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Priority 1: Engaging academic staff in the internationalisation agenda

The curriculum is linked to issues of social power and social control. World society is not

one in which global resources and power are shared equally – “globalisation is being
experienced as a discriminatory and even oppressive force in many places” (Soudien 2005,
501). It has contributed to increasing the gap between the rich and the poor of the world, and

the exploitation of the ‘South’ by the ‘North’. This domination is not only economic. It is also
intellectual, the dominance of Western educational models defining “what is knowledge and

who is qualified to understand and apply that knowledge” (Goodman 1984, 13), what
research questions are asked, who will investigate them and if and how the results will be
applied (Carter 2008). Globalisation has contributed to the dominance of Western

educational models (Marginson 2003).

Academic staff are key players in addressing this issue. They are the link between

knowledge in the disciplines and student learning. They are responsible for the research that
creates knowledge, and the curriculum that disseminates that knowledge and trains the next
generation of researchers. Knowledge in and across the disciplines is the centre of the very

concept of internationalisation of the curriculum. Supporting academic staff to challenge
dominant knowledge paradigms is an important part of the process of internationalisation of

the curriculum (Leask 2012).

Successive Global Survey Reports of the International Association of Universities (Knight

2006; Egron-Polak & Hudson, 2010) have, however, found that issues related to staff
involvement and expertise ranked high on the list of obstacles to the achievement of
nd
institutional internationalisation goals. In the 2 Global Survey they even outranked the
perceived lack of resources for internationalisation (Knight, 2006). Sanderson (2008) notes
the importance of the internationalisation of the academic self. Others have noted that some

disciplines are more open to internationalisation than others. Some believe that by their very
nature their discipline is international; that it is based on ‘universal knowledge’, ignoring the
fact that decisions about what does and doesn’t count as knowledge are value-laden

decisions that usually reflect dominant paradigms.

Increasing the engagement of academic staff in the internationalisation agenda of

universities and other institutions of higher education must remain a priority for the future.

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