Exploring flying faculty teaching experiences: motivations, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

‘Flying faculty’ models of teaching represent an important aspect of the internationalisation agenda. As short-term sojourners, these overseas visits provide academics with disorientating dilemmas that can stimulate transformational learning. This study explored the impact of flying faculty teachers' experiences on their work, lives and identities and used the Biographical, Narrative, Interpretive Method (BNIM) for both data collection and analysis. The findings provide rich, colourful pen portraits of the motivations for, experiences of, and benefits from teaching overseas. Cross-case analysis highlighted the physical impact of overseas visits; the search for equivalence; relationships with local staff and students; and concerns about internationalisation as a means of income generation as important to the interviewees.

Keywords:

• transnational education
• internationalisation
• short-term sojourner
• Biographical, Narrative, Interpretive Method
• transformational learning

Acknowledgements

This study was possible due to the prize money from the Society for Research into Higher Education's Newer Researcher Prize, 2009. I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their comments, and the interviewees and panel members for their time engaging with this work. This article is dedicated to Panashe Mpamhanga, whose presence was felt at each stage of the research.