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THESIS PROPOSAL:

Knowledge Encounters in Interdisciplinary and International Education

Tanja Kanne Wadsholt, MA, PhD student

Department of Business Communication School of Business and Social Sciences

Aarhus University

Primary Supervisor: Associate Professor Hanne Tange, PhD Secondary Supervisor: Associate Professor Peter Kastberg, PhD

Thesis Proposal: Knowledge Encounters in International and Interdisciplinary Education

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1 INTRODUCTION 3 1.1 FKK-‐PROJECT: INTERNATIONALIZATION AT AARHUS UNIVERSITY 3 1.2 A READING GUIDE 3 1.3 MOTIVATION: TEACHING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 4

2 RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION 5 2.1 ONTOLOGICAL CHANGES 5 2.2 EPISTEMOLOGICAL CHANGES 7 2.3 KNOWLEDGE AND ACADEMIC PRACTICE IN THE INTERNATIONAL CLASSROOM 8

3 THE PHD PROJECT: KNOWLEDGE ENCOUNTERS IN INTERNATIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION 13 3.1 AIM AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS 13 3.3 PRELIMINARY THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 14 3.2 METHODOLOGY 19 3.4 PRODUCING DATA 21 3.4.1 SELECTING THE PROGRAMS 21 3.4.2 PRODUCING AND DOCUMENTING DATA 21 3.5 SKETCHES AND TRACES: THE BEGINNING OF AN ANALYTICAL PROCESS 23 3.5.2 POWER/ ETHICS IN THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK 23 3.5.3 KNOWLEDGE ENCOUNTERS IN THE INTERNATIONAL CLASSROOM: KNOWLEDGE-‐NEGOTIATION PRACTICES 25 3.5.4 BECOMING THE SAME? 25 3.5.5 BUILDING ON DIFFERENCES 27 3.5.6 DIVERGING 27

4 APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW GUIDE 28

5 APPENDIX 2: LIST OF INTERVIEWS 31

6 APPENDIX 3: PHD-‐PLAN 31

7 BIBLIOGRAPHY 33


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1 Introduction

1.1 FKK-‐project: Internationalization at Aarhus University The PhD-‐project is part of a larger FKK-‐financed project about internationalization at

Aarhus University. The larger project takes a broad perspective on

internationalization, which includes language, socio-‐cultural-‐, pedagogic and

organizational processes. From this perspective, the actors taking part in

internationalization are seen as being socialized into different linguistic, academic,

disciplinary and institutional systems (see www.internationalisering.au.dk).

Theoretically, the larger project rests upon Bourdieu’s theory of practice (1977,

1990) and the concepts habitus, field and capital. It uses both a macro-‐level

sociological framework, which seeks to map the socio-‐cultural and educational

backgrounds of the actors; and a micro-‐level framework, which researches interactions

among the actors involved in international education programs at Aarhus University.

The project consists of five subprojects. The first subproject seeks to determine

who the students participating in international education at Aarhus University are,

how international education is part of their educational strategy and how they perceive

internationalization. The second subproject researches university lecturers’

contribution to the creation, confirmation and evaluation of social practice. The third

maps the linguistic landscape at Aarhus University and the fourth project examines

student relationship-‐building in international programs. Finally, the task, I was given,

was to examine what the students perceive as knowledge capital.

1.2 A Reading guide The purpose of this thesis proposal is to show the reader the state of this research

project and how it was conceptualized. Therefore, Section1.3 is an account of my first

reflections upon the topic based on my experiences as an external lecturer in

intercultural communication. Section 2 presents a review of the literature about the

ontologies and epistemologies of the international university as well as literature

about the international classroom. In Section 3, the PhD-‐project is presented in its

present state. This sequence has been decided upon, because I wish to show what lies

behind the purpose of the project and the research questions. This section also outlines

the theoretical framework of the project and describes the methodology and the

methods used to produce data. Finally, the section presents some emergent themes


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and sketches of analysis that I hope can form the background for a discussion of

analytical strategies after the oral presentation of the thesis proposal

1.3 Motivation: teaching intercultural communication Before I became a PhD student, I worked as an external lecturer teaching intercultural

communication to mixed groups of students consisting of international exchange

students from a number of different disciplines, institutions and countries as well as

full-‐degree business administration students, some of which were Danish and some of

which were from other countries. I noticed that the Danish students were trying to find

ways to include the international students, their knowledge and their habits in their

teamwork. In the codes of conduct that the groups wrote in the beginning of the

course, most of the groups explained that the work in the group was going to be guided

by values such as democracy and equality, and the right to voice your opinion.

However, as the semester progressed, there began to be tensions in some of the

groups. In the individual teamwork evaluations that the students wrote towards the

end of the course, some of the Danish students expressed that they felt they had to

some extent failed to include the international students; and the international students

wrote that they had sometimes felt left out by the Danish students – even though they

were convinced that the Danish students had tried to include them. What struck me

was that the students felt that they had failed to include the international students

instead of explaining it as a deficit in the other. I had previously studied Levinas and his

description of the ethical encounter with the other, and I began to think about if the

situation could be seen as a failed ethical encounter. According to Levinas, the ethical

encounter is a relation in which the temptation to understand or explain the other

from one’s own perspective is resisted. It is in this moment that the subjectivity of the

subject is fully realized (Levinas 1996, 2002). However, explaining it as a failed ethical

encounter in this sense does not account for why it was the Danish students and their

perspective that dominated the class or what caused the encounter to fail.

Around that time Hanne Tange and Lisanne Wilken introduced their ideas about

the FKK project; and I started to think about Bourdieu as a possible theoretical

framework for explaining why the students’ encounter failed as an ethical encounter.

These reflections grew into a paper about knowledge asymmetries in Danish

international education that I delivered at the NIC conference in Oslo in 2010. In the

paper, I analyzed the position of the Danish students as being characterized by a


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conflict between, on the one hand, a wish to engage in an ethical encounter with the

international students and, on the other hand, a need to remain within the system they

were familiar with.

When I started working on the PhD project about knowledge capital in

international education, these observations and reflections constituted the point of

departure in the literature search. I was interested in finding out if it was relevant to

investigate knowledge capital among students in international education as being

formed at an intersection between a power dimension and an ethical dimension.

2 Research in international education The literature about international education covers both research into macrolevel

changes in the university field such as the emergence of a global education

marketplace (Altbach 2004) and changing understandings of knowledge (e.g. Tierney

2001, Barnett 2012) as well as research into microlevel, or classroom, changes (e.g.

Singh & Shrestha 2008; Tange & Kastberg 2013). My study is located at the micro level,

and the main focus of this review is therefore also on literature related to this level.

