The internationalisation of a university as local practices: A case study

Abstract

This article presents a case study of the internationalisation of an Engineering School at a leading Swedish University. The case study is an attempt to sketch out a more qualitative analytical approach to the study of internationalisation, focusing on the interplay between agency and structure and policy and practice as constructed by actors on the 'meso' and 'micro' levels of the organisation. We aim to provide a contribution to existing empirical studies that have usually focused on the national and institutional level of policy setting and implementation without adequately taking the perspective of local actors or local organisational cultures into account. The results of the case study show that internationalisation is materialised in many forms within the School, sometimes as a policy or a set of practices derived from the agency of specific actors (administrators or academic leaders), but equally as specific, varied local educational practices and cultural meanings construed within various micro cultures of academics working directly through their own global-local networks.

Integration Processes Between Higher Education and Production: Current Status and Development Prospects

“…Another important area of research in the integration processes in the higher educational system is issues related to the integration of interstate education. It is recommended that the problems of educational integration be investigated in three groups in a number of scientific literature [13,14,15]. Particularly:…”

Institutional motivations for hiring international academics in Poland

“…At the same time, the consequences of the brain drain were visible in many societies, including Eastern Europe (Vavrečková and Baštýř, 2009; Renc-Roe, 2011). In some cases, the phenomenon of non-metropolitan areas benefitting from academic migration is better captured by the notion of “brain circulation”.…”

A First Analysis of the Experience and Educational Impact of the International Cooperation at the Facultat D’informàtica De Barcelona

“…In this paper we present the first analysis of the main international cooperation actions carried out by the Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona (FIB), from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya -BarcelonaTech (UPC), in its almost forty-five years of history. The identification and classification of the FIB's international cooperation activities, and the study of their relationships with the educational activities of the school have allowed us to prepare a micro-level type of study that so far is rarely present in the literature [1].…”

“…The wide range and diversity of these actions have been consolidated in the operation of the FIB and have improved the academic activity and the educational offer of the school. It is important to highlight that the decentralized organisation of the UPC allows each school to organise and manage its educational offer and its internationalisation policies with a notable degree of independence.In this institutional context, the identification and classification of the FIB's international cooperation activities, and the study of their relationships with the educational activities of the school have allowed us to prepare a micro-level type of study that is rarely present in the literature [1].Based on the analysis of institutional documentation, both from FIB and UPC, and the testimonials of the different people involved in the international cooperation overall experience of the FIB, we first list the internationalisation actions and then we classify and evaluate them in their respective context. The classification is done along three axes: 1) the set of internationalisation descriptors proposed by Guillaume & Vanholsbeeck [2]; 2) the higher education internationalisation cycle proposed by Perez-Encinas [3] as an extension of Knight's [4]; and 3) the relevant historical periods of the FIB emerging from our study, from 1976 up to 2017.…”

“…In this institutional context, the identification and classification of the FIB's international cooperation activities, and the study of their relationships with the educational activities of the school have allowed us to prepare a micro-level type of study that is rarely present in the literature [1].…”