The role of English in internationalisation and global citizenship identity in South Korean higher education

Abstract

In the era of globalisation, non-Anglophone higher education institutions worldwide have begun to offer English courses with the strategic aim of generating funding and proving competitive on a global scale. Along with this, the global employment market seeks graduates who can assimilate into diverse cultural and social contexts. Institutions therefore aim to cultivate ‘global citizens’ who have the knowledge and skillset to adapt to globalised environments. However, global citizenship is a contested terrain with very little empirical basis. This research aims to provide an exploration into a non-Anglophone site – South Korea – with the aim of understanding how two institutions present the role of English, student perceptions of the role of English and how in turn the latter are conceptualising global citizenship as pertains to their identity.
The research employed two data sets – websites and individual interviews. Within the two institutions, 20 undergraduate students participated in the study. Students from one of the universities were majoring in Social Welfare while students from the other university were drawn from a range of disciplines. The epistemological agenda of the study is constructivist in nature with an approach heavily rooted in symbolic interactionism and qualitative methodologies. The websites were analysed through a mixed approach of discourse analysis and multimodal analysis. The individual interviews were analysed through thematic analysis and discourse analysis as deemed appropriate suitable.
The findings show that overall the institutions’ internationalisation agenda is rooted in English with orientations towards native English. Internationalisation native English and an aversion to Korean influenced English. As regards global citizenship identity, students conceptualised it in terms of English. This had major repercussions on how they viewed their membership of a global community and was mostly accompanied by a disregard for their own culture as a whole is presented as something ‘non-Korean’ and usually Americanised, while native English is presented as the ideal for global citizenship. Student perceptions on the role of English were largely divided due to the amount of choice they had regarding participation in policies such as English Medium Instruction. Students also mainly perceived English proficiency in terms of and the capacity to position themselves within a globalised framework. This research has ideological and practical implications for English practices and policies within internationalisation contexts such as South Korea and beyond. The findings regarding global citizenship can contribute to literature in the area and fill many conceptual gaps. It can also provide an insight into 21st century identities particularly in newly globalised environments such as South Korea.

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ORCID for William Baker: orcid.org/0000-0003-0533-2795

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