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Abstract
This study addresses the challenges concerning the internationalisation of higher education, with a particular focus on designing new international programmes. It presents a case study of a novel international study programme: the MA in Media Education at the Faculty of Education at the University of Lapland, Finland. The study looks into its curriculum as an affordance network and asks: How do the planned and experienced curricula respond to and support cultural inclusion? The results shed light on the risks of transforming existing domestic degree programmes into ‘international’ programmes. The core curriculum design challenges found in this study stem from the fact that the meaning of internationalisation has been defined ‘from within’; from the existing structures and expectations of the programme and from the host institution. We suggest that more attention should be paid to students' life-worlds and the entire multicultural ecosystem that builds on the affordances inscribed in the curriculum.
Funding
This research has been partly funded by EU (Kolarctic ENPI CBC).
Notes
1. The first two authors of this article were teaching in the programme at the time of the data collection. The research has been conducted as part of a research and development project on inclusive education in the Barents region. The project aims at developing inclusion at all levels of education. The third author of this article leads the project.
2. At the time of the research, 11 Finnish students had taken the courses of the programme, and of them, 4 volunteered for the interview, respectively, of 13 active international students, 9 participated in the interviews.
3. The interview passages by domestic students have been translated into English by the authors.