Internationalisation of the curriculum in Malaysian Universities’ business faculties: Realities, implementation and challenges
Introduction
In recent times, global businesses are increasingly recruiting globally while only applicants who have international experience are highly employable. This according to Brown et al. (2008) is because they have demonstrated drive, resilience and inter-cultural sensitivities as well as language skills to succeed in uncertain complex situations. The capacity to operate globally has been identified by Jackson (2009a) as one of the key industry-relevant competencies and skills of modern graduates. Employers from the US, UK, and Australia have expressed dissatisfaction about graduates’ inadequate development of relevant competencies required to effectively operate and compete globally. There is an increasing need for graduates to be equipped with relevant knowledge, skills, and perspectives to enable them develop, conduct, and manage international business operations effectively. The role of internationalisation in meeting this need cannot be overemphasized. Field (2001) cited by Jackson (2009b) posited that internationalisation will play a crucial role in developing the competences required of graduates in the new global economy. Consequently, universities and business schools are responding to this development by embedding internationalisation into their institutional visions and mission, though without adequate attention to initiatives that will enhance global employability of the graduates (Minocha et al., 2018). Nevertheless, some of them have amended their curricula by highlighting cross-cultural skills and capabilities necessary to prepare graduates to operate and compete effectively in a global business environment (Martin et al., 2011; Randolph, 2011).
The internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia started in the 1980s according to Munusamy and Hashim (2019). However, there is still limited knowledge on the internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) in Malaysian higher education; specifically, on the perception, experience and challenges of internationalisation of the curriculum of specific academic programmes among the academic staff. The significance of this knowledge gap was emphasized by Beelen (2011) cited by Foster and Carver (2018) when he expressed the need for more research into the involvement of academic staff in the specific aspects of internationsalisation of the curriculum. Therefore, this study will contribute to filling this knowledge gap by investigating the academic staff's understanding of the concept of IoC, the implementation of IoC in Malaysian universities' business faculties, the roles of academic staff and the challenges of curriculum internationalisation in Malaysia Universities' business faculties.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the academic staffs' understanding, experience and challenge of internationalisation of the curriculum in Malaysian business faculties. This study is significant because, firstly, it contributes to filling a critical knowledge gap on the current practices of internationalisation of the curriculum in Malaysian Universities' business faculties. Secondly, it provides valuable knowledge on IoC required to adequately internationalise the Malaysian business faculties curriculum. The central question guiding this research is; what is the staffs’ understanding, experience, and challenge of internationalisation of the curriculum of business faculties in Malaysian higher educational institutions? The specific research questions guiding the study include:
RQ 1: What does internationalisation of the curriculum mean to academic staff?
RQ 2: How is internationalisation of the curriculum currently being implemented?
RQ 3: How and when are the academic staffs engaged in the internationalisation of the curriculum?
RQ 4: What type of training is available for teaching staff in executing an internationalised curriculum?
RQ 5: What are the challenges in internationalising the curriculum?
Section snippets
Literature Review
This section presents the views and findings of different authors in the field of internationalisation, followed by the role of academic staff in internationalising the curriculum. Then the issues related to internationalisation were also reviewed.
Methodology
The study utilised the phenomenological approach. This approach was chosen because it describes the meaning for several individuals' lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon (in this case, internationalisation of the curriculum). Moreover, it also describes what participants have in common and is concerned with ‘what’ individuals experienced and ‘how’ they experienced it. Since this study was targeted at a particular group of people (academic staff), purposeful sampling was used to select
Results
The analysis suggested six distinct themes amongst the verbal responses provided by participants. The results are discussed for each question separately. Participant comments are in quotation marks with the participant ID number in brackets.
Discussion
This study was set out to investigate the experience, perception, and challenges of internationalisation of the curriculum among academic staff of Malaysian Universities’ business faculties. The study was motivated by the growing trend in global recruitment among multinational companies in addition to the need to prepare students who are the would-be applicants of these multinationals for the global labour market. Malaysia has the third largest number of international students in Asia and is
Recommendations and Conclusion
One of the recommendations for curriculum internationalisation would be the provision of regular formal training on internationalisation for all academic staff. The training has to be objective-driven and take the international context of the curriculum into account. These trainings should be fixed in order to guarantee the needed competencies of academic staff as well as to promote consistency. Additionally, the university should provide opportunities for lecturers to be more exposed to
Author statement
Uchechi Cynthia Ohajionu: Abstract, Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Recommendations and Conclusion. Writing- Reviewing and Editing.
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