The internationalisation of doctoral education and the strategies to achieve it: the perspectives of Portuguese universities and doctoral students
Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education
ISSN: 2398-4686
Article publication date: 8 September 2023
Issue publication date: 16 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Internationalisation is one of the significant manifestations of the ongoing transformation of doctoral education. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the perspectives of Portuguese universities and doctoral students regarding the importance of internationalisation and the strategies to achieve it in doctoral education.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 118 doctoral programme websites from 27 universities (15 public, 12 private) served as the data source of university perspectives of internationalisation. Doctoral students’ perspectives on the same topic were collected through 31 interviews, 27 conducted in seven focus groups and four individually, with first-year doctoral students from three Portuguese public universities. Content analysis was performed on the two sets of data.
Findings
According to university and doctoral students’ perspectives, internationalisation assumes an important role in Portuguese doctoral education and is being integrated through specific strategies. Strategies for attracting and recruiting international students appear to take a back seat compared to strategies which offer students international experience through immersion in international environments in their home institutions. While expressing the potential impediments, undesirable side effects and conditions that internationalisation must meet, students seem to take a critical stance towards it and towards the institutional strategies designed to promote it.
Originality/value
This paper addresses a topic which does not appear to receive much attention in doctoral education research and, to this extent, advances knowledge on the internationalisation of doctoral education.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the EDULOG, a Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation think tank focused on education, under grant CIPES/EDULOG/2020/22.
Citation
Cardoso, S. and Sin, C. (2023), "The internationalisation of doctoral education and the strategies to achieve it: the perspectives of Portuguese universities and doctoral students", Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 399-414. https://doi.org/10.1108/SGPE-12-2022-0078
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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