009) has discussed these escalating developments in terms of status competition driven by neo-liberal political developments causing a reduction in state funding and demanding public universities to become increasingly self-supporting, financially. The rapidly escalating international education market has imposed unprecedented pedagogical demands on university teachers' academic professionalism and identity (Hellstén & Reid, 2008; Ryan, 2013; Trahar, 2011). Concurrently, there has been anxiety about lowering academic standards caused by a perceived fragmentation in the field (Ninnes & Hellstén, 2005) which may derive from an epistemic discord about internationalized curriculum policy, employability and conceptualizations about ethics (Andreotti, 2013).
References
References Andreotti, de Oliveira Vanessa (2013)(ed.). The Political Economy of Global Citizenship Education. Routledge. EIHE, 2015. Ethical Internationalization project website. http://eihe.blogspot.fi/p/background.html. Retrieved January 9. Hellstén, M. and Reid, A. (Eds.). Researching international pedagogies. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. King, R., Marginson, S. & Naidoo, R. (eds.) (2013) The Globalization of Higher Education. Cheltenham (Edward Elgar). Marginson, S. (2009). Open source knowledge and university rankings. Thesis Eleven, 96, 9–39. Meyer, J.W. (2010). World Society, Institutional Theories, and the Actor, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 36: 1-20. Ninnes, P., and Hellstén, M. (2005) (eds.), Internationalizing Higher Education: critical perspectives on pedagogy and policy, Dordrecht, NL: Springer. Ryan, J. (2013). (Ed.).Cross cultural teaching and learning for home and international students: Internationalisation of pedagogy and curriculum in higher education. London: Routledge. Trahar, S. (2011). Developing Cultural Capability in International Higher Education: a Narrative Inquiry. London: Routledge.
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