Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education?

Abstract

Internationalization of higher education appeared as a counterattack to mitigate the impact of globalization on education. In a sense, it has entered higher education as a means for ensuring that graduates are a competitive workforce worldwide. Meanwhile, TEFL has been emphasized as the medium of instruction. The current paper investigated the roles of EFL teachers could perform at schools to prepare their students before joining internationalized higher education whether at home or abroad.  Adopting a descriptive design, a quantitative data-gathering instrument, an opinionnaire, was designed to determine if EFL teachers in the Arab countries undertake their roles required for education quality assurance. The Arab EFL teachers were intentionally chosen as a community for this research due to possible curriculum-embedment of ideologies different from their national values.  86 EFL teachers from most of the Arab countries responded to the opinionnaire. Qualitative data were generated through analysis and interpretation of the numerical data of this opinionnaire to find out the extent to which those EFL teachers were aware of the internationalization process, and the challenges they face.