Internationalization,Student Engagement,and Global Graduates: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Australian Students’ Experience

Abstract

The article provides comparative insights into Vietnamese and Australian students’ experience of internationalization of the curriculum. We explore how local arrangements for curriculum internationalization in Australia and Vietnam enable and/or constrain students’ individual agency in taking control of their knowledge and skills to become skilful and culturally sensitive professionals and citizens. The article is part of a 4-year empirical study that includes 15 semistructured interviews with academics and nine focus groups with 40 students in both countries. We use practice architecture theory to interpret whether and to what extent students can be the key actors in internationalizing the curriculum and the factors that nurture or restrict their participation in this process. The article provides important comparative perspectives on students’ experience of participating in curriculum internationalization in Vietnam as a developing country and an international education importer and Australia as a developed country and an education export provider.

Keywords

internationalization internationalization of the curriculum student engagement student agency global graduates comparative Vietnam Australia

Introduction

Student agency and engagement in the internationalization of their own experience and university life are crucial to any holistic effort in the processes and practices of internationalization and to the enrichment of teaching and learning. Existing literature on students’ development of agency in international education tends to focus on two key dimensions: international students’ expression of agency in the context of cross-border mobility (Kettle, 2005; Marginson, 2014; Tran & Vu, 2017) and international students’ participation in the process of co-constructing and co-creating knowledge and skills in the host classroom (Sawir, 2013; Tran, 2013). However, little is known about how students exercise agency in internationalization in their home context and how they position themselves and are positioned by the structural conditions with regard to curriculum internationalization. Based on a 4-year comparative empirical study in Australia and Vietnam, this article explores the conditions that shape students’ engagement in internationalization of the curriculum. Drawing on practice architecture theory by Kemmis et al. (2014), it considers to what extent students in both contexts exercise agency and engage in internationalization practices. The study found that students’ engagement in curriculum internationalization in Vietnam is related to their effort to appropriate the foreign materials and theories in a context characterized by the “imperfect imported curriculum” while in Australia, it is more about students’ development of global outlooks.

Student Agency and Engagement in Internationalizing Higher Education

In this article, agency is understood as the individual or collective capacity to make choices among different courses of action and to act with “intentionality” in response to a specific circumstance (Biesta, Priestley, & Robinson, 2015; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Harré & van Langenhove, 1999). Central to this study is the view of student agency from the lens of life course theories, viewing the student as both being and becoming. Such a perspective considers how the aspiration to develop their knowledge and skills to become skilful and culturally sensitive professionals shapes their sense of self and capacity to know and to act. In other words, the development of the student as a “person” is integral to his or her intellectual development. Existing research underscores the relational interaction between agency and structure and how agency is enacted through individuals’ response to structure (Biesta et al., 2015; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Hopwood, 2010). Individual students mediate their personal agency by “constructing their life courses through choices and actions” (Eteläpelto, Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, & Paloniemi, 2013, p. 60) in their active engagement with the “ecological” circumstances (Biesta et al., 2015). Agency is about the interplay between individual efforts, available resources, and contextual and structural factors including public policy and the university’s strategies (Obeng-Odoom, 2012).

Recent research in international education identified two forms of student agency relevant to this study: needs-response agency and agency for becoming (Hopwood, 2010; Tran & Vu, 2017). Needs-response agency is prominent in the context of student mobility as it arises through students’ endeavors to achieve particular learning, social or well-being needs, and responses to structural conditions (Hopwood, 2010). This means understanding student agency in international education may need to take into account students’ intentional acts to realize or meet their needs and deal with structural conditions such as government or structural policies. Agency for becoming refers to students’ mediation of the conditions to engage in changes and working toward fulfilling future aspirations (Tran & Vu, 2017). Agency for becoming is related to students’ desire to become and their intentional acts to realize their desire for personal and professional self-formation. This article examines the nature and form of agency students may exercise in response to the specific conditions of internationalization of the curriculum in Australian and Vietnamese universities. In our study, we therefore take into account how the “ecological” circumstances (Biesta et al., 2015), which are the structural conditions and institutional arrangements for curriculum internationalization such as government policies and institutional strategies and resources, restrict and/or nurture students’ development of agency. This will shed light on our understanding of the circumstances and conditions that support or preclude student agency and engagement in curriculum internationalization. Furthermore, we realize that agency also arises from their changing needs and outlooks through their interactions with new structural, material, and social conditions. In particular, our study considers changes in students’ perspectives and aspirations when exposed to internationalization at home (IaH) and especially in the case of Vietnam to the Advanced Curriculum, a signature initiative to reform the curriculum at selected universities.

