Engaging non-Western international students' intellectual agency in the internationalisation of Australian teacher education : a case study of possibilities for transnational knowledge exchange

Abstract

This study attributes non-Western international students with agency to bring non-Western theoretic-linguistic assets to bear in Australian higher education. Reconsidering these students as intellectual agents creates possibilities for internationalising Australian higher education. By engaging with the complex and contested roles international students play in the realisation of the internationalisation of Australian teacher education in both policy and pedagogy this thesis makes contribution to the growing field of internationalisation of higher education. Through the combination of interviews, focus groups and classroom observations as well as researcher reflexivity, the case study reported in this thesis explores possibilities for non-Western international students to engage their linguistic and theoretical knowledge in Australian teacher education. The evidence from this study confirms that teacher education in Australian universities engages in a one-way knowledge transfer which is largely from the Western Euro-American world to the non-Western world. While this thesis shows that non-Western international students' intellectual resources remain unacknowledged in Australian teacher education, it indicates their potential to use these resources in their studies. To have them make a productive contribution to teacher education, Australian teacher educators' acknowledgement of their ignorance of intellectual inequalities might be deployed pedagogically, An engagement with a non-Western theoretic tool 'tri-vid', the three-in-one unification of knowledge; the knowledge, the knower and the process of knowledge production brings to the fore possibility for creating innovative pedagogies to engage both Western and non-Western students in the co-development of knowledge. This innovative approach provides a vehicle for creating intellectual spaces for all students to be exposed to Western, Southern and Eastern theoretical knowledge for better preparing them for a global culture. By redefining the internationalisation of higher education as the transnational exchange of knowledge, it proposes a transformation of Australian teacher education from Westernised internationalisation to worldly internationalisation thus providing opportunities for bringing innovative alternatives not available in the dominant Western knowledge traditions. The development of an innovative alternative perspective brings a possibility for addressing the complex and controversial dilemmas of sustainability of the planet, a global priority demanding an educational response.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English