Complicating International Education: Intersections of Internationalization and Indigenization

Abstract

Internationalization of higher education is no longer a peripheral strategy for most universities and colleges, now positioned to influence multiple layers of institutions. Intercultural learning as a positive and necessary outcome has bolstered the importance of internationalization; in Canada, intercultural learning has increasingly been institutionalized as an organizational strategy. More recently, Indigenization, or the engagement with Indigenous knowledge and peoples, has been taken up by higher education institutions in Canada. These strategies are grounded in differing educational philosophies, values, and motivations but are implemented simultaneously. This dissertation examines one Canadian higher education institution and the intersections of its strategic priorities of internationalization, interculturalization, and Indigenization. Utilizing case study methodology with interviews, document review, and observation as data collection methods, I examine the following research questions: 1) How do faculty and staff conceptualize the university’s international and intercultural efforts and motivations? 2) How does the institutional priority of increasing intercultural understanding engage with the internationalization and Indigenization organizational strategies of the university? 3) How do staff and faculty across the university understand the intersection of Indigenization and internationalization? Through this dissertation, I make two primary arguments. First, internationalization’s implementation through a business framework has motivated a movement toward interculturalization to further academic learning on campus and temper more the neoliberal outcomes of internationalization. This relationship has established a lasting link between the two strategies. Second, the growing engagement of higher education in Indigenization efforts has brought about intersecting strategic priorities and a hope that interculturalization can support and further Indigenization. However, the Indigenization project is supported and motivated by Indigenous autonomy and sovereignty, not by Western organizational frameworks. Further possibilities of engagement require an uncoupling of business and economic motivations for internationalization and interculturalization to open both to the possibility of transformation.