Existing literature suggests the way to facilitate the development of student agency and to engage them productively and meaningfully is to construct them as coproducers in partnership with staff to develop and evaluate teaching and learning resources (Bovill & Bulley, 2011; Bovill, Cook-Sather, Felten, Millard, & Moore-Cherry, 2016; Bryson, 2016; Flint, 2015). Bovill and Bulley (2011) proposed a model called ASP—Active Student Participation—to facilitate student participation in curriculum design. Creating the platform to engage students as partners recognizes their potential capability to contribute to their learning through, for example, curriculum design, traditionally considered to sit within the parameters of expertise and responsibility of staff only. This challenges the assumption that students are passive subjects in education. However, barriers to engaging students as more equal partners and cocreators in teaching and learning can lie in structural conditions, for example, increasingly regulative government policies in higher education that position students as depoliticized clients and not active partners in pedagogy (Suoranta & FitzSimmons, 2017). In the corporatized university, student participation is costly and time consuming because it is process driven requiring iterations of feedback and revision.

Research on international students tends to focus on their capability to enact different forms of agency when responding to the transnational conditions, challenges, and opportunities associated with mobility (Tran, 2015; Tran & Vu, 2017). Marginson (2014) argues that cross-border mobility creates possibilities for international students to acquire a sense of agency as they are in new cultural environments with different pedagogical approaches. Emergent research considers how student agency is exercised through their engagement as coproducers of knowledge and skills in the international classroom (Sawir, 2013; Tran, 2015). Positioning students as a “co-constructor” of knowledge recognizes students’ capacity to add alternative, international, and fresh perspectives to the teaching and learning discourse based on their understandings of their homeland contexts and their reflective capacity (Tran, 2015). However, potential challenges for international student enactment of agency are often seen to arise from cultural issues, including “cultures of learning,” the cultural positioning of them as “reluctant contributors” (Yates & Nguyen, 2012) and English language proficiency (Sawir, Marginson, Forbes-Mewett, Nyland, & Ramia, 2012). Yet Tran (2013) argues a deep-seated structural condition in universities in Anglo-Saxon host countries often views international students from a deficit frame and sees them as lacking critical thinking and other skills desired in the Anglo-Saxon education and work contexts. Such a condition and mind-set often discourage teachers from developing inclusive pedagogies and curriculum that uses students’ cultural resources and transnational knowledge and experiences.

Internationalization of the Curriculum in Vietnam

The recent efforts of the Vietnamese government in universalizing basic education have increased the number of high school leavers significantly, resulting in stronger demands for tertiary education (Nguyen, 2013). Although Vietnam is among the major source countries of outbound student mobility, most school graduates are accommodated by domestic higher education, although considered outdated and inward-looking (see Tran et al., 2014). Against this backdrop, curriculum internationalization via the enhancement of transnational partnerships is a critical initiative seeking to boost the quality of Vietnamese higher education and educate the workforce.

At the institutional level, key universities have been proactively broadening their international networks and promoting English-medium-instruction (EMI) programs, including joint programs (JPs), EMI high-quality programs (HQPs), and advanced programs (APs). These programs mimic those of foreign (mostly Anglophone) higher education institutions (HEIs) in many aspects, including knowledge content, course structure, and course delivery. The EMI programs are encouraged by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) to close the gap of education quality between Vietnam and other countries.

Among the EMI programs, the AP [chương trình tiên tiến] project, introduced in 2006, is a signature internationalization strategy initiated by the MOET. The 33 APs coordinated by key institutions use curricula largely imported from the world top 200 universities with minor adaption. This curriculum borrowing policy is seen as a quick and easy way to ensure that Vietnam can obtain already-proven quality curricula (Phan & Tran, 2015) and provides a shortcut for some universities to be recognized as world-class by 2020 as stated in the Vietnam’s Strategy for Education Development 2009-2020. Despite issues of staff and student capabilities and resources arising from this process of curriculum borrowing (Tran et al., 2014), student agency and engagement is paid little attention.

Internationalization of the Curriculum in Australia

Internationalization efforts in Australia have long been focusing on recruiting international fee-paying students. Besides the economic benefits, the escalating number of international students creates an unprecedented diversity on Australian university campuses, which shifts the focus from attracting and accommodating the needs of international students to utilizing the diversity to internationalize the learning experience of all students.

