Internationalisation of the curriculum, an essential component of the broader concept of internationalisation in higher education, is variously interpreted and enacted.
In part, this can be explained by the different ways of thinking and approaching issues that are associated with different disciplines, but other factors are also important. These other factors include the relative importance ascribed by academic staff to the different contexts within which they work. The layers of context and their possible impact on the way faculty and staff think about internationalisation and the curriculum are represented visually in the contextual framework below.
Each layer of context directly and indirectly interacts with and influences the others, creating a complex set of conditions influencing curriculum design. In the wide divergence in the understanding of internationalisation observed in universities across the world is not surprising.
