Teaching staff's views about the internationalisation of higher education: the case of two bilingual communities in Spain

摘要

The process of internationalisation of higher education can be seen asfluctuating between two main discourses: economic competition and academicinternationalisation (Bolsman & Miller 2008). Within the former type of discourse,internationalisation is constructed as a means to generate income, incompetition with other institutions, through the provision of research andteaching services of a high quality to as many ‘clients’ as possible. From thepoint of view of academic internationalism, internationalisation is representedas a joint enterprise by institutions from different countries for the advancementof human knowledge and intercultural understanding. In this paper weaim to explore the views of the teaching staff of two bilingual universities inSpain in connection with the process of internationalisation of their institution,placing a special emphasis on its impact on language policy. The sample forthis study was made up of 173 university teaching staff who completed a questionnairein which they were asked to express their views on issues such asinternationalisation at higher education institutions, academic mobility andtheir attitudes towards multilingualism. The participants belonged to two officiallybilingual universities in Spain, namely the University of Lleida (UdL) andthe University of the Basque Country (UBC). Variables such as the sociolinguisticcontext, gender, mother tongue and age were considered when scrutinisingthe participants’ answers with a view to drawing a picture of internationalisationwhich included opinions on academic mobility and multilingualism fromthe teaching staff’s perspective.