Green and Mertova (2009) suggest that IaH and outbound mobility are two equally important aspects of curriculum internationalization. One initiative of IaH has been the systematic development of graduate attributes related to internationalization, the production of a global citizen and worker, rapidly embraced by Australian universities. Graduate attributes have become a driver for embedding the development of international, intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes into the curriculum (Green & Mertova, 2016; Leask, 2001) and potentially enable internationalization to reach all students through the formal curriculum. A complementary focus on the informal curriculum, for example, is the implementation of social peer mentoring schemes that deliberately encourage and reward cross-cultural interaction linked to the capacity of universities to develop graduate employability in line with employer perceptions and needs (Gribble & Blackmore, 2012). These have strong implications for curriculum design and teaching practices. In terms of outbound mobility, increased integration of exchange and study abroad experiences for Australian students are increasingly a feature of curriculum internationalization. For example, extracurricular short-term study tours and “Global leadership” programs in some universities recognize the value of inter and cross-cultural experience in achieving internationalized learning outcomes.

Theoretical Framework

One approach to curriculum internationalization has been to focus on the systematic development of related graduate attributes (Leask, 2011), which emphasize the building of a broad range of skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed of global professionals and citizens. Also, the focus of curriculum internationalization is mostly on the means (what students do) rather than ends (what students have learned; Leask, 2015). Despite the common focus on learning outcomes, the students’ process of becoming globally competent professionals and citizens tends to be neglected. To attend to students’ becoming, higher education curriculum needs to position students as a key factor and encourage their individual agency in all aspects of knowing, acting, and being (Barnett & Coate, 2005). In other words, the internationalized curriculum needs to engage students to act productively and meaningfully in their journeys of acquiring the desired knowledge, skills, and identity in light of their aspired future selves, that is, global professionals and citizens.

Agency is often discussed in relation to social structure. As people’s ability to act is either constrained or enabled by their contextual conditions, the study employs the theory of practice architecture of Kemmis et al. (2014) to interpret students’ engagement with curriculum internationalization, considering how it is constrained and/or nurtured by local conditions. According to practice architecture theory, practice comprises a set of sayings, doings, and relatings that simultaneously shape and are shaped by each other and by the arrangements of “intersubjective spaces” in which practitioners interact. The intersubjective spaces in which people encounter one another include semantic space, physical space-time, and social space. Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 4) propose that within these intersubjective spaces exist three types of arrangements:

Cultural-discursive arrangements that exist in the dimension of semantic space, and that enable and constrain how we can express ourselves in the social medium of language (and symbols).

Material-economic arrangements that exist in the dimension of physical space-time, and that enable and constrain how we can do things in the medium of work and activity.

Social-political arrangements that exist in the dimension of social space, and that enable and constrain how we can connect and contest with one another in the social medium of power and solidarity.

These three kinds of arrangements—the architectures of practice—are necessary (though may not be sufficient) for practices to be comprehensively implemented. Using practice architectures suggests a way to understand the potential blockers and enablers of stakeholders’ practice which, with regard to curriculum, is student engagement in internationalization. Practice architecture theory focuses on students’ sayings, doings, and relatings as well as the institutions’ cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements to understand how arrangements for curriculum internationalization restrict and/or nurture students’ individual agency and engagement.

Research Method

This article is part of an ongoing empirical research that aims to offer a comparison of the processes of internationalizing business curricula in Australia and Vietnamese universities and their impact on teaching and learning. In this article, we aim to compare students’ experience of and engagement with the internationalized curriculum at the chosen Australian and Vietnamese universities.

To achieve the research aim, we employed case study methodology (Yin, 2018) as it has the salient strength of documenting different layers of context, thus being helpful for portraying a multifaceted picture of internationalization of curriculum in the chosen universities. We deliberately selected two universities that had promoted internationalization and curriculum reforms. The selection of the Vietnamese university was not straightforward as the concept of internationalization or internationalization of the curriculum was not available in either policy documents or official websites of Vietnamese universities. To indicate activities with international dimensions, international cooperation was in use instead.

Regarding international cooperation and curriculum reforms, Đông-Phương University (pseudonym for the Vietnamese institution) stands out as a rich case. Đông-Phương is a well-established university which, similar to other public universities in Vietnam, follows the Soviet mono-disciplinary model, offering only business-related undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. In academic year 2017-2018, the university had 14,500 students totally, 95% of those enrolled in undergraduate courses and less than 1% was international students. Since the mid-2000s, Đông-Phương has introduced 14 undergraduate EMI programs and 64 exchange programs with various HEIs in 18 countries, including the United States, Australia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and so on. A strong international network was expected to foster staff and student mobility, professional development, and curriculum enhancement. The aspiration of the university is to be ranked among the top 100 universities in the region by 2030 and subsequently to become an academic and cultural exchange hub.

