ABSTRACT
Two years ago I was invited to be a visiting academic in the Faculty of Education of a Malaysian university. During my visit I gave a series of seminars for postgraduate students and academics and, in addition, I had meetings with many senior staff, including the Vice Chancellor and the International Officer. Facilitating the seminars and talking with the academics gave me insights into how the university was conceptualising internationalisation, together with anecdotal accounts of perceptions and experiences in the classroom. One of the academics, whose doctoral research I had supervised, suggested that I interview international postgraduates during my visit. She considered that such conversations would be interesting for me, given my research interests and the opportunities afforded to pursue them in a different context. This article reports on elements of those narrative conversations with six doctoral researchers from Iran and Nigeria and three academic staff, from Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, setting them within the context of how internationalisation of higher education is conceptualised in Malaysia. Following a review of
relevant research, I describe the rationale for employing a narrative inquiry approach in my engagement with the participants, ‘story’ some of their experiences and then offer some concluding reflections. Throughout the article, I use the terms ‘international students’ and ‘local students’ merely for ease of reference and not because I assume homogeneity within these ‘groups’.
