Web-Based Analysis of Internationalization in Israeli Teaching Colleges

Abstract

The international activities of academic institutions dramatically expanded in volume, scope, and complexity during the past three decades. This expansion raised the need to monitor and assess the process at various levels and ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of internationalization. This study has two main aims: first, to present a model large-scale feasibility test for internationalization assessment through institutions’ websites; and second, to assess internationalization using the proposed methodology in teachers’ colleges in Israel. A website-based analysis was combined with in-depth interviews with colleges’ leadership. The use of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through systematic assessment of 21 teachers’ colleges in Israel. The effect of contextual variables such as colleges’ size, location (national periphery vs. center), and educational stream (Jewish-Secular, Palestinian-Arab, and Jewish-Religious) on internationalization expression and intensity are presented and discussed in detail. Internationalization levels were found to positively relate to the size of each institution and its proximity to Israel’s geographic center. In addition, Jewish-Religious and Palestinian-Arab colleges were found to possess lower general levels of internationalization in comparison to the Jewish-Secular stream. This article presents discussion and policy implications of the findings.

Keywords

strategic institutional management of internationalization internationalization of teaching learning and research globalization and international higher education internationalization of higher education internationalization of the curriculum

Introduction

The international activities of universities dramatically expanded in volume, scope, and complexity during the past decades. To address the integration of international, intercultural, and global dimension into the purpose, function, and delivery of higher education, we shall use the term “internationalization,” as it is commonly applied in this context (Knight, 2004).

Several studies (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Beerkens, Branderburg, Evers, Leichsenring, & Zimmermann, 2010) indicated an increase in the importance of and attention granted to supporting internationalization in the higher education sector in recent years. Internationalization over last years has moved from a reactive to a proactive strategic issue, from added value to mainstream, and its focus, scope, and content evolved substantially (de Wit, 2010). This growing interest has translated into active development of policies, programs, and infrastructure at institutional, local, and national levels. As this expansion and investment in internationalization are welcome and indeed requisite in this global era, institutions and even nations have recognized the need to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of this process as an urgent priority. Moreover, as internationalization is perceived as a vital process for further development of higher education, differences in the intensity and scope of internationalization, and certainly the inability to internationalize, might affect the competitiveness and even the survival of higher education institutions (Yemini & Ben Artzi, 2013). The academic debate on internationalization assessment is quite fierce, including differing visions of the purposes of assessment (should it serve as an internal improvement measure, or for the purpose of comparative ranking or benchmarking); the agency responsible for the assessment (internal vs. external); the frequency and means of assessment (surveys, observations, etc.); the diversity in assessment models needed for different types of institutions (research universities vs. teaching-orientated academies); and the role of assessment in different countries (Europe vs. United States and Asia; Beerkens et al. 2010; de Wit, 2010). Ultimately, the reasons behind institutions’ differences in internationalization levels and the factors that affect the intensity and scope of internationalization have not yet been fully revealed.

This study will contribute to the literature on internationalization assessment by proposing a significant simplification of assessment procedures, employing institutions’ websites as an autonomic and informative assessment tool, useful for various existing assessment models. We demonstrate the use of the proposed methodology by systematically assessing 21 teachers’ colleges in Israel. The results of this assessment are presented and discussed in detail and the effect of contextual variables such as colleges’ size, location (national periphery vs. center), and stream (Jewish-Secular, Palestinian-Arab, and Jewish-Religious) on internationalization expression and intensity are recorded. Interviews with institutions’ directors contribute additional perspectives regarding the internationalization strategy within different contextual frameworks. The use of institutions’ websites as an assessment medium is discussed in general and in the Israeli case in particular.

This work will focus on internationalization assessment at teachers colleges for several reasons: first, the comparatively large number (21 colleges included) and heterogenic nature of those colleges will allow proper testing of the proposed technique; second, monitoring internationalization at these institutions is particularly important given to their influence on society through the future teachers and educators they train. At last, focusing on a specific type of higher education institution (teachers academic college) will allow us to investigate the contextual factors influencing the intensity of internationalization, thus to include those understandings into policy making in the later stages.

