Uluslararası Eğitim İşbirliklerinin Sürdürebilirliği

Abstract

The international institutional linkage is one component of the internationalized campus. The success or failure of a linkage, however, may reverberate through all internationalization efforts across the campus. Therefore, it is essential that educational leaders on campus who are involved in international initiatives, such as international programs officers, university administrators, and faculty, not only possess knowledge of the factors that lead to successful linkages, but the tools necessary to navigate the complex interplay of those factors throughout the institution. There are certainly many questions underlying the issue of success and sustainability, including: What is the definition of a successful linkage? What factors play a role in the success of a linkage? What are tools that international education practitioners can utilize to increase chances of success in regards to linkages? This study explores these issues in a qualitative study of three specific cases of linkages at one university. The resulting in-case, and cross-case analyses explore the notion that three separate environments can be nurtured at institutions of higher education through distributed leadership in order for international institutional linkages to take root, develop, and ultimately to be sustained. The study concludes that are a number of contributors to the success of a linkage, and that in order to achieve sustainability of a linkage, the institution should endeavor to strike a healthy balance between independence and support, or rather, between a loosely coupled and a tightly coupled structure.