Internationalizing the Curriculum in the Disciplines—Imagining New Possibilities

Internationalization of the curriculum provides challenges and opportunities for academic staff and institutions. This article reports on research undertaken in 2010-2011, which engaged academic staff in different disciplines and universities in the process of exploring and making explicit the meaning of internationalization of the curriculum in their disciplines. One of the outcomes of the research was a five-stage model of the process of internationalization of the curriculum. A critical part of the process involved small groups of staff discussing existing paradigms within their disciplines, questioning “what we believe” in relation to the curriculum and student learning and imagining and negotiating new possibilities. The article argues that internationalization of the curriculum should be a planned, developmental, and cyclical process and that employing the imagination is an essential part of the process of internationalization of the curriculum in any discipline.