Context

In most countries worldwide, interest in evaluation of the performance and quality of higher education has exploded during the past 20 years. Internationalization has become an increasingly important aspect of higher education and continues to move from the margins to the center of the academic enterprise. Directors of higher education institutions are increasingly striving to internationalize their institutions for economic, political, academic, and sociocultural rationales (De Wit, 2002, pp. 83-102; Hudzik, 2011; Knight & de Wit, 1999) and thus need to assess and monitor their efforts. At the same time, both public and private educational institutions are being held increasingly accountable by stakeholders such as parents, community, and the society itself, thus giving rise to the importance of conducting performance assessments (including internationalization assessment) in higher education institutions (Brennan & Shah, 2000). In particular, the assessment of internationalization is important in several contexts: as a component of overall institutional performance; to judge the effectiveness of an institution’s internationalization strategy; to benchmark with other institutions and with past and future performance; and to improve internationalization programs and practices (NAFSA, 2003).

Internationalization Pressures

Internationalization has various meanings in preparing future citizens in a globalized world. Understanding foreign languages, cultures, and traditions is part of developing feelings of global connectedness or curiosity about the “other” (Beck & Sznaider, 2006; Weenink, 2008). Either implicitly or explicitly, cosmopolitanism (as the characterization of a result of efforts to internationalize through education) has long been assumed to be a privilege that is often attached to other privileges; more or less an elite characteristic (Hannerz, 2006). Taking a Bourdieuan perspective, international tastes, and knowledge can serve as symbolic capital in elite competitive games of distinction. Hence, cosmopolitanism was historically enjoyed as an advantage by local and national elites, while minorities and recent immigrants (who were generally exposed to unfamiliar places and cultures) were excluded from the academic discourse and public arena (Martell, 2009).

For national and ethnic minorities, the international dimension can be complicated as the “other” or “foreigner” can sometimes refer either to their country’s own majority population or to other nationalities outside the country. The definition of an “international” versus “local” dimension is thus more complex among heterogenic, segregated populations. For example, Ulf Hannerz (2006) discusses ethnographic field studies within the Kosmopolit project, which aimed at exploring a cosmopolitan dimension in the communities and networks of homosexuals in St. Petersburg and Moscow. As a social category with a long history of discrimination extending into the present in their own hometowns, this group evidently finds some of its most appealing connections and strongest organized support in Western Europe and North America. In other words, minorities may employ cosmopolitanism as a way to foster global community generation and as such as a survival strategy. Moreover, on institutional level, unprivileged institutions may employ internationalization as a social mobility ticket outside their surroundings and “go global” rather than competing on the local level, where they may feel disadvantaged (Yemini, 2012).

However, according to the institutional perspective, higher education institutions are typically conceived as being highly influenced by strong institutional pressures (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) and compelled to conform to practices and norms imposed by the formal central (national) authorities (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Thus, internationalization may be perceived as part of decentralization and loss of control of national authorities that lead to contradicting pressures on different stakeholders within the institutions. The strategic need to internationalize in order to provide a competitive advantage to the institution and its students may partially conflict with local regulatory forces and national objectives. In contrast, a national strategy to internationalize may also interfere with local and institutional values (Skrbis & Woodward, 2007).

Internationalization Assessment Initiatives

According to de Wit (2010), the following questions are relevant in assessing internationalization: how do we measure what we do? What do we measure? What indicators do we use for assessment? Do we assess processes or specific activities? Do we carry out assessments with a view to improving the quality of our own process and activities, or do we assess the contribution made by internationalization to the improvement of the overall quality of higher education? Do we apply a quantitative and/or a qualitative approach to measurement? Which instruments do we use—ex post or ex ante measurements, indicators, benchmarking, best practices, quality review, accreditation, certification, audits, or rankings? Do we focus on inputs, outputs, and/or outcomes? The answers to all those questions are far from being obvious or constant. Continuous attempts have been made to clarify this arena, to improve the existing tools and models and to simplify the assessment process and the resultant employment of assessment results.

