An overview of internationalization and its relevance for school and educational psychology

Abstract

This paper serves as the introductory article for the special issue titled, Internationalization in School and Educational Psychology. The paper begins with a summary of the existing literature about internationalization and describes how there are both similarities and differences in the many proposed descriptions and definitions of internationalization. Possible reasons for advancing internationalization within psychology are described next, including those that are applicable for the subdiscipline of school and educational psychology. The paper also describes the scope of this special issue, why it may be timely for the subdiscipline, and its overall goals (i.e., to promote increased understanding and discussion about internationalization, particularly in the context of school and educational psychology).

A working definition and conceptual model of internationalization for school and educational psychology

“…The definition and use of “school and educational psychology” in the present paper is consistent with how it is described within Begeny ()—including the occasional naming of the discipline simply as “school psychology” or “educational psychology” for concision, as well as the acknowledgement that much more debate and work is needed to develop one or more definitions that represent international and local perspectives (see Bernardo et al., ). Before proposing my working definition and conceptual model of internationalization, it will help to briefly summarize some of the content from the introduction to this special issue.…”

“…For instance, in psychology, internationalization has been described as an approach, a set of activities, a movement, a framework, or a process. As part of the activities, framework, process, etc., most descriptions of internationalization emphasize one or more of the following: the importance of collaboration with reciprocity; fostering cultural sensitivity and respect; synthesizing knowledge generated from practice and scholarship, including but not limited to empirical research; and the potential that scholarship from North America and/or Western Europe may (1) overly or negatively influence theory, practice, or research methods in countries located outside of those global regions, and/or (2) be overrepresented within the international scholarship (e.g., Arfken, ; Begeny, ; Leung et al., ; van de Vijver, ).…”

“…Yet, although there is evidence of internationality, an extensive amount of international research, and some past work related to internationalization in school and educational psychology, there have been no proposed definitions or descriptions of internationalization for the discipline. It also appears the term has hardly been used within discipline‐specific scholarship, and until this special issue, only a few recent studies have specifically evaluated data with the goal of understanding internationalization within school and educational psychology (Begeny, ). In short, scholarship pertaining specifically to internationalization is still relatively scarce throughout all of psychology (Arfken, ; Gerstein, Heppner, Ægisdóttir, Leung, & Norsworthy, ; Ng & Noonan, ), but particularly little has thus far appeared within school psychology.…”

“…Several possible advantages of internationalization relate to improved training and development of professionals within the field, including pre‐service and in‐service professionals (Begeny, ). A small number of empirical studies in school and counseling psychology have examined factors related to professionals’ international or multicultural knowledge (e.g., Oakland, Jones, & Callueng, ) or graduate training programs’ integration of internationalization concepts and practices (Hurley et al., ; Ng et al., ; Turner‐Essel & Waehler, ).…”

“…Examples include (1) scholarship that examines indicators, characteristics, or challenges related to one or a small number of internationalization components or goals (e.g., Kim et al., , in their assessment of issues related to Goal 1); (2) conceptual, summative, and/or critical scholarship about one or more internationalization components or goals; (3) scholarship that attempts to summarize or categorize existing scholarship or professional perspectives within the discipline as it relates to one or more internationalization components or goals; (4) scholarship that attempts to directly assess or improve an internationalization goal (e.g., Begeny et al., , in press] in their assessment of the geographic representation of published articles in discipline‐specific journals). As described in Begeny (), at this time, there is very little scholarship in school and educational psychology that aligns with Categories 2 and 3.…”