The Impact of International Studies in Faculty Development

The commercial benefits and global need for higher education institutions has led to creation of faculties in foreign countries by higher education institutions. This practice has come to be referred to as the globalization of higher education as it runs through different countries with different cross-cultural environments (Gahungu, 2011). Higher education institutions have been forced to establish foreign branch campuses so that they are able to provide intellectual resources necessary for the development of students in those foreign campuses. The creation of these faculties has contributed to the employment of more faculty members from the home campus or even from the foreign country where that campus is located to teach in that foreign campus (Altbach & Knight, 2007). However, these faculty members are not well prepared for the different cultures that they will encounter in those foreign faculties. As a result, they do not have enough capability to communicate with learners from those foreign cultures. They therefore, lack the cultural competencies that are critical for their success in those foreign countries. This eventually results in unsuccessful transmission of knowledge to the students.

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Research Objectives

The proposed research would seek to achieve the following goals:

To establish the effects that international studies have on the development of faculties in the foreign campuses.

To assess the role that cultural knowledge of the foreign campuses has on the ability of foreign educators to communicate with foreign students.

To establish the impact of the lack of cultural competencies on the success of students in those foreign campuses.

Research Questions

The proposed research would seek to answer the following research questions

What are the effects of international studies on the development of faculties in foreign campuses?

What roles does cultural knowledge of the foreign campuses play on the ability of educators in foreign campus to communicate with foreign campuses?

What is the impact of the lack of cultural competencies on the success of students in foreign campuses?

Research Methodology

The proposed research would deploy a qualitative research methodology in the quest to address the research aims. The research paradigm would be an interpretive/constructivist one which will seek to unmask the reasons behind international studies and faculty development. Specifically, different scholarly articles would be reviewed on how they have addressed this subjected matter. The results of this search would be synthesized to bring out a conclusion on the impact that international studies have on the development of faculties in foreign countries.

Research Hypothesis

From the research, it is expected that international studies and the globalization of higher education would lead to creation of more faculties in foreign campuses. As such, international studies lead to employment creation for educators of the higher education institutions both in the foreign and home countries. Additionally, it is presumed that those educators have the challenge of cultural competencies of the foreign culture. As such, they are unable to properly communicate with the foreign students and are, therefore, not well prepared for the culturally different environment. At the end of the study, it is expected that the success of those international students is affected due to their inability to converse with the foreign educators who have little or no knowledge of different cultures.

References

Altbach, P. G., & Knight, J. (2007). The internationalization of higher education: Motivations and realities. Journal of studies in international education, 11(3-4), 290-305.

Gahungu, A. (2011). Integration of Foreign-Born Faculty in Academia: Foreignness as an Asset. International journal of educational leadership preparation, 6(1), n1.

Gopal, A. (2011). Internationalization of Higher Education: Preparing Faculty to Teach Cross-Culturally. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 23(3), 373-381.