In the past years, we have witnessed a strong growth in the number of tools and studies that aim to identify the ultimate way to assess internationalization (de Wit, 2010). One of the first comprehensive international initiatives to assist institutions in evaluating and improving the quality of their internationalization activities was the International Quality Review Program (IQRP) developed by the OECD’s Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) program together with the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA). Another extensive effort to measure institutional internationalization efforts involves the work of Madeleine Green and others from the American Council on Education (ACE). The “Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses” studies (Green, Luu, & Burris, 2008; Green & Olson, 2003) provide information about the policies and practices of American educational institutions and analyze “high activity” campuses as well as “less active” institutions. European countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Belgium have also initiated such studies (Beerkens et al., 2010). In addition to European and English-speaking countries, there is also an increasing interest in internationalization assessment East Asia, in particular Japan and Taiwan (Chin & Ching, 2009). In his review from 2009, de Wit presented assessment schemes and sets of indicators from six European countries and over ten countries in other parts of world. Most of these initiatives are similar and based on earlier efforts—mainly on the IQPR and ACE (Beerkens et al., 2010). Among more recent initiatives and attempts to standardize and simplify the process is the new proposal of the Dutch/Flemish accreditation organization (NVAO) for assessment of internationalization, potentially resulting in a certificate. Since the current study is intended to show feasibility for website-based assessment, we will exploit the existing ACE questionnaire (Beerkens et al., 2010) to demonstrate usefulness of institutions’ websites as a major source of information regarding internationalization assessment.

What Are We Looking for in an Internationalization Assessment Tool?

With the shift from peripheral to mainstream involvement, internationalization has become a more complicated and more comprehensive process. It concerns activities that relate to many other factors within the institution, such as quality assurance, funding, student services, and other aspects. While internationalization used to be an aggregation of dispersed internationalization activities within the institution, it has evolved into a comprehensive strategy that should be approached in a holistic way. This shift has also added to the complexity of internationalization in higher education institutions, creating a need for more sophisticated data on these internationalization activities. Yet assessment should not only be comprehensive and accurate but also scalable and cost-effective, enabling use of the results for policy making within and beyond the institutions.

Several studies address the question of which indicators and monitoring factors should be used. For example, Chin & Ching (2009) addressed 12 indicators for assessment of Taiwanese internationalization and the previously mentioned ACE and IQPR presented different sets of proposed indicators according to the purpose, scope, scale, and other parameters; de Wit (2010), Brandenburg and Federkeil (2007), and others offered other comprehensive networks of indicators.

Brandenburg and Federkeil (2007) claimed that only those indicators that measure only what needs to be measured should be included, without collection of invaluable or nonuseful data (construct validity). In addition, reliability is critical: measurements should be gathered periodically and, when the basic data has not changed, they should always provide the same results. The results must also be objective—unaffected by the identity of the tester. Additional requirements in this sense are scalability, meaning that the tool should be applicable for use on a small as well as on a large scale, and cost effectiveness, which, defined quite broadly, means gathering only the relevant data, requiring minimum efforts of the monitored institution and other stakeholders.

Hence, internationalization assessment should be executed according to the above-mentioned guidelines and the existing or upgraded new tools. Here, we propose that institutions’ website can be used as a source of information for internationalization assessment while the use of those websites will increase the applicability of the tool, regardless of which set of indicators is selected.

Institutional Websites

Universities, as institutions of higher education and culture, are well aware of the opportunities the Internet brings for wider international communication. Moreover, most are committed, in principle, to marketing their institutions to foreign students and to promoting international contact (Altbach, 2004; Ho, Ooi, & Amri, 2010). The university homepage is usually the first contact point for anybody who seeks information about the university on line. It is inevitable for the university to develop a dynamic homepage that captures its users’ attention and meets their informational needs.

