Internationalisation is a much debated and interpreted concept in higher education institutions in Australia. Universities have a clear responsibility to prepare graduates with international perspectives, who can be active and critical participants in world society. However, economic rationales for internationalisation are also important and internationalisation is seen by many Australian universities as critical to success in an increasingly globalised society in which there are economic imperatives to sell educational products and services in the world marketplace. These different rationales for internationalisation are reflected in multiple discourses, all of which contribute to the construction of internationalisation. This paper explores internationalisation at an Australian university through discourse analysis of a corpus of texts, identifies conflicting and competing discourses and discusses some of the implications of these for academic staff development.

Keywords: internationalisation; higher education; discourse analysis; academic staff development