Birrarung University (pseudonym for the Australian institution) is a multidisciplinary university that provides more than 300 undergraduate and postgraduate courses, 75% of which was undergraduate, across its four faculties. Currently, Birrarung has more than 54,000 students totally, 76% of whom is campus-based and 15% is international students coming from 127 countries. The university has continuously been ranked among the top 100 most international universities in the world for its diversity and research. The university has developed graduate attributes in which global citizenship is one important learning outcome. Birrarung’s international vision is to educate students who are able to thrive in different environments with the skills and values necessary for success in global markets.

To investigate students’ experience of curriculum internationalization, focus-group interviews were organized with students in both universities. As Đông-Phương only offers business-related degrees, we decided to recruit participants from Birrarung’s business school only to ensure similar grounds for comparison. The focus-group interview method was used because of the presumption that students may be hesitant to give “evaluation” of the study programs they are undertaking, especially in the case of Vietnamese students. Focus-group interview method helps resolve the problems as interaction within the groups stimulates students to speak up, give them the courage to share their thought, and provide the opportunity for them to elaborate on each other’s answers to produce richer data for the research (Fontana & Frey, 1994). Also for the purpose of obtaining richer data, we chose to recruit third- and final-year students as these students, compared with university freshmen, would likely have more learning experience to reflect on.

Specifically, 40 students aged between 20 and 23 years old (29 from Đông-Phương and 11 from Birrarung) were recruited for nine focus groups. These students were invited using the convenience sampling strategy and snowball sampling suggested by Patton (2015). In recruiting student participants, voluntariness was significant so that the participants were willing and enthusiastic to provide better insights about their learning experience. All the students from Đông-Phương Univeristy were Vietnamese, and only two out of 11 students from Birrarung were Australian natives. Each group interview lasted around 60 min and was audio-recorded. The first author facilitated the focus groups, asked questions, and invited all the students to share their thoughts and experience. The questions asked and discussed in the focus groups were open-ended questions regarding how they engaged with different aspects of the curriculum, for example, materials, assessment, in-class activities, and so on; what they liked/disliked about their study programs; whether/how they saw themselves differently as of their final year of study compared with their first year, and so on.

In addition, 15 semistructured interviews of around 45 to 60 min were conducted with 10 academics (six females and four males) from Đông-Phương University and five academics from Birrarung’s Business School (three females and two males) to complement student understandings of how internationalization of the curriculum was implemented in the classroom. The interview questions were about how the academics understood internationalization of the curriculum in their teaching context, whether/how they internationalized their enacted curriculum, whether/how they encouraged cross-cultural interaction and cross-cultural learning, and so on.

Interviews and focus groups with Vietnamese participants were conducted in Vietnamese then translated into English. Data analysis involves coding the transcripts of interviews and focus groups into themes. Given the explorative nature of the research, we adopted both inductive (data-driven) coding and deductive (concept-driven) coding (Gibbs, 2007; Patton, 2015). We used a set of predetermined codes which are the key concepts derived from the research questions and the conceptual framework while allowing space for open codes and new themes which emerged from the coding process itself. Then, we followed the two-stage cross-case data analysis suggested by Merriam (1998), that is, within-case analysis was conducted first to gain a full understanding of each case in its entirety, then followed by the cross-case comparison in the second stage.

Integrated Results and Discussion

From the perspective of practice architecture theory, student engagement in curriculum internationalization involves three dimensions: sayings, doings, and relatings. Students’ practices are not only mediated by their personal resources but also by the external cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements at the site of practice. In this section, we will look at each of the three dimensions, that is, sayings, doings, and relatings, as well as the institutions’ cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements to understand how arrangements for curriculum internationalization influenced students’ experience and engagement.

The Sayings Dimension

According to Kemmis et al. (2014), “sayings” are “forms of understanding” (p. 3). As such, the sayings dimension of student engagement in internationalization can be understood as the verbalization of students’ understanding about what internationalization in their contexts has to offer and the opportunities with which they will engage.