In particular, web visibility of universities has become critically appreciated in that the Internet has played a key role in forging the academic and educational competences of universities across countries through various e-learning programs and open sources for cutting-edge knowledge produced by higher education institutions (Ortega & Aguillo, 2009). University administrators have also started to recognize the university website as an important channel to increase institutional reputation and organizational image and spread knowledge produced by universities to global communities (Masterson, 2011). Indeed, institutional websites have became an online mirror of the institutional environment, reflecting ongoing activities and presenting institutional values, vision and mission accompanied with large amount of data regarding every aspect of institutional life. We shall exploit the existing ACE questionnaire to monitor institutional websites for internationalization assessment process of Israeli teaching colleges.

The Israeli Education System and Teaching Colleges

Israel, a fairly young state of around eight million citizens, consists of a Jewish population forming the national majority of roughly 80% and Palestinian-Arabs constituting a national minority of 20%. The Israeli higher education system has grown dramatically since the early 1990s, from 70,000 students two decades ago to 300,000 in 2012, and from just seven universities and a handful of colleges in the 1990s to 67 institutions spread all over the country. Until the 1980s the postsecondary education system in Israel was divided into two different branches: academic and nonacademic institutions. The academic branch consisted of the seven Israeli universities (focusing on research and teaching), and the nonacademic branch consisted of other academies, such as teachers’ training seminars. During the last three decades, the situation has changed radically. Most of postsecondary institutions were upgraded to academic colleges and the teachers colleges underwent an “academization” process. Hence, presently 23 teaching colleges operate in Israel: three colleges for Arab teachers, nine for Jewish-Religious training and 11 Jewish-Secular colleges (with a considerable amount of Arab students studying in several of the latter colleges—some of which have special Arab education tracks).¹ The teachers colleges range in their size, from around 500 to 2,500 students, and they are scattered throughout the country with seven in the north, seven in the center, four in the south and five in the Jerusalem area. Table 1 presents the list of teachers colleges according to their demographic stream and geographical coordinates.

Table 1.

Teachers’ Colleges According to Stream and Geographic Location.

	Palestinian-Arab	Jewish-Religious	Jewish-Secular
Center		4	14
		5	15
			13
Jerusalem		6	16
		7
		8
		9
South		10	17
		11
North	1	12	18
	2		18
	3		19
			20

Palestinian-Arab Teachers Colleges

Since the establishment of the Israeli state, the Arab education system has remained at the margins of the mainstream Israeli Jewish education system, subject to continuous government control processes. The Arab education system suffers from discrimination in the allocation of resources, including physical infrastructure and classrooms, teaching hours, and enrichment hours (Arar, 2012). Prior to 1948 the Palestinians, who constituted the majority of the country’s population, attended a separate education system run by the British Mandate government. This ethnic separation continued to exist after 1948, primarily because the remaining Arab localities within the Israeli territory were placed under military administration, which lasted until 1966. The abolition of military administration did not eliminate this division in education: with a few exceptions, through the present day, almost all Arab students are taught by Arab teachers, both male and female, at separate schools where the main language of instruction is Arabic and part of the syllabus is specific to Palestinian-Arabs. However, unlike the Jewish public religious stream, the Arab education department does not enjoy independent Arab administration; for most of its history, it has been headed by Jews.

