This paper presents the outcomes of a study carried out in 2001–2002 with nine postgraduate students from China, enrolled on taught master's programmes in a UK university business school. The aims of the research were to explore the development of the students’ orientations to learning during their year of study in the UK, and to explore how the researcher's interactions with the study group contributed to her professional reflections and influenced her academic practice. The main conclusions of the project were that participants’ underlying approaches to learning did not change substantially over the year, owing to the culturally implicit nature of UK academic conventions and that they experienced high levels of emotional isolation and loneliness, which affected their academic confidence.
Competitive and cooperative impulses to internationalization: reflecting on the interplay between management intentions and the experience of academics in a British university
AbstractThe paper This paper explores some of the practical tensions associated with Higher Education internationalization through the introduction of an institutional case study. The case highlights the interplay between policy-makers and academics around the emergence of an 'internationalization' agenda in a British university. It aims to illustrate aspects of the debate within the literature which discuss the gap between competitive and cooperative international motivations and to explore the impact of commercial internationalization upon the academic community. The key conclusions are that: cooperative and competitive impulses to internationalization respond to different ideological positions; linking a commercial revenuegenerating approach with internationalist rhetoric may frustrate the development of an international orientation in an institution; and increasing academic disengagement with the commercial agenda possesses the potential to obstruct management intention.
This article explores the evolving relationship between curriculum design, teacher perceptions, and the lived experience of students participating in an international programme of study within a U.K. university business school. The article illustrates the challenges inherent in supporting cross-cultural learning within diverse cohorts and explores the use of reflective learning strategies as a means of promoting cross-cultural understanding. It concludes with a discussion about the positioning of university curricula as international spaces within local contexts and questions the degree to which implicit pedagogical norms support inclusivity.For more than a generation, higher education (HE) has been embracing increasing international diversity. The historic national roots of higher education institutions (HEIs) find themselves entangled by diverse student and academic populations not only from the obvious influx of educational sojourners from around the world but also within indigenous populations and so-called nontraditional students. As the breadth of the stage on which HEIs perform expands so too does the range and variety of missions with which they struggle: as business organizations seeking to generate international revenues, as educational institutions seeking to intellectually enfranchise an increasing variety of people, as international knowledge exchange and research partnerships, and as social and diplomatic missions which privilege and communicate particular notions of intellectual life and educational and social participation (De Wit, 2002;Scott, 1995). One of the most profound of these challenges, however, is the implicit drive to internationalize local student populations, giving them through their education intercultural competence or so-called internationalization at home (Deardorff, 2006). Whether part of an explicit aspect of citizenship education or more implicitly embedded within notions of intellectual life and civic participation, the impetus to harness the intercultural opportunities that lie within diverse international cohorts is clear.
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