However, changes at the macro level, and its implications for the power structures of

the academic field, as well as epistemological changes surrounding the globalized

and/or internationalized university have implications for the processes at play at the

micro level; and echoes of these changes reverberate in the literature on pedagogy and

classroom changes. Therefore, this section is introduced by a sketch of some of these

macro level changes.

2.1 Ontological changes According to Altbach, universities have always been global institutions. They have

made use of a common language, sought to incorporate tensions between national and

international trends and when they have not, they have become irrelevant (Altbach

2004). The present changes are in the importance of the knowledge economy (Altbach

2004). It is sometimes argued that globalization has assisted in creating more equality

in the world. However, following Stiglitz and Rodrik, Altbach claims that globalization

works against the interest of developing countries and he argues that this is also

mirrored in higher education, where inequalities continue to be reinforced. The major

international research centers are located in the North and membership of the top tier

requires vast financial resources. Furthermore, many universities outside the North


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are solely teaching universities that rely on the center for production of new

knowledge, and therefore academic talent moves towards the centers in the North

(Altback 2004). Mobility has become an “influential driver of university policy”

(Kenway & Fahey 2008, 162) and universities promote and support mobility for staff

and students because it is seen as an important factor in global positioning and

economic productivity (Kenway &Fahey).

As a result, a global education marketplace has emerged (Altbach 2004).

Zygmunt Bauman has argued that the universities have become more and more like

businesses (Bauman 1997), and today the universities “are obliged to cede the right to

set the norms, and perhaps most seminally the ethical norms, to its newly embraced

prototype and spiritual inspiration” (Bauman 1997, 20).

Marginson sums these tendencies up in his analysis of the global field of higher

education. It is, according to Marginson (2008), characterized by an American

hegemony, which is manifested in four aspects of the field: research concentration and

knowledge flows, the global role of English and American universities as people

attractors, and as exemplars of ideal practice.

Furthermore, by applying Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, Marginson

describes the global field of higher education as being structured by a polarity between

an elite subfield of restricted production and a subfield of large-‐scale mass-‐production.

This polarity is also found within the national field and within single institutions.

However, moving beyond Bourdieu’s framework, Marginson also argues that that even

though the field is characterized by American hegemony, agency in the shape of “the

creative imagination of governments, universities, disciplines, groups and individuals”

(Marginson 2008, 312), as well as co-‐operative intersubjective relations, has the

potential to restructure the field.

It is concluded that the result is a greater ontological openness in the global

setting which is assigned to “the growth, extension, reciprocity, dynamism, instability

and contingency of cross-‐border flows (Marginson 2008, 313). The global is defined as

an identifiable space “where human action is played out, suffused with unpredictability

[…] that sits alongside the national and local spaces and connects with them at many

points” (Marginson 2008, 313). Higher education is a domain of practice that operates

across all three spaces. It is more open, dynamic and unstable than it once were. Yet,


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because of the American dominance, it is still more predictable and bounded than the

global, national and local spaces (Marginson 313).

2.2 Epistemological changes The ontological openness (Marginson 2008) is accompanied by changing

epistemologies. Tierney (2001) argues that there has been a transition from modernist

to postmodernist understandings of knowledge. He claims that knowledge can no

longer be seen as neutral and universal or linear and additive. Rather it is dynamic,

interested and created from social, cultural and ideological positions (Tierney 2001).

Moreover, the universal claims and aspirations of knowledge in the traditional

university have been replaced by specific, problem-‐solving knowledges in the

entrepreneurial university (Barnett 2012, 223).

With reference to Bauman’s concept “liquid modernity”, Barnett introduces the

concept “liquid knowledge” which is the present state of knowledge resulting from “the

knowledge economy, globalization, knowledge capitalism, the digital revolution, the

rise of faith in a so called secular society, a growing interdisciplinarity and a new place

for the creative arts” (Barnett 2012, 212). It has weakened the boundaries between

knowledge and belief, between understanding and practice, and between science and

technology. It has, in other words, brought a change in the epistemologies of the

university (Barnett 2012).

As a result of the change from a knowledge society where knowledge was of

service to society, to a knowledge economy where knowledge is of service to the

economy, the knowledge economy is now both “steering and controlling the

production of knowledge” (Barnett 2012, 213). With the knowledge economy follows

therefore new authorities of knowledge as the academy is “faced with the competing

voices of consultants, journalists, so called freelance ‘experts’ in society, professionals

(who by definition know what is ‘best’) and those who advance their own views via the

internet, the mass media and the creative arts” (Barnett 2012, 217). While the

knowledge economy has introduced new sources and authorities of knowledge, others,

according to Barnett, such as the humanities, struggle to keep a position.

Barnett concludes that the role of the university in the knowledge economy must

be to make ethical choices “in the shape of academic inquiry” (Barnett 2012, 224). This

conclusion echoes Rizvi’s call for cosmopolitanism as a new way of learning about and

ethically engaging with new social formations and “practices of global


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interconnectivity” (Rizvi 2008, 26) where learning becomes a set of “epistemic

virtues”(Rizvi 2008, 26).

2.3 Knowledge and academic practice in the international classroom Research about internationalization in the classroom is traditionally divided into

studies of linguistic, social-‐cultural and academic practice (see

www.internationalisering.au.dk). For the present purpose, I will focus on research that

relates to academic practice, including academic norms and disciplinary knowledge.

As the previous section indicated, the university is undergoing ontological and

epistemological changes. These changes suggest a university, which on the on the hand

is characterized by new flows of people, knowledges and ideas and, on the other, by a

powerful Northern hegemony and a knowledge economy, which defines what is

accepted as authorities of knowledge. However, in response to this power dimension,

there is a call for a new ethics in the university, which should engage ethically in its

global relationships and in its production of knowledge.

While research into internationalization of the classroom most often does not

discuss these changes directly, the trends in the literature can be divided into different

classroom responses to these changes based on different understandings of

knowledge. The first part of the present section describes responses to

internationalization where classroom practices imply an understanding of knowledge

as neutral, objective and transferable. In this classroom response to

internationalization, the role of the university and the lecturer is to transfer objective

knowledge to the incoming students. The second part describes approaches – or calls

for approaches – where knowledge is seen as interested, context dependent and co-‐

created between teachers and students and locals and internationals alike; or, as

Joseph (2008) describes it, a difference between “a one way exercise in educational

practices in just adding on information on different knowledge rather than the sharing,

exchanging and experimenting’ “ (Joseph 2008, 30).