Due to an ongoing complex political situation in Israel, the Palestinian-Arabs are politically marginalized, subject to constant (though changing) suspicion regarding their loyalty to the State. The overwhelming majority resides in distinct geographical localities (villages or towns) or in segregated neighborhoods in “ethnically mixed cities” such as Haifa or Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Gonen, 1996). These factors, among others, contribute to tighter state control over school principals’ selection and general control of Arab schools by the dominant Jewish majority (Al-Haj, 1991). Although a significant improvement in the educational level of the Israeli Palestinian-Arab population has been recorded in the last 50 years, Arab education still lags far behind the Jewish streams in terms of resource allocation and schools’ autonomy. In line with this situation, teachers in the Palestinian-Arab education stream are less autonomous and more dependent on governmental financial and other resources (Resh & Benavot, 2009). Palestinian-Arab students comprise 25% of the students in the education system, but Palestinian-Arab teachers-in-training comprise more than 30% of the students in teachers’ colleges in Israel (Agbaria, 2010). Today, Palestinian-Arab students attend Palestinian-Arab and Secular-Jewish higher education institutions: only 46% of Arab students are enrolled in the Arab teachers colleges, while 54% of them are enrolled in the Jewish teachers colleges, mainly in special tracks designed exclusively for Arab students.

Jewish-Religious and Jewish-Secular Teaching Colleges

A considerable lack of research exists regarding the differences between Jewish-Secular and Jewish-Religious teachers colleges. According to Lifshitz and Glaubman (2002), the major goal of religious teachers’ education in Israel is developing an educator with religious orientation, that is, a teacher with a religious philosophy of life, who believes in the Jewish God and the Torah. Teachers are supposed to be a model for imitation with regard to their religious lifestyle, that is, observing the Sabbath and holidays, eating kosher food, and dressing modestly (yarmulke head covering for men and covered hair for married women). Students who register religious colleges are requested to declare that they live a religious lifestyle, including the above requirements. They are required to take a few courses in Judaic studies in addition to the regular education curriculum. The students in the secular college are not subjected to these requirements. Secular colleges focus on democratic and liberal values. They also emphasize tolerance and pluralism, and acceptance of people from all strata of society and different ethnic backgrounds, based on humanistic and liberal philosophy and not religious belief.

Methodology

The Internationalization Assessment Tool

This study will employ the ACE (Green, Luu, & Burris, 2008; Green & Olson, 2003) questionnaires with minor adaptations made to allow for large-scale assessment based fully on websites. The original questionnaires were designed to determine the level of internationalization for each institution and allow categorization as highly active or less active in internationalization. The questionnaires were developed for the American Council on Education (ACE) internationalization initiative to measure the level of internationalization in the teaching, research, and service functions of universities. Based on the input of an advisory board of experts in international education and a literature review, ACE defined highly active universities as having a high level of international or global perspectives and content in the instruction, research, and service functions of a university. The questionnaire consisted of 45 questions, which employed a 6-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree and with 6 = not applicable. The original questionnaire was based on four subcategories: (a) Institutional support (including stated institutional commitment, organizational structure and staffing, and external funding); (b) Academic requirements, programs, and extracurricular activities (including foreign-language requirements and offerings, international/global course requirements, education abroad, use of technology for internationalization, joint degrees, and campus activities); (c) Faculty policies and opportunities (including funding for faculty opportunities and criteria for promotion, tenure, and hiring); and (d) International students (including enrolments, recruiting targets and strategies, financial support for international students, and programs and support services). We used the original questionnaire for our analysis (except from questions related to degrees and programs offered abroad to international students), while questions that were impossible to answer by screening the sites were altered to fit our chosen platform. For example, we modified the question regarding faculty-hiring procedures: “when hiring faculty in fields that are not explicitly international/global, does your institution give preference to candidates with international background, experience, or interests?” Instead, we examined the extent to which faculty members present their previous international experience and interests in their web pages on institutional website. Furthermore, we removed several questions that were impossible to modify and answer by screening the institutional websites. Questions such as: Does your institution, or do any schools or departments within your institution, provide specific institutional funds for student education abroad, in addition to all other sources of financial aid?; What is the foreign-language requirement for graduation at your institution? How many courses that primarily feature perspectives, issues, or events from specific countries or areas outside the United States are undergraduates required to complete to satisfy their general education requirement? And “Are students required to complete courses that primarily feature countries or geographic areas other than Canada, Australia, or Western Europe?” All other questions were remained in our version and were answered by intentional websites’ screening. See Appendix 1 for the full questionnaire.

