Disciplinary Variation in Curriculum Internationalization

Top-down strategies for curriculum internationalization (CI) often neglect discipline-specific preferences in content and teaching methods. This limited understanding of how content is prioritized across disciplines makes relying on a single implementation plan impractical. To supplement the few, almost exclusively qualitative, studies on this topic, this pilot study aims to answer the questions: what are the discipline-specific rationales for (non)engagement with CI? and what are the preferred internationalized teaching strategies across disciplines? In this study the relationship between variables about international learning environment and outcomes were tested against Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines using Chi-square, Spearman’s and Fisher’s tests. Preliminary findings of this study show no statistical significance in the relationship between disciplinary groupings and questions about international learning environment and outcomes. The findings of this study imply that the two most-cited frameworks used in CI literature (Biglan and Becher, who builds on Biglan’ framework) may result in incomplete or misleading interpretations regarding disciplines' orientations towards internationalization.