In the first group, literature reports that international students in Western

universities may experience that cultural or academic knowledge that they have

acquired through their previous education is not recognized or acknowledged at the

host university (e.g. Dei 2000; Zhou, Knoke, and Sakamoto 2005; Wilken 2008; Singh &

Han 2009), or by the predominantly positivistic frameworks that legitimize knowledge

in Western universities (Joseph 2008). The same tendency also applies to students’


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learning strategies when these are not congruent with the characteristics of learning in

the host country (Volet 1999).

Researchers have connected the exclusive tendency in international education

with a Western bias, which assigns non-‐Western students to a passive role as receivers

of Western knowledge (e.g. Tange & Kastberg 2013). In this context, admittance into

“the community of scholars” (Singh & Shresta 2008) of the host university can be seen

as being based upon an agreement of submission to the rules of the host community

(Chow 1998, Singh & Shrestha 2008), which involves taking classes in academic

writing and learning Western academic traditions. On the part of the international

students, it thus becomes a “confession of their crimes against the academy” (Prescott

& Hellstén 2005) in their previous schooling. Furthermore, Prescott and Hellstén

argue that awareness of international students’ capabilities for knowledge production

and of their knowledge networks is not part of the pedagogical strategies. Building on

the idea of misrecognition or even rejection of the academic practices of the

international students, Tange and Jensen (2012) argue that, in a Danish setting, the

deficit perspective that the lecturers tend to apply to the international students is

closely connected to the image they have of themselves which is linked to an ideal of a

“democratic teachers who facilitates knowledge–sharing rather than authorizing

particular scientific methods or theories ” (Tange & Jensen 2012, 187). The

international students respond differently to this kind of teacher and, paradoxically,

the result is that the international student is constructed from a deficit perspective as

less willing to participate in dialogue and less reflective (Tange & Jensen 2012).

In an extensive literature review, Marginson and Sawir (2011) divide the work

into two traditions based on the relationship to the other. They call the traditions

“Refusing the Other” and “Engaging the Other”. Despite the difference in focus,

Marginson and Sawir’s categorization of the literature has many parallels to the trends

I am outlining. “Refusing the Other” is research and practice based on cross-‐cultural

psychology. They argue that this tradition is producing “static and normalizing

concepts” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 49) and they criticize it for furthering cultural

essentialism in international education. According to Marginson and Sawir, the

problem is political as well as methodological because it uses static categories to

analyze complex relational processes which, seen from a particular cultural viewpoint

prioritizes cultural uniformity over cultural diversity. However, according to


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Marginson and Sawir, the tradition has made a useful contribution by pointing to the

“three-‐way interaction among agency, communicative competence, and cross-‐cultural

practices” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 50). The connection between agency and

communicative competence, which entails that individuals are social beings that

“manage themselves in relational contexts” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 50) points

towards their second tradition.

As ways of overcoming the conflict between local and foreign actors in

international education and achieve internationalization of the curriculum, proposed

strategies include a curriculum, which does not rely on prior knowledge of local origin

(Haigh 2002); engagement with difference “within and beyond spaces of learning”

(Rizvi & Walsh 1998, 11); decolonization of pedagogic practices and critical

considerations of the epistemologies and ontologies employed in knowledge

construction, curriculum and pedagogy (Rizvi & Walsh 1998; Joseph 2008). Singh and

Shrestha (2008) introduce the concept “double knowing”. By double-‐knowing, they

mean the position of international students as partakers in “the intellectual life of at

least two societies” (Singh & Shrestha 2008, 66). This position should be acknowledged

by the teachers and the local students. Furthermore, it is necessary to test and make

use of the knowledge that the international students can offer in order to achieve a

“double-‐knowing matrix [where] knowledge from different cultures is intertwined and

understood through, and in relation to each other” (Singh & Shrestha 2008, 68). Tange

and Kastberg draw upon Singh and Shrestha’s concept “double-‐knowing” and argue

that international education can be seen as an encounter between different knowledge

systems that the students have been socialized into (Tange & Kastberg 2013 Based on

interviews with university lecturers, they describe pedagogic strategies that involve

acknowledgement of the knowledge systems of the international as well as the local

students . Similarly, Marginson & Sawir (2011) note that studies have shown that some

teachers in international education are aware that knowledge may be context bound

and apply other contextualizing strategies in international education than they do in

classrooms with only local students.

The second tradition, Marginson and Sawir call “Engaging the Other”. What they

see as the most promising line of argument in this tradition they term “cosmopolitan

cultural analysis” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 54). It focuses not on individual persons

but on the “larger relational space” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 54). They identify two


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strands of cosmopolitan thought, which have different implications for international

education, namely globalism and relational cosmopolitanism. Both strands are

formulated as answers to the problem of Kantian liberal universalism: that it was

“grounded in a particular worldview […] and presupposes that all cultural groups

share similar moral outlooks” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 55). Marginson and Sawir

largely discard globalism on the grounds of its utopian claiming of independence from

“all particular national and cultural traditions” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 55) which in

the literature about intercultural education translates into an ability to communicate

effectively with people from all cultures without privileging any specific cultures.

However, while this approach has been advocated in the literature on

international education, Marginson and Sawir conclude that only very few participants

in international education will be able to live up to its goals and therefore they argue

for relational cosmopolitanism as an approach to international education.

Relational cosmopolitanism describes a space in which “locality, nationality,

changing cultural identity, and global systems and imaginings are all at play”

(Marginson & Sawir 2011, 60). Following Rizvi (2008), Marginson and Sawir argue

that in education it translates into not “a universal moral principle, nor a prescription

recommending a form of political configuration, but […] a mode of learning about, and

ethically engaging with, new cultural formations.” (Marginson & Sawir 2011, 72). A

cosmopolitan approach to international education is both empirical and normative in

the sense that it both involves empirical understandings of the consequences brought

on by global transformations and discusses how we should approach these

transformations.

The main part of the literature in the second approach has a pedagogic and

teacher oriented perspective. From the perspective of the students in the international

classroom, studies report on ways to enhance cross-‐cultural relationships (e.g.

Pritchard & Skinner, 2002; Montgomery 2010), intercultural learning (e.g Volet & Ang,

1998, Allen 2003), learning diversity (Ramburuth & McCormick 2001) and the

international student experience as a community of practice (Montgomery 2010).

Though highly relevant, they are not touching upon what lies at the core of this PhD

project: processes behind negotiation of knowledge capital Of more interest to my

project is Fabricius’ (2011) mapping of the interaction of locally and internationally

anchored elements in student groups’ project work process. Fabricius concludes that


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the students “negotiate an academic education between the spheres of the local and the

international” (Fabricius 2011, 135). This is achieved by the interplay between

academic theories, the choice of empirical case studies and the problems the students

analyze.

