Valoración de la Sala (perpetuatio legitimationis)

Despite enrolling over 4,000 international students annually, the university’s strategic plan for 2008 – 2013 reflected only a market appreciation of these students through its requirement for higher numbers to enrol and it appeared to ignore the concept of internationalisation of the curriculum (see section 1.6). This marketised, rather than pedagogic, approach is not unusual according to Tran (2011). If worldwide perspectives on practice were not a priority for the university it is not really a surprise that neither were they for the programme. The limited internationalisation in the strategy appears to relate more to the anxieties generated by other current pressures in the English HEI arena, for

example the National Student Survey, which indicates that home students are often not keen to integrate with those from outside the UK (Peacock & Harrison, 2009). The university is very sensitive about these results since they strongly influence UK HEI ranking systems, and a fear is that a strong focus on integrating their international cohorts may affect ratings further. This, to me, is a short sighted view – if home internationalisation were to occur through internationalisation of the curriculum, then all students would gain from learning more about other cultural perspectives if teaching was approached in an inclusive way (Carroll & Ryan, 2007).

Students from a less well-resourced country come to study in the UK at a high cost. I would argue that, ethically, the course should help international students understand their own context, in addition to learning alternative practices, in order to make constructive decisions for themselves. This requires a degree of responsibility in the way we offer education to students from elsewhere and for us to be ethical in terms of our organisational practices. It is particularly important that HEIs act with awareness of these issues and the wider context of brain-drain/brain-gain (Altbach & Knight, 2007).

Transnationally situated education occurs at the boundaries of professional identifications and, when developing curricula, HEIs need to be sensitive to professional needs for cohorts likely to engage with diverse and/or pluralistic societies. The content of the physiotherapy programme is almost entirely focussed on English clinical practices, so the privilege given to the dominant cultural discourses, their largely unreflective search for control and the prioritisation of a Western based model of practice and education pedagogy forms the basis for Grimshaw and Sears (2008) suggestion that any research that takes as ‘normal’ (i.e. ignores) the cultural base from which it emerges is neo-imperialist in nature. A critical framework has allowed me to view the conditions that serve to disadvantage and discriminate against cultures, including Indian, such as hierarchy, hegemony and racism. Students are exposed to a white authority, in the form of an English university, and it promotes the hegemony of English practice with its ethnocentric views and oppressive attitudes.

171

Higgs et al. (1999) rightly predicted increases in education for international, migrant physiotherapists as part of the global developments outlined in the introduction. This trend can be seen in the uptake of post graduate physiotherapy education programmes in the UK. Between 2007 and 2012 there were increasing student numbers on the MSc course subject to this research, rising to a peak of over a hundred in 2010-2011. At the same time the number of UK HEIs offering full time PG physiotherapy courses aimed at the international market also increased23. However, a change in administration to the coalition government in 2010 and the new Department for Education’s altered focus in the education strategy, as well as political tensions around the number of immigrants allowed to enter the UK, prompted the effective loss of the post study work (PSW) visa scheme. Graduates are now required to have visa sponsorship through a professional post within 3 months of graduating. This stipulation results in little time for adaptation into UK working culture and practice and excludes many physiotherapists for whom the on-going cultural adaption takes more time.

Adding to the pressure on job finding for graduates is the fiscal restraint introduced by the current government for the NHS following the 2008 banking crisis and the austerity policies of the coalition government (Bidgood, 2012). Reduced or only maintained government spending in the health arena has resulted in severely limited job availability in health service areas (Prince, 2011). These issues have combined to generate a twofold impact: reducing alumni's capacity to gain employment (by offering them much less time to find and prepare for work) and simultaneously increasing the competition for positions.

The overall impact has been that UK job finding for alumni has become not just difficult, but virtually impossible. They are now expected to return home or move to a third country on course completion. The decrease in numbers entering the UK secondary to changes in immigration regulations has disproportionally affected Indian students, perhaps because of the critical importance to this group of work opportunities in the UK following graduation

23

From 3 HEIs in 2005 (from an internal market intelligence report at that time) to 28 in 2010 (The British Council 2010).

(Williams, 2013). So, whilst the number of international student visas administered continues to rise in the UK overall, this data hides decreases in the number of study-related visas issued for Indian students which fell by 21% in one academic year (UKVI, 2014). This is reflected in the admissions to the physiotherapy programme which dropped to around 20 in the academic year 2013 - 2014.

This heavy focus on UK employability comes not only from the students but has also been influenced by the university’s 'employability agenda', where career development is stated to be an essential aspect of all courses. This is particularly relevant for a university with a history rooted in professional qualifications, but also within physiotherapy pedagogy. It is accepted that the purpose of learning is to be a physiotherapist, and this includes all the culturally accepted norms that this professional position carries with it. And it can be seen that initially physiotherapists who travelled to the UK to work in the UK, improved their access to jobs through having Masters level study. This shaped the course to bridge national boundaries and practices (Williams et al., 2012) and as a result it focussed on English practices as a model of working. Now, however, students on the course are intending to return home, or elsewhere in the better resourced world, with the attendant complications that it generates in cultural and professional transition.

From this background it can be seen that there are business as well as pedagogic rationales for greater levels of cultural flexibility in approaches to teaching about practice. If the university is to maintain a programme that is attractive to students then it must offer them something that can help them develop practice in a variety of locations. This requires a curriculum that is fit for a wider variety of final locations and this could be achieved through proper internationalisation of the curriculum.