International approaches to transnational higher education (TNHE)

This article considers the importance of student mobility worldwide in transnational higher education (TNHE) and research on international students, much of which has focused on Western European institutions receiving students from other countries and continents. There is a desire in this research nowadays to avoid clichéd and binary oppositions of cultures and the "deficit Model" of the East Asian learner. Induction or orientation is here taken as an exemplification of differing approaches to internationalisation in TNHE. Research by this author in 2012 did indeed find differences in approach to the induction of international students, with more similarities between the UK and Japan than to China. This may be a feature of developmental stages in receiving international students; China has more recently started to receive students fron North America and Western Europe, where previously they tended to be from the East Asia region. The focus on adaption by the student rather than by academic staff and institutions has been noted (Ryan 2011) as the £firtst step" in the internationalisation process of Transnational Higher Education.