Globality, Bifocality, and In/ternationality in CIE
Doctoral Programs: Rethinking the Training and
Experiences of Transnational Doctoral Students
Heidi Ross, Indiana University
Yimin Wang, University of Illinois
with Yue Ren, Communications University of China
2014 November 15
Shanghai Jiaotong University
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CIE Doctoral Training
for What and for Whom?
The globalization of doctoral education is not
just a process but also a condition, “part of a
world research environment in which traditional
and familiar boundaries are being surmounted
or made irrelevant.” (Powell and Green, 2007,
239) [We call this globality]
MOTIVATING IMPULSE: the internationalization
of doctoral training has been little studied
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Outline of Presentation
• Background, 2010-2014 (as illustrated in
handout)
• Three Concepts: globality, bifocality,
in/ternationality
• Literature Reviews along the Way
• Findings from Student Surveys
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Background
21st century research universities have three “faces:”
1.
2.
3.
economic markets exchanging products and commodities
status-seeking institutions competing for global rankings
increasingly networked and collaborating partners (Marginson,
2011).
These faces shape the expectations, training and career opportunities
of all doctoral students, yet little scholarship on the doctorate
examines the needs and impact of trans/international students in/on
doctoral programs.
With the handout you have as illustration of our questions, I report on
the 2010-2014 experiences and training of 14 Chinese doctoral
students in a U.S. comparative and international education (CIE)
program in terms of its influence on their professional development,
affiliations, and employment within an internationalized job market.
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Three Key Concepts
• No shortage of research on what higher education institutions need to
do to become “global universities” (Wildavsky, 2010; Altbach and Salmi; 2011)
• We agree that “the globalization of higher education should be
embraced, not feared,” because globalization is a condition [globality]for
the university’s third face of collaboration and partnership.
• Bifocality, a concept first used by Ted Bestor, refers to the idea that to
understand globalization individuals need to develop experience nearand experience-distant reality.
• We borrow in/ternational from Elaine Unterhalter, who describes an
important shift in “global space” as moving from two waves: the international, “associated with the primacy of states in “global space,” and
the second wave, in/ternational that is “associated with networks,
sometimes of states, civil society, corporations, sometimes
combinations of these” (Unterhalter, 2008).
• Our findings convince us that we should be educating students as global
scholars who can reflect on and collaborate in an in/ternational global
space.
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Three Conclusions about Doctoral
Training—what it could and should be
• Doctoral training is a social practice, from which
arises communities of practice that include a
shared “intellectual substance” (Wenger, 1998;
Cummings, 1999).
• Doctoral training programs can foster an
appreciation of diversity that flows from bifocality
(local to global vision).
• Doctoral mentoring can lead to the creation of
horizontal, in/ternational connections across
national boundaries with the potential for
creating global scholars supported by “circles of
esteem” (Cribb, 2005).
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Literature Review, Part 1: Reflections on
Comparative Education in China and the U.S.
• A review of authors represented in the U.S.-based
journal Comparative Education Review (University
of Chicago Press) and participants in the annual
CIES meetings provide encouraging evidence of the
existence of an increasingly robust space for CIE
collaboration.
• An example: a search of current CIES members
with a postal address in China indicates that onethird are Western scholars currently residing in
China studying, teaching or doing research; a
member search of all states in the U.S. yields at
least several Chinese names.
Pictures on the CIES main website.
http://www.cies.us
Literature Review, Part 1: Reflections on
Comparative Education in China and the U.S.
• The China-based CER (Bijiao Jiaoyu Yanjiu): from
describing “trends in foreign education” to actively
participating in international dialogue about CIE
and its purpose. (196519922010the future)
• The implied tension between learning/
adopting/globalizing and serving the
social/educational needs of China has been an
ongoing one within the Chinese field of CIE and is
affected by global interaction.
• Chinese CIE scholars have been very consciously
reflecting on China’s role in the development of the
field(s) of CIE, as well as on what China and Chinabased scholars can contribute to it/them.
• WCCES in Beijing in 2016
Literature Review, Part 2: Global Doctoral Training
in the U.S. and Worldwide
• From the “Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate,” initiated in
2002 to the “Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs”
being conducted by the National Research Council (NRC): the
existing literature does little to illuminate our central concern,
the nature and role of research for international students—or
for all students in a transnational community.
• Most of the research that has been conducted focuses on
cultivating in undergraduate programs, particularly through
general education courses and study abroad programs, global
knowledge, understanding, awareness, and citizenship
(Nussbaum, 2004; Noddings, 2005; Hanvey, 1982).
• Perhaps the “transnational competence” (Hawkings and
Cummings, 2000) of doctoral students is taken for granted.
But it shouldn’t be!
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•
•
•
•
•
CIE and the Larger Debates
about Doctoral Training in US
Chronicle of Higher Education: blogs: The Professor is In, etc
CIES and other professional organizations—New Scholars Committee
Market and Training Gaps—recognized everywhere
Adjunctification
Recognition and research for doctoral students as teachers— “FSSE-G”
see http://fsse.iub.edu/
Faculty perceptions of how often students engage in different
activities.
The importance faculty place on various areas of learning and
development.
The nature and frequency of faculty-student interactions.
How faculty members organize their time, both in and out of the
classroom.
• MLA report 2014--Report of the MLA Task Force on Doctoral Study in
Modern Language and Literature
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Main Points in Report
• Pursue and maintain academic excellence. High intellectual
standards can be sustained through creative flexibility (of the
curriculum, the dissertation, and career preparation). Adaptable
doctoral programs can deliver the desired depth, expertise, scope,
and credentials.
