ACVOIHE · The academic voice in quality and internationalisation of Czech and British higher education
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2010-05-10 → 2013-05-09
- EU contribution
- €75,000
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IRG
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The academic voice in quality and internationalisation of Czech and British higher education
The project has brought together academic perceptions of internationalisation in three higher education systems: Czech, English and Australian. Through narratives of senior academics within the three higher education systems, it has highlighted how the academics’ backgrounds and experiences have impacted on their current practices. The whole research has drawn on critical events among 81 senior academics within the three higher education contexts. This project has helped to further refine a critical event narrative inquiry method as a qualitative research method particularly suited to investigating complex, human-centred environments such as higher education. The project has underlined the complexity of the phenomena of internationalisation and quality and the ways in which they relate to each other. The research has highlighted the significant role of the different socio-economic, cultural, historical and political contexts within the three systems which have played a key part in shaping Czech, Australian and English higher education. This was suggested through different issues highlighted by the academics. The academics also voiced some overarching similarities. They have underlined the need for considering the context when either adopting or proposing particular models in relation to internationalisation. A significant number of interviewees within all the three contexts have expressed concern about the current hegemony of English as the global language of communication. In discussing a range of critical events, a great majority of academics pointed to the complexity of developing international and intercultural competencies in themselves and subsequently developing these in others. This underlined the need for a considerable interest and engagement of academics but also support and engagement across the whole institution, including the leadership for internationalising initiatives to have any chance of succeeding. The project has led to further research into graduate employability and graduate attributes where internationalisation plays a key part.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The proposed research concerns the issue of internationalisation in higher education and its relation to higher education quality. Quality in higher education has gained attention particularly over the last two decades (Westerheijden et al, 1994). Internationalisation in higher education is a phenomenon which has also recently become a widespread and strategically significant topic in higher education (Van der Wende and Westerheijden, 2001), and has developed in parallel with quality in higher education. In particular, the research proposes to investigate internationalisation and its relation to higher education quality through the academic voice in the Czech and British higher education systems. These issues are currently high on the agenda of many European higher education systems, including the Czech and British systems. The research study will utilise a “critical event” narrative inquiry method, which is a novel qualitative method ideally suited to investigate complex issues, such as internationalisation and quality in higher education. The essence of the “critical event” narrative inquiry method is in the identification of “critical events” in professional practice of individuals, in the case of this proposed research it will be the British and Czech academics and higher education leaders. To the researcher’s knowledge, higher education quality and internationalisation have not yet been investigated utilising such a method, nor have they both been previously investigated from an academic perspective. Thus, it is proposed that such research would be of great value to European higher education and potentially to other higher education systems worldwide, particularly in terms of further policy development.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union