Special issue on university internationalisation – towards transformative change in higher education. Internationalising doctoral research: developing theoretical perspectives on practice

Abstract

The current internationalisation agenda in UK higher education (HE) is still seen as most relevant to those university departments involved in international student recruitment and support. This approach has been influenced by the dominant ‘deficit’ discourses from earlier decades, which emphasise the need for international students to ‘catch up on’ English language and academic skills. By contrast, we argue that a more critical and holistic approach towards internationalisation can have implications for all staff and students in the university, and in all areas of activity, including curriculum development, assessment and research. Through examples from recent research conducted with doctoral students, we draw on conceptual approaches from the fields of academic literacies and intercultural communication to develop a lens for exploring educational research and teaching practices from an internationalisation perspective. We discuss some of the issues that arose in relation to the unfamiliar academic literacy and communicative practices that international students encountered in the UK institution. These included: negotiating different procedures and approaches when conducting research as a UK university-based researcher as compared to their ‘home’ institution; developing understanding of the supervisory relationship and feedback, and the challenges of reading and writing across cultures. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of these research findings for developing a ‘transformative’ approach to internationalisation of HE.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank all the doctoral students who contributed directly and indirectly to this article through the research project, which was funded by a UEA Teaching Fellowship.

Notes

1. The country background of those in the focus groups and individual interviews included: Brazil, China (2), Egypt (2), Ghana (2), Iceland, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan (2), Korea, Malaysia (3), Mexico (3) Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania (2), Thailand (7) and Vietnam. Students were from the following disciplines/schools of study: biology, literature, international development, education, allied health professions, environmental science, computer science, nursing, medicine, pharmacy, political science, business studies, language and translation studies, mathematics, film studies and chemistry.

2. For ethical reasons we were unable to ‘triangulate’ these perceptions with those of the supervisors concerned. A parallel research study which explores some of these issues with supervisors is, however, currently being undertaken.