Student satisfaction, teacher internships, and the case for a critical approach to international education

Published online: 26 Oct 2011In recent times distinctions between the economic and political imperatives of international education and its cultural and educational aspects have become conveniently aligned. This alignment is troubling because it allows the pursuit of profit to fit neatly and without apparent controversy into the pursuit of more lofty political cultural and educational goals. Measures of student satisfaction with international education do little to challenge this comfortable affiliation. Indeed, they appear to reinforce the view that international education as currently pursued is travelling well and yielding maximum profits and benefits for all. The discussion in this article is based on the results of a pilot study that examined international student satisfaction with a teacher education internship program in Australia. Our findings showed that students were satisfied with their international education experience and that the internship/work integrated learning experience enhanced their satisfaction. Importantly however, our pre-departure study showed that students expected study abroad to make a difference to their lives even before they left home. The study led us to consider the meaning of student satisfaction and whether assessments of satisfaction might simply confirm what students already expect. If this is the case, it is not altogether clear what student satisfaction with international education means or measures.Julie Matthews and Meredith Lawle

Towards action and power: post-enlightenment pragmatism

The prologue to the development of educational philosophy outlined recently by Kaminsky (1992) challenged me to think about an epilogue. Is philosophy of education in the 1990s dead in the water or can it contribute dynamically to issues in contemporary research, policy and practice? What I propose to do in this article is to build from Kaminsky's outline of the period 1861-1914 by considering the role of educational philosophy in the period marked by the opposite, the dismantling of modernism in the 1990s. I wish to describe the form of philosophy I see as most appropriate to us now as post-enlightenment pragmatism [pEp] and indicate, in a programmatic style, the ways in which PEP can help educational workers move towards action and power relevant to our new conditions. While this article is exploratory and polemical, the final section refers to specific empirical studies, undertaken over the last 10 years and reported in detail elsewhere that inform the assertions made in earlier sections