• Preserve accessibility. We need a more capacious view of the
humanities’ benefit to individuals and society. Reducing graduate
program size denies access to qualified students who want to study
the humanities and who will make contributions to academic and
public life in their work.
• Broaden career paths. Departments must recognize the validity of
the diverse careers that students might follow within and beyond
the campus and ensure that appropriate orienting and mentoring
takes place.
• Focus on graduate students’ needs. The profession would do well to
endorse a shift from a narrative of replication, in which students
imitate their mentors, to one of transformation, since graduate
programs should be centered on students’ diverse learning and
career development needs.
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MLA Recommendations
• Redesign the doctoral program: to align with the learning needs and career goals
of students and to bring degree requirements in line with evolving character of
our fields. Noncourse-based activities are essential.
• Engage more deeply with technology: provide ways for students to develop and
use new tools and techniques
• Reimagine the dissertation: both form and committee composition
• Reduce time to degree: five years
• Strengthen teaching preparation: course work, practical experience, and
mentoring for a host of different kinds of institutions—including community
colleges
• Expand professionalization opportunities: collaboration, project management,
grant writing, internships and work with professional associations
• Use the whole university community to mentor: librarians, informational
technology staff members, administrators.
• Redefine the roles of faculty advisers: who must marshal expertise in
nonteaching careers, alumni networks, and career development resources.
• Validate diverse career outcomes: give students a full understanding of the range
of potential career outcomes and support students’ choices.
• Rethink admissions practices: calibrate admissions broadened range of career
opportunities, taking care to build the pipeline of applicants for small fields and
subfields and from underrepresented groups.
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YET, What’s Missing….Again
One mention of international in the entire
report:
“Preparation for teaching includes teaching
diverse populations, both domestic and
international. Departments should develop a
culture of support of doctoral student teaching,
creating peer and faculty mentoring programs
and recognizing excellence in the classroom
through teaching awards.”
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ANALYSIS PART 1: Features of American CIE
Programs—themes from a dialogue with students
• Curriculum design: An emphasis on
methodology and personal standpoint
• Intellectual Orientation: toward diverse views,
practice, and a global? Community
• Reference Group
• Expectations for the Program
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ANALYSIS PART 2: Features of Chinese CIE
Programs: themes from a dialogue with students
•
•
•
•
•
Curriculum design
Intellectual Orientation
Building Bridges between two Communities
Community Identification
Community Identification and Research
Interest
• Community Identification and Job Opportunity
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Conclusion: Doctoral Mentoring as Social Practice:
Towards Creating a Global Community of Practice
• Perspectives and ways of understanding and being
understood: One particularly “loud” theme is the
extent to which international students become
familiar with dominant U.S. discourse, in its many
guises, of critically evaluating, appreciating, and
coping with difference, diversity, conflict, including
that which must sometimes be overcome or
embraced to understand another’s point of view.
• An example: “what I gained was more like
‘perspectives’– how I understand others and how I
am understood by others.”
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Conclusion: Doctoral Mentoring as Social Practice:
Towards Creating a Global Community of Practice
• Tension—or perhaps productive friction (Tsing, 2004) in
the way Chinese doctoral students understand their
gradual adoption of a scholarly identity: Reference
groups, fluid yet individualized commitment and willing
choice, etc.
• An implicit theme of intellectual resistance to
dichotomizing here/there, us/them, American/Chinese.
• Bifocality—that sense of having a fluid identity with
dual vision—is apparently instilled and/or desired: “I
want to work in the American research community, but
ultimately I hope to promote the development of the
Chinese research community.”
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Conclusion: Doctoral Mentoring as Social Practice:
Towards Creating a Global Community of Practice
• Diverse reactions regarding their own academic and
professional identifications.
-- Some are more definite that their reference group is North
American.
-- “Intellectually, I don't really have a strong sense of
distinction between Chinese community and American
community.”
-- “a little bit of everything (American, Chinese and Diaspora)”
-- “Our research is distinct from the traditional Chinese
educational scholars…We also differ from the North
American research community as the Chinese Diaspora
community has our own priorities in terms of topics.”
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Conclusion: Doctoral Mentoring as Social Practice:
Towards Creating a Global Community of Practice
• One most significant area of agreement is that the
environment necessary to, as one student puts it, be
“adaptable in an internationalizing intellectual
community” can and should be strengthened.
• One of the students most optimistic about creating
the third space or community of practice this paper
advocates believes that he is being trained to be an
active participant in “a global research community as
our career tracks know no specific national
boundaries.”…“I do believe that the potential to
engage all these communities is our asset and we
should cultivate such great possibilities.”
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Conclusion: Doctoral Mentoring as Social Practice:
Towards Creating a Global Community of Practice
-- So, where does this take us as we strive to provide all of our
students, and in the case of this paper particularly
international students, what they need to thrive as global
professionals and public scholars?
• There is near unanimous agreement among Chinese students
being trained in one North America university that they learn
sophisticated analytical methods.
• The near/far perspective: “The fundamental requirement for
the researchers who have the ambition of gap-bridging is the
training to understand and master qualitative and/or
quantitative methodology. Second, they need to have
sufficient content knowledge of the political, cultural and
educational context in both countries.”
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Reflections and Future Steps
• Future Research
– Longitudinal research starting from the time before the
students enter the doctoral program
• Structural Aspects
– Funding
– Job Market
– How Schools/Colleges of Education define their
missions/functions: schooling vs. education
– How education fits into the interdisciplinary fields such
as international studies, global studies, area studies?
– What else?
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