Reflecting on New Faculty Training: Internationalized Learning Essentials

Literature Review

The effort to internationalize the curriculum required familiarity with the literature. Since internationalizing the curriculum was part of GGC’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) – and the QEP constituted part of the basis of accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools – finding the literature and theoretical bases remained a significant early task. It was recognized that while GGC hosts one of the most diverse student bodies and faculty in the southeastern United States, not all of the literature would be relevant to institutional stakeholders. Administrators and faculty quickly identified three distinct areas, broken down in this literature review as the following interrelated concepts: 1) internationalization of the curriculum; 2) intercultural competence; and 3) training university faculty in both internationalizing the curriculum and in intercultural competence.

The literature addressing internationalization of the curriculum (IOC) has expanded both in quality and scope in the last fifty years. Since internationalization itself can mean different things to different people, one of the tasks scholars have attempted to address relates to its meaning. For example, does internationalizing the curriculum suggest enlarging the faculty with higher numbers of professors from foreign countries? Does it include adding larger numbers of international students to courses? Does it involve sending students to other countries for a portion of their higher education, or even bringing branch campuses of foreign universities to one’s national shores? Does it require adding international content to courses? Internationalization raises questions and provokes confusion about its relationship to globalization: are they the same thing? If not, how do they differ? As Knight observes, “This reflects the realities of today and presents new challenges in terms of developing a conceptual model that provides some clarity on meaning and principles to guide policy and practice” (2004, p. 6).