In Vietnam, internationalization of the curriculum was characterized mainly by the promotion of EMI programs, including the APs [chương trình tiên tiến]. Interview data with Đông-Phương academics and students revealed that the APs were advertised as comprising distinctive features such as a hundred-percent-English environment, foreign textbooks, highly qualified lecturers, and an advanced curriculum using foreign-born materials incorporating Vietnam-specific content. Such discourses around the APs led students to shape their understandings and high expectations accordingly. Upon embarking on the APs, students visualized awaiting opportunities of acquiring cutting edge disciplinary knowledge, enhancing English competence, and thus good employment/further education prospects. For students, the hybrid curriculum would provide them with global linguistic capital (Tran & Nguyen, 2018) as well as necessary knowledge for better careers.

This discourse of employability was also evident in the Australian data, with sayings such as “transferable skills to take into any workplace,” “partnerships with employers,” “able to get involved in many different fields,” and so on. The discourse around internationalization seemed to evoke for both Đông-Phương and Birrarung students a positive initial view about how worthwhile their program is.

So I thought it [advanced programs] was basically better than other programs. (Tuấn, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

From the beginning, I didn’t know what I was gonna do, so it was good to hear that [Birrarung had partnerships with some employers that employ a lot of graduated students]. (Tim, Birrarung student, Business)

Studying in a worthwhile program was one of the three critical dimensions of what Barnett and Coate (2005) termed attitudinal space. Unless students “come into a positive relationship with their experience” (p. 139), they would fail to engage wholeheartedly. Creating a positive regard for learning through the sayings about internationalization, as illustrated in the above quotes, potentially encouraged students toward certain forms of engagement.

The Doings Dimension

The doings dimension of student engagement is concerned with what students do in response to specific contextual conditions of internationalization.

Needs-response agency

In Vietnam, the mandated EMI and the curriculum borrowing policies in the internationalized programs were among the most salient material-economic arrangements that posed great impact on student experience. The focus group data revealed that, despite the initial positive regard for the study program, the subsequent experience of internationalization did not live up to student expectations in two interrelated areas, that is, English language and learning content. At Đông-Phương University, it was mandatory that the EMI programs use English entirely, but this overlooked implementation problems. First, this policy was only mentioned in EMI briefings and EMI programs lacked the capacity to create an English-only culture among a particular group of students within a Vietnamese speaking institution.

It was mainly the teacher who spoke English. Students all talked to each other in Vietnamese. (Thùy Anh, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

Although using Vietnamese in EMI classrooms was seen as a drawback that was “not impossible to fix” (Cường, Đông-Phương student, International Economics), the students were unable to shake off their “language identity” (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009, p. 144) upon entering EMI classrooms.

Second, although the foreign textbooks used in the programs were seen as “very good,” “well-structured,” and “interesting,” the students expressed concerns regarding the breadth and depth of the lectures’ content. Both academics and students considered that the English-only policy created considerable difficulties for lecturers to teach effectively although “they are very knowledgeable and can deliver highly engaging lecturers in Vietnamese” (Ngọc, Đông-Phương student, International Economics). English-only teaching resulted in students’ finding the content “simplified,” “superficial,” and “ambiguous.” More often than not, the students reported that comprehension was sometimes “hard,” “uncertain,” and “inaccurate.” As Nam (Đông-Phương student, Business administration) elaborated, when taught in English, many disciplinary concepts became difficult to understand as the students could not guess the meaning through the terms’ denotations.

Interview data revealed that although their lecturers strove to blend in Vietnam-specific examples, it was insufficient as most textbooks were Western. Consequently, the students felt a degree of disconnection between the international literature and debates that they studied and the local actualities of the Vietnamese economy.

Our textbooks have a lot of American and European case studies. They are very interesting but do not give us insights about Vietnamese economy. (Linh, Đông-Phương student, Business Administration)

I think the reality in Vietnam is very different, so we learn the theories just to know that there are such theories. Many are probably inapplicable. (Mai Anh, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

Besides, a number of participants did not see the connection between some subjects and the future career that they would like to pursue.

