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Prof. Troy Heffernan, Prof. Debby Cotton, Prof. Simon Payne, Polly Magne, Dr Dave Morrison
Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]
Aims and Methods
Student Views Across and within Subjects
External Internationalisation and Business Cases
The Nature of Student Resistance
The Terms we Use
Session Outline
Home Students 80% of UK student population (HESA 2016)
Following current interest in literature (Jones & Killick 2007; Jones & Beelan 2015)
Literature Bias Appeared to be Business subject bias We investigated whether this was a problem
Before/After Comparison (pending)
Purpose & Aims
Discipline Comparison
Primary Education Arts & Humanities English Literature Arts & Humanities Social Work Health & Human Sciences Chemistry Science & Engineering Maths Science & Engineering Biology Science & Engineering Marketing Business Tourism & Hospitality Business
Aimed to address several gaps in literature in one move
Student Survey: Immersive Module
6-option Likert scale – no neutral choice
Representative Samples Surveys administered during class sessions at end of term Scheduled for days students most likely to attend (receiving assessment details)
Factor analysis and 2-step Clustering Two factor-sets of questions: general student views and views about mobility Data weighted for differing class sizes
Thematic coding for qualitative data
Business Subject Review 399 abstracts/methods between 2000-2016 Search terms: Internationalization, Global Citizenship, filtered for ‘Higher Education’
Methods
Total
Responses Female Male Avg. Age Multi-lingual
Marketing 45 45% 55% 19 22%
Tourism 35 77% 23% 19 63%
Social Work 24 87% 13% 28 25%
Education 124 73% 27% 20 21%
English 70 75% 23% 20 30%
Biology 77 59% 41% 21 17%
Chemistry 38 39% 61% 20 32%
Computing 30 0% 100% 20 27%
Maths 51 29% 71% 20 25%
Total 494 57% 41% 21 27%
Demographics
Overall, home students are largely positive about internationalisation in the curriculum
Student Views Across Subjects
Std. Dev Quartile25 Median 75
I expect a university level module in my subject to have a global/international scope 1.1 4 5 5In my subject, learning about internationalisation takes time away from learning more important skills 1.2 3 4 5
It is important to know about how other nations or cultures approach my subject 1.2 4 5 5Global citizenship is one thing that higher education is for 1.1 3 4 5You need to have international students in your class to have a multicultural experience 1.5 2 4 5Students should have to be more culturally sensitive and aware 1.1 4 5 5To get a good job in my subject you need to look at it globally 1.2 4 4 5You need to travel or study abroad to learn about international parts of my subject 1.3 3 4 5Learning about different cultures is not relevant to my subject 1.6 3 4.5 5
There was the expected divide between STEM and
Business/Social Science disciplines. The pattern was not perfect though.
Biology was more similar to the Business/Social Sciences than to the other STEM subjects.
English Literature was more similar to the STEM subjects.
Primary Education students were predominantly positive, but more centrally located between the two extremes. Education, Biology, and English Literature formed a
tentative ‘middle’ group
Business and Social Work students were much more positive about all aspects of internationalisation. Moreover, there were almost no negative outliers in these
subjects, while all other subjects had many.
Student Views within Subjects
Two clusters emerged
Most subjects felt international students or study abroad were not necessary for internationalisation
Marketing and Tourism students felt these were necessary Between 55-70%
Need for External Sources
47% of the papers which addressed internationalisation at the home
institution relied exclusively on Business subjects as data sources.
Given the substantial differences Business students showed in our study it is doubtful that teaching/curriculum recommendations from these sources can be broadly applied to internationalisation across an institution This does not mean the research was poor, or the recommendations incorrect Rather, more work must be done to relate Business outcomes to dissimilar subjects
Only 11% of studies used comparison across subjects
Business Bias
Amount and type of response to the final comments was
strongly polarised by Faculty
Here the STEM / Social Science divide was most apparent
English Literature was more negative than and STEM But quantitatively English Literature was less so Indicates a hidden student resistance
Nature of Resistance
Response Rate Negative Positive
Marketing 6% 0 3
Tourism 3% 0 1
Social Work 12% 0 3
Education 5% 1 4
English Lit. 17% 11 1
Biology 4% 3 0
Chemistry 26% 9 1
Computing 20% 5 1
Maths 18% 8 1
Nature of Resistance
Comments from STEM students felt that multiculturalism was irrelevant to their subjects. “Chemistry is an international subject and is interpreted by every scientist the same no matter what culture they come
from”
“It's Science, it should all be the same regardless of culture and so it's international without having to place emphasis on the 'internationalness”
English Literature students had different reasons for resistance. The chief reason was that the subject was explicitly not international because it was 'English' literature. “Although our module was based on the Greek poem the Odyssey, there wasn't much need to consider global
perspectives.”
“I don't think this is massively relevant to English as a course. We don't do world literature at this university”
“Not necessary in this subject really! Pick a subject that this is relevant to! Like languages or geography”
Global Citizenship or Cross-Cultural Competency?
Do students understand either term?
Are there differences according to subject?
Is either term more easily/effectively understood?
Is either term problematic?
The Terms we Use
Global Citizenship
Student understandings of Global Citizenship are erratic and not similar to the presumed meaning in the IoC literature - chiefly, student definitions lack personal agency or responsibility
57% did not mention global community
Less that 20% had a sense of personal agency or responsibility
Most regarded it as something outside, which may or may not affect them
22% saw it as instrumental – open borders/mobility/employability
Cross-Cultural Competency (CCC)
Student understandings of Cross-Cultural Competency were very consistent, clearly articulated, and nearly always involved personal agency and responsibility
Extremely high degree of uniformity to the responses, even though 88% said they had never heard the term before. Responses also showed tremendous similarity in wording
overall, even across subjects.
97% referred to CCC in terms of personal agency or responsibility in some way
26% explicitly mentioned personally developing or enacting positive dispositions to other cultures
10% explicitly mentioned including CCC in the curriculum No such responses for Global Citizenship Slightly more came from Education, but there were
responses of this nature across all of the subjects.
Pedagogies of internationalisation need to be strongly contextualised in each subject
The immersive module seems to be a perfect opportunity to do so in an introductory setting. Done at this stage, this awareness could positively colour students' future perceptions of other types of IoC, such as multicultural campus events which they may otherwise view as irrelevant to their course.
Explicitly use the term Cross-Cultural Competence Students appear to inherently grasp the meaning and personal responsibility of this term in each subject
Steer away from the term Global Citizenship, at least in year 1 Term is poorly understood, and students do not associate with something within their control or
responsibility (i.e. something they have a reason to know about)
Be critical of recommendations for IoC which come from Business-centric research These do not adequately address the views and situations of the majority of students, but presume
homogeneity based on a dissimilar cross-section It is important to note that many studies looking subjects other than Business nevertheless still rely on this
Business-centric core for interpretive frameworks
Recommendations
Beelan, Jos and Elspeth Jones (2015) “Europe Calling: A New Definition for
Internationalization at Home”, International Higher Education, 83, 12-13.
Higher Education Statistics Agency (2016) url: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/free-statistics
Jones, Elspeth and David Killick (2013) “Graduate Attributes and the Internationalized Curriculum: Embedding a Global Outlook in Disciplinary Learning Outcomes.” Journal of Studies in International Education.
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