Going beyond the binary of internationalisation: how international faculty programmes enable institutions to function at home and abroad

ABSTRACT

Internationalisation is now a prominent feature of the higher education landscape, with many institutions integrating international, intercultural and global dimensions inside and outside the classroom. In this paper, I examine the long-term outcomes of international faculty mobility on individual pathways at home institutions framed within the context of internationalisation. I find that the current mode of internationalisation neglects the role of how abroad activities contribute to subsequent institutional internationalisation at home and abroad. My retrospective tracer study with eight qualitative in-depth interview participants finds that formerly internationally mobile faculty integrate international, intercultural, and global dimensions related to the host country, host region and wider world at their home institutions into their teaching, research and service after returning from abroad. In doing so, I propose a new way of understanding how the complementary pillars of abroad and at home internationalisation maintain an on-going, synergetic process that react and contribute to each other and the way in which internationalisation can be re-visited and re-imagined meeting broader goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• international faculty mobility
• internationalisation
• outcomes
• United States
• Japan

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express deep thanks to the interview participants for their time and willingness to openly share about their experiences. The author also appreciate the research grants provided by Kyoritsu Women’s University that allowed the research to be conducted. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers for their time and effort to carefully read and provide helpful insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a research grant from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Culture of Kyoritsu Women’s University.