While the literature does not specifically talk about power/ethics dimensions in

the international classroom, these dimensions echo throughout the literature, which

suggests that a closer look at the role of the ethics/ power dimensions in the process of

negotiating and acknowledging knowledge may be fruitful.

What I understand by a power dimension in the negotiation of knowledge is in

the parallel between approaches to international education where knowledge is

understood as neutral, objective and transferrable (Tierney 2001) and Marginson and

Sawir’s (2011) “Rejecting the Other” because it synthesizes understandings of

knowledge and approaches to the Other and shows that within the international

classroom, certain actors have the power to render their own knowledge system as

objective and thus to reject other knowledge systems. This power dimension is

present in international education both at the macro level of the ontology and the

epistemologies of the university, but also at the micro level of classroom interaction.

On the other hand, the synthesis between the understanding of knowledge as

interested and dynamic (Tierney 2001) and Marginson and Sawir’s (2011) “Engaging

the Other” approaches to internationalization forms the ethical dimension which

potentially plays a role to the negotiation of knowledge capital in the international

classroom. In the literature, the ethical dimension is introduced in relation to

epistemologies and proposed teaching strategies, but not in relation to student

experiences. It is thus not covered to what extent the students experience this

dimension within different approaches to internationalization or how the introduction

of such a dimension in the institutional framework influences what the students

acknowledge as knowledge. Furthermore, it is not covered how the presence of both

dimensions at once influences the process.


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3 The PhD project: Knowledge Encounters in International and Interdisciplinary Education

3.1 Aim and research questions The potential introduction of the ethical dimension into the institutional framework

opens up for a more complex analysis of the negotiation and authorization of

knowledge than my original model suggested because now the dimensions operate in

several directions. They operate both in the knowledge encounter between the

institutional framework and the student and in the knowledge encounters between the

students.

Being a quest into the premises behind the authorization of knowledge among

students in the international university, the project thus examines the negotiation and

authorization of knowledge capital in relation to the dimensions power/ethics.

This main theme is explored through the following research questions:

1. How can the institution’s/the program’s ontological and epistemological

framework be characterized in relation to the two dimensions?

2. How do the students characterize and evaluate the knowledge system they have

been socialized into before their participation in international education?

3. How do the students characterize and evaluate the knowledge system of the

institution/ program?

4. How do the students characterize and evaluate the knowledge systems of the

other students?

5. How are negotiations of knowledge capital played out in relation to the two

dimensions.


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3.3 Preliminary theoretical framework In “Vive la Crise! For heterodoxy in social science” Bourdieu criticizes “methodology”

understood as preliminary definitions of concepts, because it produces closure and

static categories. However, thinking of theory as my partner in dialogue, the following

section sketches my theoretical starting point. Theories that I hope can assist my

observations and reflections upon how knowledge capital is negotiated. As stated in

the introduction, the larger project’s theoretical framework draws upon Bourdieu’s

theory of practice. In my project, the main focus is on cultural capital (e.g. Bourdieu

1984; Bourdieu 1986), or more specifically knowledge capital, knowledge system,

symbolic power and symbolic violence (e.g. Bourdieu & Passeron 1990; Bourdieu

1993). It is, however, a framework which involves a number of methodological as well

as theoretical challenges linked to applying his concepts to an international field, and

to the notion of agency and to the introduction of the ethical dimension.

Bourdieu’s empirical research and the main body of his arguments are developed

before “contemporary globalization” (Marginson 2008, p 304) and an in a context

where the relationship between higher education, society and nation-‐state was

relatively stable (Naidoo 2004, Marginson 2008). The question is now to what extent

his work has relevance and can be applied in a globalized context.

As outlined above, the literature illustrates that international programs may

reproduce existing knowledge systems and they may not recognize the knowledge that

Institutional framework

Student

EncounterPower/Ethics

Knowledge Capital

Embodied, Objectified,Institutionalized

Student

Enco

unte

r

Pow

er/E

thic

s

Enco

unte

r

Pow

er/E

thics


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the international students bring. Furthermore, Wilken (2008) also points out, that

internationalization of higher education rests upon the premises that 1: “scholastic

cultural capital” (Bourdieu & Passeron 1979) can be transferred from one context to

another; and 2: that it is possible to create an educational environment where all

participants can contribute on an equal footing. If we accept that these are the

premises of much international education, and the literature supports the claim, it

implies that Bourdieu’s theoretical framework still has relevance in an international

setting.

Furthermore, in “The Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas”

(1999), Bourdieu points out that intellectual life is “a home to nationalism and

imperialism, and intellectuals, like everyone else, constantly peddle prejudices,

stereotypes, received ideas, and hastily simplistic representations” (220). Here,

Bourdieu argues that ideas and authority are misunderstood or misrecognized, when

they are taken out of their original context unless there is a “structural homology” (p.

224). Bourdieu argues, that in order to overcome thinking in patterns derived from

“national categories of thought” (227) and achieve what he calls a “scientific

internationalism” (220), it is necessary to apply a reflexive sociology to the field of

cultural production and the history of educational institutions. Bourdieu thus

recognizes that knowledge systems are closely linked to national frameworks and

implies that these frameworks have relevance in international encounters.

A reading of Bourdieu’s analysis of the French educational system before 1968

Homo Academicus (Bourdieu 1988), shows that knowledge systems are not only linked

to national frameworks but also institutional. Furthermore, it shows how knowledge

systems are both producers and products of symbolic power and symbolic violence.

(Swidler & Arditi 2008; Tange, Kastberg & Wadsholt forthcoming).

Within a knowledge system, certain agents hold positions of authority or

symbolic power from which they can legitimize or reject scholarship that conflicts with

the system or, in other words, they have the power to render a particular

understanding of reality objective (Wilken 2006; Tange, Kastberg & Wadsholt

forthcoming). The result is that the system appears as naturally given (Wilken 2011,

Bourdieu & Passeron 1990, Bourdieu 1993) and therefore, neither the dominated nor

the dominant recognize the nature of the power. Symbolic violence is when the

symbolic power is realized and agents conform to the system and acknowledge the


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knowledge and the culture it represents despite their own status within the system

(Bourdieu 1988, Bourdieu & Passeron 1990).