Analysis

In the current study, the internationalization assessment was conducted by screening 21 websites of teachers’ colleges in Israel. The list of colleges was extracted from the Israeli Council of Higher Education website and each of the colleges on the list was identified according to its educational stream (Secular-Jewish, Religious-Jewish, and Arab-Palestinian), geographical location (south, north, center, and Jerusalem area) and according to the size (number of students). The full list of colleges assessed is presented in Table 1. Next, each of the colleges’ websites were identified and screened, and assessed according to the list of indicators based on ACE 2008 questionnaire, with minor adjustments to accommodate a website-based platform. Each website was screened independently by all authors. Each screening lasted around 90 minutes. To answer each question, we screened the home page of the website for each college and we followed up to 10 links (inside each of the websites to gather relevant information). Each question was ranked according to the relevance (appearance of the screened item and easiness to approach, when appearance in the formal homepage was ranked as 100 (maximum) and appearance in hidden location (up to 10 clicks inside the website was ranked as 10). If no relevant information was found through the screening the question was graded as 0. In addition, we interviewed one Palestinian-Arab college director and two Secular-Jewish colleges’ directors. We also gathered indirect information from high officials at two Jewish-Religious colleges (due to administrative constrains to conduct an interview in religious colleges). These interviews enabled us to reveal the meaning of internationalization in teachers colleges, the nature of this process, and the factors that assist or hinder internationalization activities and main interactions, helping us to reveal the contextual variables that influence colleges’ internationalization activities beyond those reflected online.

Limitations

Website-based assessment will probably suffer from lower interactivity as compared to interviews or self-reporting. Moreover, if the assessment is to be used for ranking, institutions might deliberately enhance the visibility of their international dimension, which might force creation of less objective measures. Another point that should be addressed is whether the measurement is reflecting the real state of the monitored institution.

One of the main drawbacks of self-evaluation surveys is that sometimes they might present the “desirable” and not the true picture. The same statement can be also true for the website-based analysis, but here the institution is much more accountable regarding the information published on the public website, and thus the information provided is expected to be more reliable. Moreover, if websites will be widely acknowledged as an assessment tool, this might affect the actual intensity of internationalization, as usually the data available on public institutional websites is reliable. Ultimately, if website assessments motivate institutions to enhance their online internationalization profile, they will be led to actually advance the intensity of their international, intercultural, and global activities

Moreover, not all internationalization-related activities are presented on the website, especially the hard to evaluate financial issues. These variables can be managed by assessment of other “visual” characteristics (e.g., visibility of the international dimension) that are not available through other modes of assessment.

Clearly, no one model exists for internationalization, so in measuring internationalization, this diversity of rationales, approaches, objectives and strategies by region, country and institution must be taken into account (de Wit, 2010). Considering this situation, and the limitations of any assessment system, website-based analyses enable a fast, scalable, and comparatively reliable way to get assessment results in an extremely cost-effective matter.

Findings and Discussion

The assessment of internationalization outcomes needs to incorporate both a set of measures that allow for cross-institutional comparisons and measures specific to the institution. Table 2 presents the summary of the results according to the four subcategories and Table 3 present the summary of the assessment results according to the educational stream, geographic location, and volume of student body.

Table 2.

Internationalization Assessment via Website Analysis Based on ACE Framework.

