Themed focus group discussion:
what have we learned (or not learned)? What are the implications for different stakeholders?
The emerging practices of transnationalism
How does ‘transnational’ as a term fit into the dimensions of rethinking the needs of international students and developing internationalization for individuals, groups and institutions? Developing the uses of appropriate language used to discuss this is one step to raising awareness of – and changing – practice.
We might think of transnationalism as ways of looking at the world and engaging in it across borders and national boundaries and identities to realize wider international consciousness. Student and staff mobility across countries are now visible evidence of transnationalism at the level of physical travel, but this isn’t necessarily transnational consciousness or transnationalism in other areas of practice, eg a Polish lecturer or a student from Poland in the UK may remain unchanged in their national outlooks without added dimensions to their experience and identities.
In academic disciplines, in many cases there is a paradoxical lack of international dimensions: in Education, cases, projects and references may be largely to the UK; in Pharmacy, professional accreditation means large parts of a programme must meet UK criteria of knowledge and practice, even for Nottingham’s Malaysian campus; in sciences and engineering there is a core of recognized knowledge which applies internationally but applications may be UK based in practice.
We saw a challenge for students and, particularly, for staff to be transnational: there are some committed and interested individuals but institutions may be market-driven and not developing a strategy for staff to become more transnational. Universities could make more of transnational opportunities for staff in work placements, study abroad and sabbaticals and make a collective policy to support international dimensions of work and expect transnational aspects in programmes. Maybe there is a role for applied social, cultural, anthropological aspects in all disciplines, eg cultural beliefs about health and intercultural managements issues. Should there be foreign language requirements for students and staff (which would give a possible advantage to multilinguals among international students).
There are deep paradoxes and language constraints not to be transnational: the role of global English in journal, conferences and research quality assessment highly favours English.