Bourdieu’s concept “cultural capital” is well known. However, he also introduces

the concept “informational capital” as a broadening of the concept of cultural capital in

order to “give the notion its full generality” (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992, p. 119). In

“Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field” (1994)

Bourdieu shows how information, like cultural capital, is linked to the construction of

national unity:

[T]he state concentrates, treats, and redistributes information and, most of all, effects a theoretical unification. Taking the vantage point of the Whole, of society in its totality, the state claims responsibility for all operations of totalization (especially thanks to census taking and statistics or national accounting) and of objectification, through cartography (the unitary representation of space from above) or more simply through writing as an instrument of accumulation of knowledge (e.g.. archives), as well as for all operations of codification as cognitive unification implying centralization and monopolization in the hands of clerks and men of letters (p. 7).

As an analytical concept, it thus becomes relatively broad and may be difficult to

apply to the field of higher education (Tange, Kastberg & Wadsholt, forthcoming). In

stead, the project looks at what could be characterized as a subcategory of

informational or cultural capital that for the purpose is labeled “knowledge capital”

and relates to the particular knowledge, behaviors, skills and objects acknowledged

within a particular educational environment.

In “The Forms of Capital” (1986), Bourdieu states that cultural capital can be

found in three different forms: embodied, institutionalized and objectified. In the

embodied form, which Bourdieu sees as the fundamental state, cultural capital is “the

long lasting dispositions of the mind and body” (p. 47). It relates to having a taste for

particular values and goods and it is linked to language skills, political opinions and the

ability to consume cultural objects such as paintings, books and music (Wilken 2011).

In relation to knowledge capital, I translate embodied capital into a preference and

knowledge of certain academic/ political schools, knowledge of academic literature

and theories, language skills and learning strategies. In this translation, I draw upon

the literature’s identification of problematic issues in the intercultural classroom as

well as my observations of classroom interaction.


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In the objectified state, it according to Bourdieu’s definition of cultural capital,

refers to “pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc” (p. 47). Seeing

knowledge capital as a subcategory of cultural capital and drawing upon my initial

observations at the three programs, I translate it as books, computers/ computer

access, computer programs, ipads etc.

The institutionalized state is, according to Bourdieu, “one way of neutralizing

some of the properties [cultural capital] derives from the fact that being embodied, it

has the same biological limits as its bearer” (p. 50) and it is “cultural capital

academically sanctioned by legally guaranteed qualifications” (50). In relation to

knowledge capital, it is only slightly changed, as I understand it to be related to the

academic degree of an actor and degrees from prestigious universities or institutions,

which parallels Munk’s definition of institutionalized legitimate informational capital

(2001; 2009).

The nature of the institutionalized state of cultural capital is an indication of how

closely connected to knowledge systems knowledge capital may be. It is the knowledge

system embodied in institutions and universities that legitimizes knowledge capital.

The roles of symbolic power and symbolic violence raise the question of agency.

Marginson (2008) discusses Bourdieu’s theorization of agency and claims that in

relation to agency and the field of power in international higher education, Bourdieu’s

theoretical framework has limitations because “he sees agency freedom, self-‐

determining identity, as bound a priori by the stratification of class power lodged in the

unconscious” (Marginson 2008, p. 312). On the other hand, and at the level of

classroom interaction, Mills (2008) argues that there is agency and transformative

potential in Bourdieu’s theoretical constructs that otherwise have been criticized for

their emphasis on reproduction (e.g. Jenkins 2002). With the call for new approaches

to international education such as “double-‐knowing” and “ethical engagement with

new cultural formations”, the role of agency becomes highly relevant because it

involves an active involvement with the knowledge of the Other and ultimately

challenges Bourdieu’s conception of the field as defined by struggle. Marginson (2008)

argues that “intersubjective relations in global higher education are often cooperative”

(p. 312) and a key discussion in my project investigates this claim at the level of

classroom interactions in international education.


18

Theorists of didactics have proposed a levinasian approach to teaching in which

the role of the teacher is one of response and responsibility (e.g. Biesta 2003; Säfström

2003). It is argued that the teacher, as it is also the case according to Bourdieu, can

carry out an act of violence through his teaching, by seeking to transfer knowledge

about a presumably objective world to the student (Joldersma 2001, Säfström 2003,

Biesta 2003). Instead, a levinasian pedagogy argues that the teacher should abstain

from the attempt to transfer knowledge to the student and instead enter a dialogue

with the student in which the teacher’s role is defined by response and responsibility

(Biesta 2003, Säfström 2003).

This approach builds on Levinas’ idea of the ethical encounter According to

Lévinas, we can wish to fully understand and explain the other. But, if this desire is

carried out, it will result in the reduction of the otherness of the other to the same.

Levinas calls this reduction violence or murder (Lévinas 1996). The moment of

violence or murder is similar to Bourdieu’s acts of symbolic violence, which the

dominant actor carries out in order to protect his own position. However, according to

Lévinas, this is the moment, in which power becomes the opposite of power, power is

dissolved as it is carried out, because it is the moment when otherness escapes the

subject (Lévinas 1996, Lévinas 2002). Instead, the ethical encounter is a relation in

which the subject resists the temptation to carry out the murder. Levinas calls it being

in the presence of the face and, according to Lévinas, it is in this moment the

subjectivity of the subject is fully realized.

Initially, I have chosen to draw upon Levinas’ account of the ethical encounter to

discuss the called for new approaches to international education as contrast to

Bourdieusian approaches for several reasons.

First of all, it adds a conceptual contrast to Bourdieu’s “symbolic violence” which

emphasizes the two-‐dimensional nature of the encounter and the potential conflict

between the dimensions.

Secondly, the origin of the didactic theory in Levinas’ account of the ethical

encounter allows a discussion of the ethical dimension of knowledge encounters both

as result of teaching strategies but also potentially as a dimension occurring in spite of

exclusive teaching strategies.

Thirdly, the origin or Levinas’ thought in phenomenology addresses the

discussion of structure/agency and objectivity/subjectivity in Bourdieu’s


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theorizations, where Bourdieu has been accused of remaining “caught in an unresolved

contradiction between determinism and voluntarism with the balance of his argument

favouring the former “(Jenkins 2002, p.21).

3.2 Methodology Though guided by Bourdieu’s “structuralist constructivist” stance (Bourdieu 1989, p

14), the project, being a quest into the authorization of knowledge and the premises

behind the authorization of knowledge within the university, opens, confronts and

challenges my settling upon an epistemological position in the beginning of the project.

The further definition of the ontology and epistemology of knowledge is thus under

development during, and as a consequence of, the research process. This process

involves both the reading of the literature about the ontology and epistemology of the

global university, the choice of empirical approach as well as the production of

empirical data and the development of a theoretical framework.

The methodological choices are guided by the need for a project design which

allows me to trace the negotiation of “knowledge capital” and potentially allows for the

structure/agency dialogue, balances subjectivist and objectivist approaches, and seeks

to avoid committing “symbolic violence”, which follows from the epistemological quest.

