Studying Internationalization of Iran’s Higher Education System and Comparing with European Countries: Role of Language in Internationalization
Location
DeSantis Room 1047
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
15-1-2020 2:15 PM
End Date
15-1-2020 2:35 PM
Abstract
Nowadays indeveloping countries, one of the challenges of higher education is internationalization followed by using English-medium instruction as one of its factors. The current paper attempts to find the role of language in internationalizationof higher education and to know what language learning approach the European countries use in higher education. Then it is triedto compare Iran position in internationalizationof higher education with European countries in order to get a benchmark. It is a qualitative descriptive study using qualitative content analysis, description, and interpretation of top-level documents in Iran, the experience of European countries and expert panels. Based on the developed countries, European ones have been chosen as a sample population. The stratified purposeful sampling was used withthe U.N.typology for European countries: Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western Europe. Choosing samplescontinues in order to getsaturation. Qualitative content analysis of texts is applied and after triangulation of findings, criteria and factors are chosen and farm work is developed. Thefindings evaluate in an expert panel to be verified and refined using the feedback provided by experts in the field. The panel of subject-matter experts (SMEs) was used to examine the proposed framework. During the evaluation process, useful recommendations were received and the framework was improved. The experts are selected using a snowball sampling technique and two rounds of SMEs panel are used to obtain the consensus and validate the findings. Findings show one of the barriers in Iran forInternationalisation of higher education is language. Since the only legal language for teaching in higher education is Persian (Farsi).
Keywords
Internationalization of Iran, English-medium instruction, Higher education
Studying Internationalization of Iran’s Higher Education System and Comparing with European Countries: Role of Language in Internationalization
DeSantis Room 1047
Nowadays indeveloping countries, one of the challenges of higher education is internationalization followed by using English-medium instruction as one of its factors. The current paper attempts to find the role of language in internationalizationof higher education and to know what language learning approach the European countries use in higher education. Then it is triedto compare Iran position in internationalizationof higher education with European countries in order to get a benchmark. It is a qualitative descriptive study using qualitative content analysis, description, and interpretation of top-level documents in Iran, the experience of European countries and expert panels. Based on the developed countries, European ones have been chosen as a sample population. The stratified purposeful sampling was used withthe U.N.typology for European countries: Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western Europe. Choosing samplescontinues in order to getsaturation. Qualitative content analysis of texts is applied and after triangulation of findings, criteria and factors are chosen and farm work is developed. Thefindings evaluate in an expert panel to be verified and refined using the feedback provided by experts in the field. The panel of subject-matter experts (SMEs) was used to examine the proposed framework. During the evaluation process, useful recommendations were received and the framework was improved. The experts are selected using a snowball sampling technique and two rounds of SMEs panel are used to obtain the consensus and validate the findings. Findings show one of the barriers in Iran forInternationalisation of higher education is language. Since the only legal language for teaching in higher education is Persian (Farsi).
Comments
The contents of the present paper were drawn from a Ph.D.dissertationin Higher Education, entitled “Studying the Effective Factors in Internationalization of Iran’s Higher Education: Language of Academic Teaching”. It was also done by the scientific and financial support of the Institute for Research and PlanningofHigher Education.