Internationalization in the Formal Curriculum as Interpreted and Experienced by International Graduate Students in Canada – An Interpretive Case Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many universities in Canada have dedicated themselves to internationalization as an educational approach to enhance students’ awareness of global complexities, engage with diversity, foster global citizenship, and encourage meaningful contributions to society. Despite the growing attention to modifying curricula to align with the internationalization agenda, the literature offering guidance on approaching this endeavour remains limited, particularly concerning insights from students and within the specific academic realm of education. In order to contribute to the ongoing discourse surrounding curriculum internationalization, deepen the comprehension of how recent international students interpret and experience this approach, and explore ways to enrich student learning experiences, I conducted an interpretive case study, the details of which are presented in this dissertation. Specifically, I delved into a case study centred on internationalization in the formal curriculum through the perspectives of international graduate students enrolled in a school of education at a comprehensive academic and research university in Canada. Using qualitative content analysis and reflexive thematic analysis, I analyzed data collected from public documents, semi-structured interviews with nine international graduate students, and my reflexive research journal. Guided by the framework of practice architecture theory, I identified and shared interpretations on four key themes: 1. Influential cultural-discursive arrangements in shaping interpretations; 2. Diversification of course content: The deliberate commencement; 3. Advancing inclusion in course design to mitigate inequalities; 4. Crucial social-political arrangements in facilitating intercultural learning. In dialogue with existing scholarship, my findings elaborate on the meanings and value of content integration in an ‘internationalized’ formal curriculum, as some international graduate students interpreted. The research findings also highlight the importance of being aware of the practice traditions on the site and incorporating inclusive course design to mitigate inequalities and the risk of system exclusion in an internationalized formal curriculum. Furthermore, the findings suggest that institutional discussions on diversity and inclusivity are notably influential in shaping how international graduate students interpret an internationalized curriculum. In addition, as my findings revealed, being aware of the hierarchical structure within a university and understanding the power dynamics between instructors and students can potentially lead international graduate students to perceive instructors as the primary initiators of the course internationalization process. Simultaneously, they tend to predominantly view their role as that of responsive participants. The study seeks to contribute to empirical and practical knowledge on international studies of internationalizing the formal curriculum in higher education. It shows the necessity for more recent, in-depth, and regional-specific studies regarding curriculum internationalization from students’ perspectives. It concludes by offering recommendations for higher education institutions to support curriculum internationalization.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.042 | 0.036 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.018 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".