The choice is also guided by the need for methods that allow for the concept to be

described in a constant dialogue between theory and empirical findings.

Based on the criteria outlined above, Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology (e.g. Bourdieu

& Wacquant 1992) serves as a methodological frame. Knowledge production is a social

practice, and therefore the researcher is never neutral or objective and the process of

knowledge production must also be an object of scientific investigation. Reflexive

sociology therefore involves adopting a historical perspective upon the construction of

our categories and analysis of the researcher’s position within the academic field

(Bourdieu 2003). Furthermore, Bourdieu argues that researchers must draw upon

their own experiences as social agents because there is a fundamental difference

between the practical logic that guides the behavior of social agents and the

researcher’s theorizing (Bourdieu 2003, Wilken 2011).

The selected empirical methods are: participant observations of lectures, class-‐

discussions and group work, semi-‐structured interviews with students and collection

of documents issued by the institutions. In my analysis, data produced using these

three methods will be supplemented by data/ results from other members of the


20

project group including interviews with teachers and statistical data about the social-‐

and educational backgrounds of the students.

Documents are “standardized artefacts, in so far as they typically occur in

particular formats” (Wolf 2004, p 284). They are, according to Flick (2009), produced

with a purpose in mind and they should be regarded as a means for communication.

The documents are collected to get information about the authorized epistemologies of

the institution/ the program in order to answer RQ1. In order to answer RQ1, I also

draw upon data/ results produced by other members of the project group. These data

are interviews with teachers from the programs and a quantitative mapping of the

sociological backgrounds of the students participating in the programs.

Participant observation (e.g. Spradley 1980; Creswell 2007) is included to build

knowledge about how the practice of negotiating knowledge capital is carried out with

reference to different sources of authority. It is included in order to answer RQ5 and

inform the quest into the other research questions. Participant observation has been

described along a continuum from complete observer to complete participant

(Creswell 2007), where complete participation is based on the ideal of getting the same

experience as the ordinary participants. Bourdieu argues that this is not possible

because the researcher does not have the same things at stake as the ordinary

participant (Wilken 2011; Bourdieu 2003). Furthermore, from a Levinasian

perspective, it could also be argued that it involves a reduction of the other’s

experiences to the same. The aim is not to get access to experiences but rather to get

access to practices and negotiations, and therefore the aim is some moderate degree of

participation.

Finally, I use semi-‐structured interviews from which I aim at getting individual

actors’ voicing of the process of knowledge evaluation, which links the interviews to

RQ 2,3 and 4. According to Bourdieu, practices cannot be explained by describing

objective structures alone but describtions of objective structures must be

supplemented by investigations in the actors’ subjectivist understandings of reality

(e.g. Bourdieu 2004).

In combination, the methods thus provide insights into the institutional

framework that surrounds the students’ knowledge encounters and negotiations of

knowledge capital; knowledge of their practice of negotiation and the construction of

knowledge capital; and their reflections upon these negotiations, which allows a


21

discussion of the role of structure and agency, ethics and power in these negotiations

of knowledge capital. Furthermore, the process allows for a continuous dialogue

between theory and empirical findings.

These methods are not applied in order to describe “differences” in the

knowledges of the participants as such, but rather to examine how the actors negotiate

among potential differences in the “local spaces” where international education is

played out (Marginson & Sawir, 2011).

3.4 Producing data

3.4.1 Selecting the programs For two of the three programs that are part of my research, access was negotiated

jointly for the project group. These programs were chosen among Master-‐programs

offered at Aarhus University that are taught in English, belong to different faculties,

vary in size and claim to be international. The choice was not guided by any particular

definition of “international”. The programs are: a) A program at the Faculty of Arts that

works closely together with a social science institute at School of Business and Social

Sciences and an educational institution outside the university. It has approximately 70

students. This program will be referred to as Education 11; and b) a business program

at the School of Business and Social Sciences. It has more than 100 students. It will be

referred to as Education 41. The third program was chosen because it, besides the

abovementioned criteria, is promoted as an interdisciplinary program, which may

result in more sources of authority and give us information about how knowledge is

negotiated across disciplines. It is a program at Arts that works closely together with

an institute at Science and Technology. It has approximately 25 students. This program

will be referred to as Education 12.

3.4.2 Producing and documenting data The overall process is documented in a project journal. In the journal, I write the ideas

that readings, observations, interviews, conversations etc. bring to the project and how

new ideas are connected to, challenges or nuances the existing theoretical framework

and empirical findings. At a later stage, it allows me to trace how the project was

conceptualized.


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Observation, first-‐hand reflections and analyses from lectures, class discussions

and group work are documented in a notebook. The observations were initially guided

by the two dimensions and the preliminary definition of knowledge capital discussed

above in section 3.3. However, as the project progresses, they have also become guided

by themes emerging in the interviews, new readings and previous observations. For

the first two months of the fall semester, I participated in approximately one class per

week (4 hours each) at Education 11 and Education 12. At Education 41, I have

participated in three tutorials (2 hours each) and 2 lectures (2 hours each). It will be

supplemented with observations especially at Education 41 this semester.

At each education I have introduced myself as a PhD-‐student and I have told the

students that I am interested in how knowledge is communicated in international and

interdisciplinary groups. I have stressed that I am not evaluating their knowledge and

that I am not a specialist in their field of study.

The interviews were built around an interview guide (see appendix 1) which

relates to the research questions so that, in combination with data produced through

participant observation, question 1-‐7 and to some extent also 8 and 9, are designed to

answer RQ2. Question 8-‐13 are designed to answer RQ3 and question 14-‐18 to answer

RQ4. Question A and B are designed to produce answers of a more narrative character,

which may frame the interview. With question 22, the intention is to sum up the issues

discussed in the interview to get the interviewee to rephrase the answers and perhaps

add to the previous answers. At this stage, I have interviewed 18 students (see

Appendix 2). The interviews were conducted together with Lisanne Wilken and we

have interviewed together for several reasons. First of all because we draw upon the

same pool of students and we were afraid that they might not want to give more than

one interview and, secondly, because our themes are interrelated and both of us might

get more detailed data by interviewing together. The interviews have been taped and

will be transcribed. Additional interviews with students from Education 11 and

Education 41 will be conducted later this semester.