I agree that the curriculum sounds very interesting. I think the program was structured similarly to the Liberal Arts programs in American universities which include such units as literature, psychology, sociology, etc. They sound very appealing but are not very suitable with Vietnamese students . . . probably not all [Vietnamese] students . . . but probably we are not used to it [learning those subjects]. I don’t see how they are related to my future job. (Tuấn, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

In the presence of these curricular drawbacks, a popular type of agency identified among the participants was “needs-response agency” (Tran & Vu, 2017). The most common strategy to engage in IaH was self-study using Vietnamese textbooks to fill the possible knowledge gaps caused by “deviations” in concept understanding and context. This form of needs-response agency is exercised through students’ determination and action to respond to the structural context and limitation of curriculum borrowing. These include variations in meanings of disciplinary concepts, the unsuitability of contextual knowledge introduced in the “borrowed” textbooks, or the contextual differences between the “Western” country from which the textbook originated and the Vietnamese context. The Vietnamese students enact needs-response agency in response to internationalization through curriculum borrowing. Besides, most students strove to find profession-related part-time jobs to familiarize themselves with the Vietnamese workplace environment. These extra efforts might be explained by their positive self-positioning (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999) or, in Barnett and Coate’s (2005) words, ontological positivity. At Đông-Phương University, APs students were regarded as the “best and brightest” due to challenging admission requirements. For example,

APs students are highly competent. They made their way into Đông-Phương, then were “filtered” once more to be recruited into the APs. (Tuấn, Đông-Phương academic)

This positive positioning, which was recurrent throughout both interview and focus-group data sets, might contribute to maintaining students’ will to learn (Barnett & Coate, 2005).

The seeds of open-mindedness

Despite being criticized, the dominance of Western content was not totally a drawback. Such exposure to non-Vietnamese content, though not ideally multinational, appeared to build students’ awareness and viewing of subject matter from a broader perspective.

Very often the tasks were about Vietnam, but we almost always included examples of other countries and compared to Vietnam. We students all want to have high marks . . . I learned to be critical. And I learned that there might be multiple approaches to an issue. (Thịnh, Đông-Phương student, Business Administration)

We referred to other countries to make our assignments more interesting and critical. It was just optional . . . completely depended on ourselves. (Quang, Đông-Phương student, Business Administration)

As Quang mentioned, although lecturers did not explicitly require multinational perspectives, students voluntarily did so, believing that it would give their assignments more depth and hence higher grades. Beside this very instrumental motivation, some participants expressed their enjoyment in researching and incorporating international cases which they believed gave them a “multidimensional view.” This multidimensional view, be it incidental or intended, was a desirable outcome of internationalization. Thùy Anh, an AP student, believed that she and her fellow students “possess[ed] an open mind to the world” as they “learn[ed] in English and need[ed] to look beyond the national boundary in all their learning units.” The AP curriculum was hence acknowledged to “grow the seeds of open-mindedness and global outlook” (Thùy Anh, Đông-Phương student, International Economics) in students. Edwards, Crosling, Petrovic-Lazarovic, and O’Neill’s (2003) three-level typology identified international awareness, international competence, and international expertise. Open mindedness and global outlook were most appropriately associated with international awareness, which may not lead to competence or expertise, yet provides critical scaffolding to enable further development.

Development of global outlooks

In contrast to the Vietnam-based students, Australia-based participants positively commented about their study experience at Birrarung. Although Australia was the third most popular destination of international students (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2017), student diversity at Birrarung varied greatly across disciplines. While about 70% to 80% of all students at the School of Business studied Accounting and Finance, in Marketing, for example, only 4% to 5% of an undergraduate classroom comprised international students, and none in Real Estate. Despite the less-than-desirable cultural diversity in some classrooms, most participants shared the feeling of “living an international atmosphere” because of the global dimensions incorporated into various aspects of the formal curriculum, including learning materials, pedagogy, and assessment.

My textbooks tend to begin talking about Western examples, usually Australia. But certainly, I have learnt a lot about Southeast Asia because my textbooks might be written by somebody who was originally from Asia. I think that’s reminiscence of most of my textbooks. They start off with the America, United Kingdom or Australia and eventually they moved into Japanese and Chinese cultures. It is a very global approach . . . One of my lecturers is from Jakarta and he wrote textbooks as well. It was lucky for me as he certainly taught me very much about Indonesian business culture and their social approach to business. (Tim, Birrarung, Business)

I remember in [the assessment of] one theory unit, they [tutors] would ask us to do research about America and European countries, like, different people’s opinions and perspectives and discuss. (Lianna, Birrarung student, Commerce)

It was found out from interviews with Birrarung academics that when it comes to internationalization, the most influential material-economic arrangement was the eighth graduate learning outcome (GLO8) which was global citizenship. As an academic elaborated, “One of the things we try to do is scaffold that idea, assuring the learning of the global citizenship through the whole course” and that this global approach was integrated formally into classroom practice. With such arrangement, Birrarung students’ engagement with the formal curriculum is related to developing intercultural and global outlooks.

