The Relation Between Values, Political Culture and Internationalization of Higher Education in Brazil and Canada

Thursday, April 7, 12:30-2 p.m.

Online

People are the foundation of society and their international relations are the core of the Internationalization of Higher Education (IHE) process. The way people see the world, see themselves in the world, and interact with others is important for IHE and the understanding of these aspects takes us to consider individuals’ values. Nevertheless, a meaningful understanding of individuals and their values as central actors of this process has tended to be ignored both in the literature and in the development and evaluation of practices, strategies and policies undertaken in universities and countries. Conceptualized as an intentional process that aims to contribute to society (Wit et al. 2015), the literature on IHE has a range of different definitions (Van der Wende, 2001; Knight, 1994; Hudzik, 2011; Stallivieri, 2018, 2019; Mestenhauser, 2012; Deardorff and Jones, 2012) but all they were built from an institutional topdown perspective. Two key trends currently in IHE are the economic (IHE as an economic driver) and cooperative (intercultural relations are important). Growing concern about the economic approach to this process has emerged in many countries. Even though about the need to rethink the process’s values (IAU, 2012) or reconsider the culture at the core (Mestenhauser, 2011; Knight, 2020) or even strengthen the importance of outcomes instead of outputs (de Wit, 2022) there has been little re-envisioning in the literature. As IHE is not in itself a discipline because of the lack of a solid theory (Mestenhauser, 2012), then approaches to other disciplines are necessary. The theoretical assumptions of Political Culture will be important here once this discipline has in the individuals, their values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors the explanatory basis of human development and changes of society (Easton, 1968; Almond & Verba 1970, 1980; Inglehart & Welzel, 2009, 2017; Castro, 2014; Capistrano, 2013; Wasburg & Covert, 2017). This presentation intends to discuss the importance of a bottom-up approach to IHE through a theoretical framework of Political Culture considering individuals at the core of the process in a society. Empirically Canada and Brazil have been chosen as study cases as they are countries that represent respectively the economic and the cooperative paradigms of IHE (Andreotti, Thiago & Stein, 2018) and there is evidence of the absence of a bottom-up approach in both of them. The timeframe will be from 1990 to 2020 because this period represents an increase in the importance of IHE for governments and universities worldwide and it coincides with the World Value Survey (WVS) 2nd, 5th and 7th waves with data about values in these societies.

https://mun.webex.com/mun/j.php?MTID=m5df046dc2037b815505aef99dcec0cf6

Presented by Christiana Mueller

Event Listing 2022-04-07 12:30:00 2022-04-07 14:00:00 America/St_Johns The Relation Between Values, Political Culture and Internationalization of Higher Education in Brazil and Canada People are the foundation of society and their international relations are the core of the Internationalization of Higher Education (IHE) process. The way people see the world, see themselves in the world, and interact with others is important for IHE and the understanding of these aspects takes us to consider individuals’ values. Nevertheless, a meaningful understanding of individuals and their values as central actors of this process has tended to be ignored both in the literature and in the development and evaluation of practices, strategies and policies undertaken in universities and countries. Conceptualized as an intentional process that aims to contribute to society (Wit et al. 2015), the literature on IHE has a range of different definitions (Van der Wende, 2001; Knight, 1994; Hudzik, 2011; Stallivieri, 2018, 2019; Mestenhauser, 2012; Deardorff and Jones, 2012) but all they were built from an institutional topdown perspective. Two key trends currently in IHE are the economic (IHE as an economic driver) and cooperative (intercultural relations are important). Growing concern about the economic approach to this process has emerged in many countries. Even though about the need to rethink the process’s values (IAU, 2012) or reconsider the culture at the core (Mestenhauser, 2011; Knight, 2020) or even strengthen the importance of outcomes instead of outputs (de Wit, 2022) there has been little re-envisioning in the literature. As IHE is not in itself a discipline because of the lack of a solid theory (Mestenhauser, 2012), then approaches to other disciplines are necessary. The theoretical assumptions of Political Culture will be important here once this discipline has in the individuals, their values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors the explanatory basis of human development and changes of society (Easton, 1968; Almond & Verba 1970, 1980; Inglehart & Welzel, 2009, 2017; Castro, 2014; Capistrano, 2013; Wasburg & Covert, 2017). This presentation intends to discuss the importance of a bottom-up approach to IHE through a theoretical framework of Political Culture considering individuals at the core of the process in a society. Empirically Canada and Brazil have been chosen as study cases as they are countries that represent respectively the economic and the cooperative paradigms of IHE (Andreotti, Thiago & Stein, 2018) and there is evidence of the absence of a bottom-up approach in both of them. The timeframe will be from 1990 to 2020 because this period represents an increase in the importance of IHE for governments and universities worldwide and it coincides with the World Value Survey (WVS) 2nd, 5th and 7th waves with data about values in these societies. https://mun.webex.com/mun/j.php?MTID=m5df046dc2037b815505aef99dcec0cf6 Online Christiana Mueller