This article reports on Higher Education student experiences of engaging with the concepts, values and activities in an adapted pilot version of the Council of Europe’s Portfolio of Competences for Democratic Culture. Our aim was to explore how this portfolio could serve as a learning tool in an internationalized context for higher education students. The contributions of 32 students undertaking Masters’ programs in a UK university were analyzed by the authors. These are discussed in relation to student development of democratic competences, focusing on citizenship, values and the Portfolio as a learning tool. Participant contributions showed a strong emphasis on valuing cultural diversity together with development of awareness and confidence in owning both the concepts and the process of being a citizen. We conclude that the Portfolio can be seen as a tool for empowerment through validation of participants’ personal experiences and as structural support in articulating these.

The covid-19 pandemic served as an accelerator to prioritise local internationalisation activities at many higher education institutions (HEIs). Internationalisation of formal curriculum at home is one of such activities that has the power to bring the benefits of internationalisation to all students, not only the mobile ones. To make this happen, university teachers need the expertise to become capable of designing and facilitating international practices in their disciplines.

The view of teaching staff as key players in internationalisation at home/internationalisation of the curriculum (IaH/IoC) is well established. However, even though teachers, in theory, may be aware of their role, research shows that there is great uncertainty about how to carry out their responsibility in practice. HEIs stand in front of the important task: equipping their teaching staff with the competencies to manage the challenges and opportunities that the international classroom brings.

This presentation will give an example of meeting this demand by introducing an ongoing initiative in creating a staff development course driven by the network for Strategic Internationalisation for Swedish University Colleges (HÖNSI).

A group of researchers, teachers, curriculum developers and international officers representing six Swedish HEIs have planned the joint course with the aim to increase the awareness of academic teachers about their role as intercultural educators and to support them in how to integrate an international, intercultural and global perspective in their own practice to increase their students’ intercultural competence. Our session will present the course plan, its learning objectives and contents. In addition, the dialogic planning process and its challenges will be discussed, for example, the balance between theory and practice and the didactic/educational issues: what is internationalisation, why internationalisation and how to ‘do’ internationalisation?

Book description: Giving voice to researchers, policy-makers and practitioners through a range of international case studies, Educational Approaches to Internationalization through Intercultural Dialogue interrogates processes of internationalization strategy and practice, from an educational and intercultural dialogue perspective.

Addressing this important, under-discussed area of internationalization – the role of intercultural dialogue – this book provides theoretical reflections and applicable, practical case studies that focus on:

Support for integration programmes for international and home studentsMobility programmes and initiatives which use an intercultural dialogue approach The place of local languages and cultures in foreign language policiesThe possibilities within a higher education contextThe multilingual perspectiveStudent and staff perspectives

Focusing on teaching and learning, and exploring the latest research within the context of internationalization, Educational Approaches to Internationalization through Intercultural Dialogue is a must-read for anyone interested in, or currently involved in designing and implementing internationalization strategies within a higher education institution.

This chapter focuses on the notion of intercultural dialogue (ICD) as a lens for considering the internationalisation policies of three European universities (Woodin, Lundgren and Castro). This led to the development of a framework for implementing an intercultural dialogue (ICD) approach in higher education. Issues of a social and educational nature, such as equity in terms of access and success, social cohesion, affordability or sustainable development, remain secondary or invisible. As D. Bourn notes: ‘even when economic forces have dominated a university’s response to globalisation, social and cultural questions have had to be recognised’. He argues for a reconsideration of pedagogy, the content of courses, the need to address intercultural dialogue and to engage higher education institutions in a more critical and student-oriented perspective with implications for citizens and societies. Within the prevailing global context of higher education, internationalisation has evolved into a broad range of rationales, discourses and approaches leading to different practices, which may conflict with each other.

Introduction: Across the world, internationalisation has been recognised as key to the ‘success’ of a university; internationalisation is even included as one of the international indicators for ranking universities’ performance. It follows then that universities which are ranked high in internationalisation attract more international students; these students can benefit an institution greatly through fees and opportunities for collaboration, including student exchanges, staff exchanges and international research opportunities, all of which count towards a high internationalisation scoring. The ‘winners’ continue to win through this process, and those lower down the hierarchy can find it hard to move forwards. In the age of a marketplace focus in higher education in many parts of the world, this can be particularly problematic. Caught in a position of chasing metrics in order to survive, university leaders can feel an obligation to ‘play the game’. This may not be the case all over the world, however, as this chapter will show.

Alongside these constraints, some innovative work is being done under the umbrella of internationalisation which offers opportunities for a rich and engaged educational approach including achievements not covered by current metrics. A number of these developments have been presented in this volume.

This chapter will consider whether the term ‘internationalisation’ has come to mean something so closely connected to marketisation of universities that it has lost other meanings, or whether it even needs replacing or amending. We shall discuss some examples of where alternative approaches have been adopted, whether at national, university or classroom level, and ask how far an intercultural dialogue/educational approach can be taken in the current context. In doing so, we seek to redress the balance towards educationally – oriented approaches to internationalisation through an intercultural dialogue lens (CoE, 2008; see Chapter 1, this volume).

This chapter looks at an objective of the proposed Swedish National Strategy for Internationalisation of Higher Education (HE), which reads as follows: ‘All students who earn university degrees have developed their international understanding and intercultural competence’. It aims to analyse the Objective and Strategy from the axiomatic position that internationalisation in HE should be a matter of the education of the individual. Swedish universities like most HE institutions (HEIs) around the world have internationalisation high up on their agenda. HE as part of Sweden’s internationalisation agenda ‘had fallen behind’ according to the Minister of Education, and she decided to take a holistic grip of internationalisation of HE and launched an inquiry into increased internationalisation of HEIs in 2017. The internationalisation efforts of the HE institutions are predicated upon constructive cooperation with the rest of society and efficient coordination between government agencies in order to overcome national and global challenges.