Being socially prepared

Leask (2009) suggests a holistic approach using both the formal and informal curriculum. In the same vein, Gribble, Blackmore, and Rahimi (2015) argue that internationalized course content alone typically fails to build intercultural competence in students as it fails to address issues of identity and engagement. In the students’ view, the global approach to course content, pedagogy, and assessment was helpful in “preparing [them] intellectually” for future employment; however, being “socially prepared” required student’s will to “go out of their comfort zone, do the extra activities and get in the world.” Focus group data of Australia-based students suggested that those students who were aware and made good use of the various support and extracurricular programs provided by the university became better engaged with their learning and development.

I think I relied on course advices over the years of my study . . . and also with mentoring . . . When you go out, mixing with different people, I think, it certainly made me feel today that I really need to work much harder because I really want to succeed and especially overseas. Also, it makes you want to get the work done to a high standard because then you can learn things from your friends, learn things about culture. (Tim, Birrarung student, Business)

I got one of my internship through Birrarung’s Portal, then I got another on my own through volunteering and building my own network. (Nathan, Birrarung student, Management)

However, the data also revealed that although opportunities were abundant and the university attempted ways to advertise them, for example, through the university’s portal, posters, banners, and so on, a proportion of Birrarung’s students did not recognize this and engage.

I know a lot of people who said they had not had a very good experience here, simply because they avoided engaging. I mean, if you don’t come to class and learn, if you don’t go out to talk to different people and look for volunteering opportunities or internship, it’s only that much the university can do. (Nathan, Birrarung student, Management)

A key actor in the internationalization of the informal curriculum was the student. Whether or not to engage depends totally on their personal agency as extracurricular activities were not part of mandatory assessments. This suggests altering the structure of study courses in a way to reinforce the importance and inclusion of the informal curriculum in the successful completion of the courses, to recognize students’ engagement in both, and to encourage students who otherwise would not engage.

The Relatings Dimension

According to Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008), a person’s relating stems from his or her life experience of all his or her social connections. Throughout the Vietnamese data set, the relatings dimension was concerned with how participants connect with other Vietnamese and international fellow students within the web of relationships, or social-political arrangements, in classrooms and particularly in student clubs. The small number of international students in Đông-Phương’s EMI programs was reported to have no significance in creating a diverse environment that nurtured meaningful cross-cultural interactions and learning.

They [exchange students] usually sat at the back and were very quiet. Once in a while, they answered the teacher’s questions, then we remembered their presence. (Vân, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

Although their presence could be a catalyst that starts students on the path of being aware of differences and of learning from others, only a small number of students benefited from the cross-cultural interactions.

There is an Angolan student in my class. Befriending her, I can learn a lot about her country. Her sharing about religious and cultural features of her country broadened my mind. (Hưng, Đông-Phương student, Business Administration)

I was once in a group discussion with two German friends. I was very interested in what they told us about European economies. (Thùy Anh, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

I talked to them quite a lot because I am the class monitor . . . I also asked some classmates to join, but it was just a few of us. (Tuấn, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

Having international friends brings opportunities. Students like Tuấn . . . could benefit from these opportunities while the majority of us did not. (Trâm, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

As illustrated above, when interaction and communication did occur, students benefited from the cultural exchange, be it a broadened mind about different parts of the world or deeper understandings of the study content. However, such benefits were overlooked as neither the institution nor the lecturers had purposeful arrangements to ensure cross-cultural interactions occur.

I think having international students is very good. The problem is the university and the Faculty did not take good care of them. There was too little support; undoubtedly they had to form their own community to help each other. If only the university paid more attention to connecting international and Vietnamese students, both sides can benefit more. (Hùng, Đông-Phương student, International Economics)

We had the freedom to choose our group members . . . We always formed group with people we know well, like best friends or friends from previous assignments . . . International students also stuck together. (Minh, Đông-Phương student, Business Administration)

Other research confirms that interactions did not always happen without intervention. As De Vita (2005) put it, intercultural interaction “is at best limited among students from culturally diverse backgrounds” (p. 75). Focus data with Australia-based students also supported this observation.

Everybody turned to join group with students who sat next to them. They were domestic and international students. Some students from China and Japan only chose students from their group of friends, which was fine because I would do the same thing by myself. (Tim, Birrarung student, Business)

However, some participants expressed their willingness to mingle with students of different cultural backgrounds; others would not mind the lecturers choosing the group members for them. It suggests students are open to intentional arrangements, initially at least, conducive to intercultural interactions. The Vietnamese data identified a practical strategy to connect students of different backgrounds may be through student clubs. The student clubs at Đông-Phương University attracted a large number of students (almost all were Vietnamese due to the few foreign students on campus) and created “excellent learning communities” nurturing social interaction, long-lasting friendships, and mutual learning. The popularity of student clubs suggests they could be an effective platform to engage students in meaningful cross-cultural interactions.

