Who’s learning whose learning? How internationalisation and pressure to perform are transforming education and learning

Abstract

The last two decades have seen a strong and accelerating trend towards the internationalisation of secondary and tertiary education. This manifests itself in such phenomena as franchising, the mushrooming of satellite campuses and the proliferation of exchange programmes. In just a seven-year period between 2000 and 2007, the number of internationally mobile students grew by almost 60 per cent from 1.8 million to 2.8 million. Not only students, but staff, too, are increasingly mobile, as are the educational models they follow. Processes of exchange and internationalisation offer obvious benefits, but they also entail many less obvious risks, not least of cultural homogenisation and a creeping academic imperialism. In the first article of this issue, entitled ‘‘Middle East meets West: Negotiating cultural difference in international educational encounters’’, Helen Goodall posits that ‘‘there is still an appalling lack of awareness of cultural differences within Western learning and teaching environments ... [, and] a thorough understanding of the potential impact of cultural differences on learning and teaching is required by providers to enable them to respond appropriately in the design and delivery of international educational encounters.’’ She rejects the assumption underlying many academic exchange programmes that models of education and learning are easily transferable, and instead warns that ‘‘in order to provide successful transnational education programmes, it is essential to understand both the needs of the learners and how they learn.’’ According to the author, an important factor to consider when transferring educational models between countries is the extent to which the recipient culture is collectivist or individualist. The Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede defined culture as ‘‘the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category from another’’ (Hofstede 1991, p. 51). Goodall takes Hofstede’s model of culture as her starting point in evaluating a proposed staff