College	Students body	Educational stream	Geographic location	Institutional support	Academic requirements	Faculty policies and opportunities	International students
1	1199	Palestinian-Arab	North	22.22	12.5	25	15
2	1199	Palestinian-Arab	North	2.77	10	12.5	5
3	1359	Palestinian-Arab	North	27.77	22.5	37.5	30
4	717	Jewish - Religious	Center	8.33	20	0	5
5	1453	Jewish - Religious	Center	2.77	12.5	0	10
6	1111	Jewish - Religious	Jerusalem	2.77	22.5	0	0
7	571	Jewish - Religious	Jerusalem	2.77	12.5	0	10
8	920	Jewish - Religious	Jerusalem	19.44	15	0	40
9	1072	Jewish – Religious	Jerusalem	16.66	20.5	12.5	15
10	504	Jewish - Religious	South	0	10	0	65
11	484	Jewish - Religious	South	0	12.5	0	5
12	784	Jewish - Religious	South	5.55	10	0	20
13	1596	Jewish-Secular	Center	16.66	15	12.5	65
14	2893	Jewish-Secular	Center	47.22	25	37.5	60
15	3002	Jewish-Secular	Center	16.66	30	0	50
16	1298	Jewish-Secular	Jerusalem	38.88	20	0	15
17	1030	Jewish-Secular	South	5.55	10	12.5	15
18	2500	Jewish-Secular	North	11.11	15	37.5	15
19	667	Jewish-Secular	North	0	15	25	15
20	959	Jewish-Secular	North	5.55	15	12.5	5
21	720	Jewish-Secular	North	13.88	25	12.5	10
			average	12.6	16.6	11.3	22.3
			Stdev	12.9	5.8	13.6	20.8

Table 3.

Internationalization Assessment Summary.

	Internationalization score
Educational stream
Palestinian-Arab	18.5
Jewish-Religious	10.4
Jewish-Secular	20.1
Geographic location
North	16.2
Center	21.7
South	10.7
Jerusalem	13.1
Size
less than 1,000	11.5
1,000-1,500	14.2
more than 1,500	28.4

Table 2 indicates the scores received by scanning each college website in every category of internationalization as defined by the ACE questionnaire. The scores refer to colleges’ nationwide from the three streams: Palestinian-Arab, Religious-Jewish, and Secular-Jewish. For each college, the educational stream and geographic setting is provided along with its number of students. In each category, the average score is given for each college, indicating the level of internationalization in the specified category.

The first category, institutional support, applies among other factors to the institution’s commitment to internationalization at the level of vision and values, institutional strategy, budgeting activities and organizational structure appropriate to international action. In this category, Secular-Jewish colleges (no. 14 and 16) attained high scores, while two of the three Palestinian-Arab colleges obtained relatively high values as well (scores of 22 and 27) compared to an average in this category among all colleges. This finding is supported by an interview with the head of one Arab institution, who declared: “we face out (to the world) since we find it difficult to turn in. The achievements of the Arab students are more like third-world achievements and we want to lead in world class. That’s why we train our students towards an international view from the beginning.” In another context she continued: “. . . The international obligation is to show the staff and students the horizon. They cannot dream to be prime minister, but they can dream to study at prestigious institutions. Some of our staff studied and succeeded abroad and came back here.” During the interviews with the institutional directors of the Secular-Jewish colleges, declarations that support internationalization were heard, but especially in research vision and in comparison to Israeli universities. The Director of Institution 1 said “[w]e need international research and international contacts to lead to academic excellence.” Compared to the previous two streams, the Religious-Jewish stream hardly presents any institutional commitment to internationalization. International activities and issues that were found while scanning the websites were related mostly to the connection with Jews in the Diaspora and to the encouragement of a cosmopolitan Jewish identity development. The official from Jewish Religious college stated “We want to preserve our society and to protect it from outer influence.”

Very large variance was found among the institutions in the category of institutional support for internationalization, with the leading institutions in this regard being Secular-Jewish institutions from the center and from Jerusalem scoring a relative high internationalization level and the Arab institutions scoring an intermediate level of internationalization.

The survey of websites demonstrates that in about half of the colleges, the institution’s mission statement does refer to international or global education to some degree (question 1). Most of the colleges have one or more professional staff or faculty member who dedicated at least half time to aspects of internationalization such as international student recruitment/admissions, international student services, international scholar services, English as a Second language (ESL), education/study abroad, international/global campus programming, internationalization of the curriculum, languages Across the Curriculum (lAC, lxC), development and monitoring of international partnerships, or other issues (question 9). In addition, most of the colleges have a full-time administrator who oversees or coordinates multiple internationalization activities or programs (question 10). However, only four colleges, all of which are associated with the Secular-Jewish stream, have a campus-wide committee or task force that works solely on advancing internationalization efforts on campus (question 4); and only two colleges formally assessed the impact or progress of its internationalization efforts in the last 5 years (question 5)—both of which are associated with the Secular-Jewish stream.