The documents are lists of required-‐ and recommended readings, hand outs from

classes, and slides downloaded from the courses’ e-‐learning platforms; and

descriptions of the programs from webpages and brochures. The documents will be

used to answer RQ1


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3.5 Sketches and traces: the beginning of an analytical process The aim of the following section is to give an impression of an analytical strategy under

construction, which I hope can lead to a discussion of analytical strategy following my

oral presentation of the thesis proposal. For the present, I present some preliminary

findings and traces, but they are no more than sketches and traces that I intend to

follow and they should be read as such. The data discussed is documents and

participant observations.

Drawing upon the literature about the ontology and epistemology of the

internationalized university and Bourdieu and Levinas’ different understandings of

power, the interaction of the power dimension and the ethical dimension in the

negotiation of knowledge capital is analyzed.

3.5.1 Mapping epistemologies of the programs

This part of the analysis is related to RQ1 and draws upon the documents and my

observations supplemented with data from other members of the project group such

as interviews with professors and biographies/cvs. I am also considering including

admission procedures because they can tell us something about how the program

ranks different epistemologies and to what extent they value epistemological diversity.

The aim of the work is to map the epistemologies of the program by looking at

the origin of the texts (geographical origin, academic texts, newspaper articles,

reports) on the reading lists and the backgrounds of the teachers (academics,

consultants, practitioners).

At this stage with limitations in regard to the number of documents I have

collected so far, program 11 is characterized by a highly “academic” and

Western/liberal epistemology. Program 12 may be characterized by a mixture of

academics, consultants and practitioners as sources of knowledge. It also has a

Western bias. I do not have data on Education 41 as yet.

3.5.2 Power/ Ethics in the institutional framework This is also related to RQ1 and the aim is to discuss to what extent the power

dimension and/or the ethical dimension is present in the institutional framework.

Furthermore, the presence or absence of the dimensions in the institutional framework

will be compared to the negotiation processes among the students. It draws upon data

from the observations, documents such as slides from the introductory days at the


24

programs and program descriptions at websites and brochures supplemented with

interviews with teachers conducted by other members of the project group.

The following example is from the first day at Education 12. The students have

just met each other for the first time and the teachers introduce themselves and

explain what their courses are about.

Ex. From Education 12

The teachers explain how the core theoretical concepts of the course must be conceptualized from

an interdisciplinary point of view and they describe how practical interdisciplinarity is a key

component in all of the courses.

The teachers say that they try to adapt their teaching to the needs of the students. In-‐time

teaching

In relation to the power/ethics dimensions, I notice in this example, that the teachers

stress interdisciplinarity both as an analytical concept and as a desired skill, which

suggests a knowledge system based in new epistemologies that draw upon multiple

sources of authority. Furthermore, they emphasize that they try to adapt their teaching

to the needs of the students. I see it as an example of the ethical dimension expressed

as a normative “ought”.

The next example is from the welcome reception at education 11. The speeches

focus on what is expected of the students and what the program looks like.

Example of slide:

What you can expect from us:

Critical and analytical approach

Research oriented and application based learning

Egalitarian and democratic ideals

An openness to constructive criticism

Casual student-‐teacher relationship

High degree of fairness in examination: co-‐examiners and a formal system of reappraisal

Student group work both in-‐ and outside the classroom


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Example of slide:

Knowledge production and not only reproduction of knowledge

Ability to engage critically with and reflect upon the knowledge acquired during the course

Apply and contextualize

Move beyond

The director of studies says, that it may be argued, that they are operating within a European

framework – but “Please challenge it!”

The emphasis is on an institution/the program and its methods and values as the

speech tries do describe what the institution is like (e.g. egalitarian and democratic)

and the kind of students it values and aims to produce (students that produce

knowledge, engage critically). The ethical dimension is there in the will to explain the

system to the international students and in the recognition of the students as

knowledge producers. However, the ethical dimension is not there as a normative

“ought” and the emphasis on the description of the institution may also suggest the

presence of the power dimension.

3.5.3 Knowledge encounters in the international classroom: Knowledge-‐negotiation practices The following examples are episodes where the students have engaged in negotiation

of knowledge capital.

3.5.4 Becoming the same? The second day at education 12 is a workshop with an external consultant who is there

to teach the students about team work and study groups. In the field-‐notes from the

second day at education 12, I notice that the students try to establish similarity

between them when they draw parallels between their experiences.

The day is framed by an external consultant who introduces the students to exercises designed to

make the students reflect upon what characterizes successful group work. In groups, the student

are asked to tell each other a story about a successful group-‐work while the others write down

what the skills were that made the group-‐work successful.

Telling their stories, the students draw parallels and emphasize similarities between their

experiences. Finally, the groups are asked to discuss what they think they have learned so far. The


26

group I observe hesitantly concludes that they expect they have learned that they can benefit from

diversity in the groups.

The students engage in each other by reducing otherness to the Same. They construct

similarities and interpret themselves and each other into each others’ frameworks.

However, in contrast, knowledge capital is hesitantly established analytically as a static

category among the participants as “diversity” or “interdisciplinarity as conceptual

frame”, and “being able to work in a diverse environment” as a skill. What the students

agree upon is thus in congruence with the knowledge capital that the teachers

established the day before.

The first regular class I attend at Education 11 takes place a few days after the

welcome reception. The students have read a chapter from a book the teachers have

written and as they discuss it in class, it is significant that they back each other up

against the teacher:

Ex. 1

American male: “We need to address a new mode of production.”

Spanish female: “De-‐growth”

Teacher: “Sustainable growth, I guess you would call it.”

X male: “No, there is a different concept which actually means anti-‐growth. I’ve heard about it in

other classes.”

Ex.2

Towards the end of the class, a student (male) says that he questions the principle the book is

written from. “Economic interests. But what about if you look at it from a principle of morality?”

Student 2 (male): “If CSR works, we could talk about how companies could really help. But if it is

really about profit, it doesn’t work.”

Teacher: “But these things do work to some extent.”

The students agree with each other and form alliances against the teacher, which

suggests that the ethical dimension is there in the relationship between the students.

However, it differs from the encounter in Education 12, because it is not based on a

principle of similarity but rather upon recognition. Furthermore, the students establish

a power dimension in their discussion with the teacher. The result is that knowledge


27

capital is not settled upon analytically in this example. However, there is a dynamic

potential present in the examples from Education 11, and it may be the case, that this

dynamic potential is connected to knowledge capital.

3.5.5 Building on differences The following example is from a class at Education 11 in the middle of the semester.

Brazilian male: “We were talking about Brazil and why it is included in the BRICS. It is difficult to

find information about it. We concluded that Brazil’s inclusion is really about image in spite of its

internal problems.”

Belgian female: “I see your point because you are from Brazil. But I think we also have to focus on

some of the internal problems in the BRICS countries.”

