Learning exchange and the ethics of textual borrowing: Pedagogy, mobility and intertextuality between academic cultures

Abstract

International student mobility is a complex sociocultural process involving the interchanges and translations of pedagogy and mobility. An exchange of learners and learning takes place, meanwhile mobility and exchange as processes of acculturation also become objects of learning. These learning and mobility processes forms key experiences for individuals doing exchange, and needs to be analyzed from the perspective of these actors (students, faculty, administrators and coordinators) participating in international exchange. In such analysis should also be taken into account not just individual biographies and learning trajectories but also the culture specific academic traditions that constitute contextual conditions for exchange. The cultural-academic conditions for exchanges within the Barents region, between Norway and Russia, is at the focus of this chapter based on interviews with the above mentioned actors. The analysis is also based on field studies of academic cultures in the two countries, and on a selection of institutional histories. The analysis specify the problem in cultural analytic and epistemic terms, then contribute to an inventory of similarities and differences between academic contexts based on styles of learning and teaching characteristic of institutional styles. A key focus will be on documented issues of contestability between these academic traditions such as “plagiarism”, language proficiency, and perceptions of student work load. The implication of this analysis is that an understanding of different academic cultures based on respect and mutual trust is beneficial in order to avoid narrow minded ethnocentric judgments of qualities of academic performance.