Educating the educators: professional development of academics for internationalisation at home

Research Project, 2023 – 2025

Recent initiatives in internationalisation in higher education institutions emphasise a broadened focus from mobility to intercultural competence for all students within the curriculum, often referred to as Internationalisation at Home. In this context, academics have the greatest potential to reach all students, yet the professional development of academics for Internationalisation at Home is limited. Within Sweden, professional development initiatives are few in number, uncoordinated and with unclear outcomes, despite the clearly expressed needs, not least from academics themselves.

This project aims to map existing professional development initiatives at Swedish higher education institutions and critically evaluate their effect for Internationalisation at Home. Furthermore, through a disciplinary focus on engineering education programs and course managers, the project aims to investigate the experienced affordances and challenges of providing a quality international education (at home), to better assess the actual need for professional development. To achieve these aims, a constructivist approach following a multilevel phased mixed design will be employed – using surveys to provide broad insights into existing professional development, and interviews to add richness with respect to in-depth experiences of participating academics. The goal is to formulate practical, research- based recommendations to higher education institutions within Sweden for effective preparation and training of academics.