The role of higher education institutions in transnational networks for teaching and learning innovation: The case of the Erasmus+ programme [Scholarly Article - European Journal of Education, May 2021]

Title: 

The role of higher education institutions in transnational networks for teaching and learning innovation: The case of the Erasmus+ programme 

 

Authors:

Tatiana Fumasoli & Federica Rossi

Published:

European Journal of Education, 6 May 2021

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejed.12454

Abstract:

Within the scholarship on internationalisation in higher education, transnational networks are seldom mentioned and even less studied. However, recent EU policy initiatives have attempted to enhance this form of internationalisation in order to tackle issues of employability, skills and competences and innovative curriculum development. Within European transnational networks, higher education institutions are posited to play a central role, as they are considered engines of socio-economic development in the so-called Knowledge Economy. To explore empirically the significance of higher education institutions in such networks, this article presents an analysis of 991 European networks promoting educational innovation within the Erasmus+ programme between 2014 and 2018. We analyse the role of higher education institutions by network size, governance, membership, and associated types of innovation. Our findings confirm expectations about the pivotal role of higher education institutions. However, expectations should be significantly nuanced, as higher education institutions tend to lead comparatively small networks. Also, higher education institutions tend to favour general innovative themes rather than specialised topics. Our contribution is threefold. First, it increases our understanding of higher education institutions' capacity to engage with multi-level, multi-actor, multi-country innovation networks. Second, it sheds light on how higher education institutions have engaged with different priorities in EU's modernisation agenda. Finally, our paper extends the scholarship on internationalisation in higher education by looking at transnational networks in teaching and learning as an emerging phenomenon.

Purposive design or ecology? A critique of teleological perspectives on internationalisation in higher education (by Tatiana Fumasoli) [Scholarly Article - European Journal of Education, April 2021]

Title:

Purposive design or ecology? A critique of teleological perspectives on internationalisation in higher education

 

Author:

Tatiana Fumasoli

UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK

 

Published:

European Journal of Education, 16 April 2021

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejed.12453

 

From the article:

Internationalisation of higher education can be understood as the expansion and integration of the higher education field across borders, implying a growing interconnectedness of the involved actors on a global scale. It is then crucial to understand the nature of such actors, including their position and their capacity for engaging with the field. As they move within the field between centre and periphery, new actors emerge and old actors disappear. Basic questions on internationalisation point to the number and quality of such relationships, that is, their density, sustainability, actor resources and institutional contexts.