Realizing the Global University – Some Roadmaps for Consideration by Universities in Developing World
November 1, 2007 at 2:26 pm 2 comments
Wang Yibing, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
This paper can be downloaded from http://www.wun.ac.uk/theglobaluniversity/workshop.html
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Ian Wei | November 5, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Thank you for a wonderfully informative and stimulating paper. Two thoughts occur to me at this point.
1. It strikes me that universities in developed countries have as much to learn from Professor Wang as universities in developing countries. Any university that wants to take internationalization seriously would do well to review its practices in the light of Professor Wang’s analysis.
2. I am particularly interested in Professor Wang’s comments about ‘comparative study of curriculum’ and ‘dialogue between different civilizations’ being achieved through ‘curriculum development and innovation’. The importance of this has just been brought home to me because this year for the first time I have a student from mainland China beginning our undergraduate History programme. Quite by chance I am his personal tutor and his tutor for medieval European history. He has been telling me that what he is doing in Bristol is not at all what he expected, that studying history in China is very different from studying history in Britain. We have been having some fascinating discussions, and he has been offering the other students a distinctive perspective in seminars. But to support him in developing his ideas, I really need to know a great deal more about how history is studied and taught in China. It would be very interesting to hear about specific projects that have compared curriculum, teaching techniques, and the methods underlying study in particular disciplines in different cultures. How has this work been organised, how has it benefited students, and should more be done along these lines?
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Professor Rosemary Deem | November 11, 2007 at 2:28 pm
This paper provides some fascinating insights into the challenges of the rapidly growing Chinese higher education system and an interesting set of proposals on internationalisation. It would be interesting to know how this list compares with what other HE systems in developing countries might prioritise, such as universities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper provides a fascinating other side of the coin analysis to Welch and Zhang’s paper on the rsie of the Chinese diaspora. I also wondered whether some thought could have been given to the extent to which internationalisation should go – if international students go to China to study, they may be keen to learn about China, not an international curriculum and some Chinese students might also resist an international curriculum.