Academic sojourners, teaching and internationalisation: the experience of non-UK staff in a British University

Conceptualisations of internationalisation remain limited as long as the implications for pedagogy of an increasingly international teaching staff remain unexamined. Non-UK staff securing posts that involve teaching at British universities face substantial practical, cultural and linguistic challenges that impact on and, in some cases, inhibit, teaching styles and strategies. In this paper it is argued that practices surrounding teaching are local and often assumed to be self-evident in nature, while the international nature of academe is substantially rooted in disciplinary communities of practice made up of researchers and scholars. This split in conceptualising academic endeavour perpetuates the fragmentation of research and teaching, while putting new staff under stress. We draw on research data to frame practical steps that might enable, in this case, UK higher education to benefit from the prior teaching experience of international faculty and to facilitate transnational adjustment to teaching in universities in more creative and less stressful ways.