Students’ and Teachers’ Experience of Globalization/Internationalization ‘of’ Higher Education - Emphasizing a pedagogical stance in an internationalized teaching and learning context

The conclusions in this paper are drawn from the results of four empirical studies.
It has been important to take an empirical approach in the investigation, concerned with
internationalization of higher education, since even though plentiful of studies over the last
decades have been concerned with internationalization in/of higher education, it has not been
from the perspectives from the teachers and students and their experiences of aspects of
internationalization in relation to their educational context (that is, as a student, and as a
teacher). The phenomenon of internationalization in higher education has, even though
frequently investigated during the last three decades, been addressed as unclear, vague,
ambiguous, and obscure, and has not become clearly conceptualized in an educational
practice. Various phenomena complexes have however been typologically outlined, dealing
with internationalization in terms of various ideologies or in terms of doctrines, or as a state
of things, or as an overall process, emphasizing various foci and relating these to various
components. What is emphasized in this paper is a shift from an overall external perspective
to a relational experienced based perspective, viewed as the description of students’ and
teachers’ experiences and understandings of an internationalized educational context. The
results show that the participants did not share a mutual understanding of the phenomenon of
internationalization, or a shared curriculum (understanding). This leads to consequences in
teaching and learning approaches, based on the various experiences/understandings of the
phenomenon of internationalization in relation to teachers and students experiences. The
results imply that the main reason for the perceived lack of clarity concerning
‘internationalization’ relates to a lack of teachers pedagogical/didactical theoretical awareness
with consequences for students in teaching and learning situations, when
issues/topics/matters/aspects of internationalization are focused on. This study has been
conducted within the educational context Swedish nurse education. It is argued that (the)
internationalization of curricula and the view of learning of aspects of internationalization
within internationalized contexts of higher education, must head for a change.