Comparative study of internationalization of higher education curricula in a number of countries

Subject Areas : Research in Curriculum Planning

fatemeh behjati ardakani ¹ , mohamad hossein yarmohamadian ² , ahmadali foroughi abari ³ , kourosh fathi vajargah ⁴

1 - 1استادیار گروه علوم تربیتی، واحد اردکان، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، اردکان، ایران
2 - 2دانشیار مرکز تحقیقات مدیریت و اقتصاد سلامت، دانشگاه علوم پزشکی، اصفهان، ایران
3 - 3استادیار گروه علوم تربیتی، واحد خوراسگان، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، اصفهان، ایران
4 - 4دانشیار گروه علوم تربیتی، دانشگاه شهید بهشتی، تهران، ایران

Received: 2017-10-17 Accepted : 2017-10-17 Published : 2012-08-22

Keywords: curriculum educational systems, Higher Education, internationalization, comparative study,

Abstract :

Today internationalization of higher education has been accompanied with issues such as rapid changes, rebuilding of programs, elimination of geographical borders, and access to the new information and technology. The aim of this article is to study and compare the efforts made by curriculum planners in different universities around the world for the internationalization of the higher education. This comparative – analytical study investigates different approaches for the internationalization of curriculum of the higher education (including strategies, programs, activities and methods of teaching and learning) in countries like the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Findings include strategies, programs, activities for internationalization of higher education curriculum learning and teaching methods in each country. Comparison of four strategies of the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan showed that internationalizing the curriculum and learning strategies by embedding international content into their existing curricula is their most important strategy and teacher and student exchange programs receive less attention. Today, the internationalization of local and national curricula is of great importance.