Week 5

I read with interest the first few chapters on internationalizing curriculum in higher education because much of my work has dealt in some way with international education. I’ve taught second languages for several years and recently I have been working with some National Resource Centers for area studies (NRCs) and Language Resource Centers (LRCs) all funded through Title VI funds for international education. One issue that all these programs seem to face is the question - What is the purpose of international and language education? While some people argue for an instrumental orientation for language and area studies – focusing on helping students develop important job skills (translation skills, international business skills, etc.), others argue for a more liberal arts or humanities oriented focus (intercultural understanding, appreciation of literature and other forms of expression, awareness as global citizens,  etc.) Most programs recognize that ideally they would be doing both, but figuring out how to combine these different goals remains a challenge, and internal and external politics add to the difficulties. Also, there seems to be a short-term orientation to decision making partly related to the consumer oriented era that Kreber mentions in Chapter 1 and partly related to the uncertain economic times. My observation is that as a result our programs often end up schizophrenic: stating one thing to satisfy funders and decision makers, doing something else in the program because it’s what instructors (or students) are most comfortable with, and then changing it all again every few years because of new policies, funding priorities, or staff turnover. I thought the first chapter discussed the different economic, academic, and political perspectives on internationalizing education quite well. I guess I have one issue to add: In a decision-making climate that seems to be short-term oriented and somewhat unstable, how do we maintain a long-term perspective both for our programs and our students? Also, how do we demonstrate the value of our programs when they do not necessarily meet the immediate short-term needs of our funders, students, and other stakeholders? To me these issues seem key if we are going to convince faculty to sit down and engage in the slow and difficult effort of curricular reform.