by Siyin Liang
The 6th International Association of Universities Global Survey Report on Internationalization of Higher Education revealed that 75% of respondents from higher education institutions had noted a significant rise in the emphasis placed on internationalizing their curriculum at home (Beelen & Jones, 2015, p. 69) in recent years (Marinoni & Pina Cardona, 2024). Although higher education institutions in Canada are increasingly considering advancing internationalization within their formal curricula, there is a noticeable lack of policy initiatives and academic discourse on how to progress in this endeavor (Clarke & Kirby, 2022). Moreover, the experiential dimension of internationalization in the formal curriculum in Canadian universities and beyond, as students perceive it, hasn’t been given enough attention (Fakunle, 2019; Jones & Caruana, 2010; Liang, 2024).
To gain more insights into students’ interpretations, expectations, and experiences of internationalization in their formal curriculum, I conducted an interpretive case study from 2021 to 2022 in a school of education at a large, research-intensive Canadian university (Liang, 2024). Research data were collected from public documents, semi-structured interviews with student participants, and my reflexive research journals. It should be noted that at this university, while international postgraduate students had accounted for more than 30% of the university’s entire postgraduate student population since 2021, the percentage of international postgraduate students in the school of education climbed from about 4% in 2021 to 7% in 2023. Obviously, despite this growth, it remains a modest proportion of the overall postgraduate student population within the school. While recognizing the benefits of advancing curriculum internationalization for all students, I opted to include international postgraduate students in the participant sample (n=9), confident that my long-term experience as an international postgraduate in Canada had provided me with more insight to navigate my roles as an insider and an outsider. The participants were five female and four male graduates. They ranged in age from late 20s to late 30s, studying in research-based programs in education and hailing from six different regions: Southern Asia, Eastern Asia, North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, and Western Asia. Two of my key research questions were:
1. How do international postgraduate students interpret an ‘internationalized’ formal curriculum and describe such a curriculum?
2. What types of activities do international postgraduate students consider engaging in when they envisage internationalization in the formal curriculum?
Two main themes emerged during my analysis of the research findings that responded to these questions. They were (1) embarking on the deliberate expansion of content diversity and (2) promoting inclusive course design to reduce inequalities.
Content Diversity
All participants suggested that expanding content diversity in an internationalized, formal curriculum is crucial. This means the curriculum should include different perspectives, practices, and issues from various countries and nations. More specifically, they made several suggestions, including adding materials by researchers from different national or cultural backgrounds to the required reading list. Omar, one of the participants, said, “When I come to a multicultural country like Canada, I expect an internationalized curriculum to include reading and resources…written by people who come from different parts of the world.” For students like Omar, including these readings is significant, which increases the representation of diverse voices within the formal curriculum and, more broadly, within a multicultural and multi-ethnic society like Canada.
Another participant, Sophia asked an interesting question about the extent to which adding articles written by researchers from different countries genuinely contributes to internationalizing course content, particularly if the goal of including diverse perspectives is interpreted as incorporating various philosophical traditions like Hinduism and Taoism. She said, “Just because you use an author from a different country doesn’t necessarily mean it’s internationalized because it could still be the same school of thought.”
Inclusive Course Design
Most participants highlighted the importance of the inclusive course design, noting that educators could achieve this in many ways. For instance, educators could add course materials that reflect students’ sociocultural backgrounds and actively seek ideas from international students in classroom discussions. Monica, who identified as Asian and was attentive to Asian perspectives, suggested, “If you have students from another social background like Germany or Spain, maybe you should update your course…For example, in the readings required for us to read, I remember there is no Asian scholar talking about educational philosophy.”
Reflecting on an inclusive classroom activity, another participant, Mastay said,
I had that moment and then I realized that our curriculum has been internationalized… We got to a point in time in some of our discussions in the classroom [where] we don’t really focus on Canada as a whole but we look at different ideas from other colleagues in other countries. So we looked at different colleagues from across the world about how they are responding to this.
All in all, the emergent voices from my study revealed many complexities in internationalizing formal curricula. By better understanding these dynamics and nuances, educators and institutional leaders could create a more timely and inclusive learning environment for local and international students. Of note, increasing efforts to enhance the quality of academic and support services for students helps counter the interim, unsustainable, and neoliberal approaches to internationalizing higher education.
Further Thoughts after the Study
Professors in Canada have been part of the key driving force in internationalizing curricula in higher education (Bond, 2003; Odgers & Giroux, 2009; Stephenson et al., 2022; Tarc & Budrow, 2022). The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (2009) and the Association of Canadian Deans of Education (2014) also actively advocated for curriculum internationalization. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, it is evident that more Canadian universities have incorporated curriculum internationalization in their recent strategic plans or set it as a key initiative. However, academic discourse on advancing this effort remains scarce (Garson, 2023; Liang, forthcoming).
Notably, Canada is recognized for having a highly decentralized education system, where ten provinces and three territories are responsible for shaping the structure of its post-secondary education system. Most provincial governments developed their own strategies and visions for international education, often operating separately from both the federal government and each other (Trilokekar et al., 2020).
