Problematizing the Idea of Curriculum ‘Internationalization’

Abstract

Problematizing the Idea of Curriculum 'Internationalization'In recent years, there has been growing acknowledgement that our interconnected world requires graduates with international and intercultural perspectives, a global outlook, or to develop as global citizens.One result of this has been greater recognition of the importance of curriculum internationalization as a central focus in a comprehensive approach to internationalization. Betty Leask recognizes the importance of the intercultural in this endeavor, as well as the international, in arguing that:An internationalized curriculum will engage students with internationally informed research and cultural and linguistic diversity and purposefully develop their international and intercultural perspectives as global professionals and citizens.(Leask, 2015, p. 10) Earlier, Josef Mestenhauser, one of the great scholar-practitioners and pioneers in the field, described international education as multi-dimensional, multidisciplinary, and cross-cultural (Mestenhauser, 1998), a view largely reinforced across the literature today.But this begs the question, what do we mean by 'culture,' and so what does it mean to talk of the intercultural when we refer to curriculum?Adrian Holliday (1999) argues that the default notion of culture is really a large culture paradigm, for example, relating to nationality or ethnicity.Perhaps we fall too easily into thinking of our students as coming from a certain country, religious or ethnic background, with the result that stereotyping, biases, and assumptions may follow (Jones, 2017).

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