Even though the Belgian female partly disagrees, she acknowledges that the Brazilian

student is an authority on the topic of discussion. Knowledge is thus negotiated among

the students in both dimensions. When she then builds on his experiences in her own

argument, I see this example as a realization of the dynamic potential present in the

examples above.

3.5.6 Diverging The last example is from Education 12. It is from a class in the middle of the semester.

In class, the students are asked to form the groups they are going to work in for a

project group exam. What I notice when reading the field-‐notes is that the attempt at

establishing similarity between the students is replaced with a rejection of otherness

by some of the students even though it is specifically stressed in the instructions from

the teachers that they should strive for interdisciplinarity in the groups they establish.

Ex.

The students have been asked to upload a qualified list of issues they find relevant in the case they

have chosen to work on in their exam project. They have also been asked to read each other’s lists

and find issues they would like to work on. Based on these lists, in class, the students are asked to

form project groups that are as interdisciplinary as possible.

They form three groups that live up to the criteria but then a student suddenly brings in a new

topic and says that he will form a groups around that topic with a student who is present and


28

another student who isn’t there. Some of the other students protest and say that it isn’t an

interdisciplinary group because the three of them have the same educational background. He says

that he cannot see that it is a problem and that he had promised the student who isn’t there that

he would make sure that the three of them end up working together. This is discussed among the

students, but he insists that the three of them work together and as a compromise a fourth

student, with a very different background (and very limited English skills) also becomes part of

the group.

Analyzing the example based on the dimensions, the student is only acknowledging

the kind of knowledge capital he has acquired in his previous education. He is rejecting

both the knowledge capital of the other students and the knowledge capital

represented by the institution. Here, disagreement does not result in a dynamic

negotiation of knowledge but rather a breakdown in the negotiation process and the

result is that they cannot establish knowledge capital because they do not acknowledge

other positions.

The examples above suggest that there is a difference in the way knowledge

capital is acknowledged and negotiated among the students from program to program.

Furthermore, in the examples above there is a difference the shape of the ethical

dimension in the institutional framework, which may be of relevance to the negotiation

processes. These are, however, only traces that I intend to follow in the further process

where the traces will be pursued in dialogue with other sources of data and the

theoretical framework.

4 Appendix 1: Interview guide Interview guide Version 4 Introduction

• Information about me and the project: Phd-‐student at BSS, project about

knowledge communication and international education. Interested in your

experiences.

• Confidential: Your name and the names of people you may mention during the

interview will not appear in any publications and I don’t talk to your teachers or

other students about what you tell me.


29

• I was not trained within your field of studies, so I am not evaluating your

knowledge or your skills in any way.

Information on the interviewee • Where are you from?

• What is your educational background?

• Where did you study?

• Do you have any work experience?

Your story A. What did you learn in your previous education?

B. What do you think you are learning now?

Previous education 1. What theories and methods did you learn during your previous education?

2. How would you evaluate these theories and methods? Did you like your

education?

3. How would you describe the teachers?

4. How would you asses the academic level at your BA-‐programme?

5. What kinds of skills do you think you acquired during your previous education?

6. How about the things you learned at your BA – how does it fit into this

program?

7. Do you think the other students consider your educational background

relevant?

Lisanne asks about motivations

Studies at Aarhus University 8. Why did you choose this education?


30

9. What did you expect to learn when you applied?

10. What theories and methods are you learning from the teachers and the readings

you are required to do?

11. How would you evaluate them?

12. How would you asses the academic level at your master program?

13. We sometimes hear that students associate their programmes with a particular

political conviction. Do you think that it is the case at your programme?

14. Do the other students contribute to your learning process?

15. How do you see the academic level of the universities the other students come

from?

16. How does the knowledge the other students have from their background and

their previous education fit into this program?

17. Are you part of a study group or project group? How was the group formed? Do

you think the group works well?

18. To what extent do the other members of the group have an educational

background or experiences that are useful when you work together?

19. Are there things such as books, computers or computer programs that you think

it is important to have as a student? Who has them?

20. Are there contacts to people or organizations outside the university that you

think it is useful to have in order to succeed in your studies? Who has them?

21. To sum up, how would you describe your learning process at university so far?

What have you learned and from whom?

Lisanne about language, social life and economy.

Other things 22. Are there other things you would like to say?


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5 Appendix 2: List of interviews Date Education Gender 07/11/12 12 Male 13/11/12 12 Female 19/11/12 12 Female 28/11/12 11 Female 28/11/12 11 Female 29/11/12 11 Female 29/11/12 11 Male 30/11/12 11 Female 30/11/12 11 Female 30/11/12 11 Female 04/12/12 11 Male 04/12/12 11 Female 05/12/12 11 Male 06/12/12 11 Female 06/12/12 11 Female 12/12/12 12 Male 18/12/12 41 Male 21/01/13 41 Male

6 Appendix 3: PhD-‐plan Semester Activity Spring 2012 (18,5 hours/week)

Meetings with the project group every fortnight to discuss relevant literature and establish coherence between the five projects.

Literature review: Bourdieu, Internationalization of higher education

Development of theoretical framework

Operationalization of key concepts

Planning of field work

PHD-‐courses:

22-‐23 March: Discourse analysis (CESAU 2,5 ECTS)

29-‐30 March: Feltstudier (CESAU 2,5 ECTS)

12-‐13 April: Det kvalitative forsknings interview (CESAU 2,5 ECTS)

16-‐18 April : Philosophy of Science (AU, BSS 5 ECTS)

19-‐20 April Kvantitative metoder (CESAU 2,5 ECTS)


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Conferences:

2-‐4 April: CALPIU: paper about the theoretical framework of the project together with Hanne Tange

Fall 2012

Literature review: epistemology of knowledge, knowledge systems, ethics

Development of interview guide

Teaching: Intercultural communication (2 classes), Censor on “Aspects of Denmark”

PHD-‐courses: Feltmetode (Arts, 3 ECTS)

Field work: observations and interviews

Conferences:

22-‐24 Nov: NIC conference, presentation of paper

Articles:

Tange, H., Kastberg, P., & Wadsholt, T.K. Knowledge systems, capital and the moment of ‘crisis’ in international education

Spring 2013

Teaching: Intercultural communication (2 classes)

Field work: observations and interviews at three international programs at AU

Transcription of interviews

Writing of literature review

Fall 2013

Data-‐analysis

PHD-‐courses: Knowledge communication (BSS, 5 ECTS)

Spring 2014 Data-‐analysis

Writing of thesis

Change of environment

Fall 2014 + Spring 2014 (3 months)

Data-‐analysis

Writing of thesis

Conference: Presentation of paper at conference


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