In addition, Canadian universities are autonomous, to varying degrees, in academic affairs, setting their own quality assurance standards and procedures, although there is backing for the Canadian Degree Qualification Framework (Universities Canada, n.d.). The definitions and metrics used to assess university performance on a national level are not provided (Eastman et al., 2022). Other than international student recruitment, decisions and directions of other approaches to internationalization have mostly been left to institutions (Stephenson et al., 2022; Tamtik et al., 2020). In other words, in fact, the institutions have led, and are leading, the vast majority of internationalization initiatives.
What’s more, in the culture of collegiality, the extent to which these initiatives contribute to changes and achieve proposed objectives in a Canadian university depends heavily on the amount of available resources and the degree of consensus-building among faculty members, administrators, and other relevant groups. This is surely relevant when the initiatives attempt changes to the formal curriculum— the required courses and activities that students must complete in their degree program. So, with this said, how can curriculum internationalization advance in Canadian universities? This is a question that warrants extensive research and thoughtful discussions.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank all the participants for their valuable time and insights shared during the study. I also extend my gratitude to Dr. Colleen Kawalilak for her unwavering, long-term support in my exploration of internationalization of higher education.
References:
Association of Canadian Deans of Education. (2014). Accord on the internationalization of education. https://csse-scee.ca/acde/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/08/Accord-on-the-Internationalizationof-Education.pdf
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. (2009). Internationalization of the curriculum: A practical guide to support Canadian universities’ efforts. https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/NCTL/VC%20symposium/curriculum-primer_e.pdf
Beelen, J., & Jones, E. (2015). Redefining internationalization at home. In A. Curai, L. Matei, R. Pricopie, J. Salmi, & P. Scott (Eds.), The European higher education area: Between critical reflections and future policies (pp. 59–72). Springer.
Bond, S. (2003). Untapped resources, internationalization of the curriculum and classroom experience: A selected literature review. Canadian Bureau for International Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED549984.pdf
Clarke, L., & Kirby, D. (2022). Internationalizing higher education curricula: Strategies and approaches. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 10(6), 408–417. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2022.100605
Eastman, J., Jones, G. A., Trottier, C., & Bégin-Caouette, O. (2022). University governance in Canada: Navigating complexity. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Fakunle, O. (2019, February 15). Students: The missing voices in internationalization. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190212144121925
Jones, E., & Caruana, V. (2010). Nurturing the global graduate for the twenty-first century: Learning from the student voice on internationalization. In E. Jones (Ed.), Internationalization and the student voice: Higher education perspectives (pp. xv–xxiii). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Liang, S. (2024). Advancing Internationalization in the Formal Curriculum: Content Integration and Inclusive Design. Journal of Studies in International Education, 28(5), 743–760. https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153241262461
Liang, S. (forthcoming). Curriculum Internationalization: Aligned with Equity and Social Justice? Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education, 17(2), 2025.
Marinoni, G., & Pina Cardona, S. B. (2024). Internationalization of higher education: Current trends and future scenarios. https://www.iau-aiu.net/6th-IAU-Global-Survey-on-Internationalization-Current-Trends-and-Future
Odgers, T., & Giroux, I. (2009). Internationalizing faculty: A phased approach to transforming curriculum design and instruction. In R. D. Trilokekar, G. A. Jones, & A. Shubert (Eds.), Canada’s universities go global (pp. 252–276). James Lorimer & Co.
Stephenson, G. K., Jones, G. A., Bégın-caouette, O., & Metcalfe, A. S. (2022). Professors and Internationalization in Canada: Academic Disciplines and Global Activities. Yükseköğretim Dergisi, 12(Supplement), 14–23. https://doi.org/10.2399/yod.22.202202
Tamtik, M., Trilokekar, R. D., & Jones, G. (2020). Conclusion: International education as public policy-the Canadian story. In M. Tamtik, R. D. Trilokekar & G. A. Jones (Eds.), International education as public policy in Canada (pp. 407–426). McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Tarc, P., & Budrow, J. (2022). Seeking the cosmopolitan teacher: Internationalising curricula in a Canadian preservice teacher education program. Teachers and Teaching, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2022.2062744
Trilokekar, R. D., Jones, G. A., & Tamtik, M. (2020). Introduction: The emergence of international education as public policy. In M. Tamtik, R. D. Trilokekar, & G. A. Jones (Eds.), International education as public policy in Canada (pp. 3–25). McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP.
Universities Canada. (n.d.). How quality assurance works in Canada. https://univcan.ca/universities/quality-assurance/
Siyin Liang holds a PhD (Adult Learning) from the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary and an MA (Adult Education) from the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. Her doctoral studies focused on internationalization of the curriculum in the context of Canadian higher education. Currently she continues studying internationalization of higher education while also working in projects as a postdoctoral research assistant in the Faculty of Education at Memorial University of Newfoundland to explore newcomer integration, English as an Additional Language, and public engagement in research. Email: sliang@mun.ca
Critical Internationalization Studies Network 