This piece is an empirical study of how students experience and conceptualise
internationalisation of higher education at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits),
South Africa. The central question of this empirical study is, how do students experience
and conceptualise internationalisation of higher education at Wits? The conceptual
framework presents Wits within three domains, which are the Official, Pedagogical and
Social, as the context within which the university operates. Using a qualitative
methodology – phenomenography – that aims to explore the qualitatively different
ways in which a group of people experience a specific phenomenon, in this case
internationalisation of higher education, four main constructs about internationalisation
have emerged from students’ accounts:
(I) internationalisation as Wits is striving to be a top global university;
(II) internationalisation as the presence of international students;
(III) internationalisation as an issue of mutual respect and acceptance, and
(IV) internationalisation as enhancing the students’ learning experience.
The argument is that, though students converge on these conceptions, their differences
regarding the emphasis and significance points to a scenario of unbalanced institutional
mediation, with strong mediation within the logic of dominant pedagogical practice in
the university, constrained by forms of weak mediation in the social domain.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/7577 |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Creators | Ojo, Emmanuel Oluseun |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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