Conclusion

The comparison of the experience of Vietnam-based and Australia-based students depicted two distinctive contexts of curriculum internationalization. In both contexts, the student participants were found to seek opportunities and exert efforts in their learning and personal development. While Vietnam-based students exercised their needs-response agency to engage with the “imperfect imported curriculum” with limited institutional support, Australia-based students were facilitated by more favorable conditions. Significantly, while the level of engagement depends on individual agency, students can be key actors in curriculum internationalization. Vietnamese students are active actors in engaging meaningfully with the imported curriculum through their efforts to translate the foreign theories into the local context. They enact needs-response agency to realize specific needs in terms of appropriating the foreign materials and theories in a context in which internationalization of the curriculum is predominantly about borrowing foreign curriculum. They do not seem to be passively conditioned by the “imperfect imported curriculum” with limited support from the institution but engage quite creatively with it in an effort to enrich their learning and respond to their aspirations for the future. The Australia-based students appear to be engaged in internationalization with more favorable conditions as the development of global outlooks is one of the key learning outcomes. They are exposed to these internationalized learning opportunities and internationalization as part of the intended goal of the curriculum rather than out of their personal agency. Thus, students’ engagement in internationalization of the curriculum in the Vietnamese context gears more toward the adaptation and appropriation of the imported curriculum while in the Australian context, it is more about students’ development of global outlooks.

Overall, this article points to how the different arrangements for curriculum internationalization nurtured and/or restricted student engagement in Australian and Vietnamese contexts. However, the research’s generalizability is limited as it investigated only one Vietnamese public institution and one Australian institution. The vastly different sociocultural contexts of the two countries, though enabling interesting findings, to some extent limit the cross-case comparability. Also, within the constraints of the fieldwork, we could practically recruit only a small number of Australia-based participants. It is, therefore, suggested that future research could develop further in terms of methodology to gain richer data and implications.

To encourage student agency and engagement in international education, it is important for institutions to take more active responsibility in creating conductive conditions for students to exercise their agency. That is, student agency cannot be fully capitalized on without active institutional agency, which is reflected in the development of a holistic and coherent framework and structure to realize students’ potential contributions and resources in internationalization. Conducive conditions for student agency also depend largely on staff commitment to internationalization and how staff are supported with relevant professional learning to develop their capacity to assist students with agency development and engagement in internationalization. Second, this study highlights that what constitutes student agency and engagement in internationalization of education is context-based and socioculturally situated. The study found that students’ engagement in internationalization of the curriculum in the Vietnamese context gears more toward the adaptation and appropriation of the imported curriculum while in the Australian context, it is more about students’ development of global outlooks. This is because in the context of Vietnam as a developing country, borrowing foreign curriculum is considered one of the signature initiatives in internationalization of education and the Vietnamese institution focused on in this study has been active in implementing this strategy while in the sociocultural context of Australia, internationalizing the curriculum is related to global learning. Therefore, it is important to avoid generalizing the constructs of student agency and engagement in international education across national contexts.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions that help us significantly improve this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Huong Le Thanh Phan

Author Biographies

Huong Le Thanh Phan obtained her master’s degree in linguistics at Vietnam National University and her master’s degree in international economics and finance at the University of Queensland, Australia. In 2015, she received the Deakin University Postgraduate Research Scholarship to undertake her PhD at the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia. Her doctoral project aims to offer a comparison of Australian and Vietnamese institutional contexts with regard to exploring the internationalization of the curriculum in particular disciplines.

Ly Thi Tran is an associate professor in the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia, and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Her work focuses on international student mobility, the New Colombo Plan, internationalization of teaching and learning, and higher education in East Asia. Her book, Teaching International Students in Vocational Education: New Pedagogical Approaches, won the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) Excellence Award for Best Practice/Innovation in International Education.

Jill Blackmore is an Alfred Deakin Professor at the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia. She has engaged in sustained and innovative research in the areas of educational governance and provision, policy and equity, and international education and employability. She has published extensively in the areas of leadership, gender equity policy, and organizational reform and presented 65 keynotes in the higher education, school, vocational education and training (VET), community sectors, and international education.

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