The second category, Academic requirements, programs, extracurricular activities, includes international courses, languages studies, extracurricular activities, and technology usage for internationalization. According to findings presented in Table 2, lower variance exists here in comparison to the first category. Yet the international level in this category was low overall (average of 16.6). All institutions have introduced some international activities in the academic requirements category. This is a broad category, which includes curricular and extracurricular activities with international character; hence, the website screenings led to some results in all institutions in this field. The limited results here across the board make it nearly impossible to note differences between the institutions regarding their geographical location or stream affiliation, except for the relatively few international activities in institutions in the south. This finding can be explained by the lack of man power and resources in the periphery, which may affect the supply of activities in this geographical area. As the Director of Institution 2, which is located in the south, said: “[w]e also serve a weaker population and are forced to deal with the lack of funding and lack of quality at some of the faculty personnel.” These findings are consistent with the findings from the field of academic achievement in schools, where students in Israel’s south (mostly taught by teachers trained in southern teachers colleges) lag behind students in the center in all measures (e.g., MEIZAV-Israeli standard tests and PISA). Broadly, it seems that all colleges require a foreign-language graduation (usually English) and part of the institutions offer international and global content for students.

Furthermore, in all the colleges except four, the students are required to take courses that primarily feature perspectives, issues, or events from specific countries or areas outside the country (question 23). However, only in most of the Secular-Jewish colleges (and in one college in the Religious-Jewish stream) are students required to take courses dealing with global issues and global changes (question 26). International/global tracks, concentrations, or certificate options for students (question 27), joint degree programs with institutions in other countries (question 28), support for students and graduates to study abroad (question 29-30) can barely be found in the any of the colleges, especially in the Palestinian-Arab stream and the Religious-Jewish stream.

The third category deals with faculty policies and opportunities. This category demonstrated the lowest level of internationalization, even though most of the colleges—but none of those in the Religious-Jewish stream—offer faculty members opportunities such as workshops on internationalizing, workshops on how to use technology to enhance the international dimension of their courses, opportunities to improve their foreign-language skills, and recognition awards specifically for international activity. The Director of college 1 said: “Right now, there is a delegation of ten faculty members abroad. We also have visiting [foreign] faculty in delegations and joint activities. I personally think that we must go for it. As the world is global, the education should follow. . .” In addition, it is interesting to see that two of the three Arab colleges have introduced significant international activities in their policy to promote academic staff.

The last category deals with international students. This category demonstrated the highest internationalization scores of all categories. International students were found in all streams and all geographical locations. However, the large colleges in the Secular-Jewish stream in the center of the country lead in this regard. Extensive activity was noted in the field of international students: all colleges except one use technology to enhance internationalization in the following ways: guest lectures using video conferencing, blogs, and video- or web-based research conferences. A direct link from the colleges’ home pages to international programs and events was present for most colleges, although the extent of use is different. Most of the colleges offered support services or programs for the international students to facilitate the orientation on campus and to integrate into the local social life. They also offered programs and activities that create a supportive climate for international students, such as host-family programs and a forum for students interested in international topics. Regular and ongoing international festivals or events on campus were found mainly in the Secular-Jewish stream. The Director of Institution 1 said: “We have unique courses in several languages; we encourage students through scholarships and other services.” In this category, we also found variation among institutions. It is interesting to note especially number of Jewish-Religious colleges that support student exchange activities (although most of them are Jewish students from Diaspora). As the official from religious college noted: “We are strengthening the Jewish identity of the students and make sure to show them Jewish life in the Diaspora.”

Table 3 presents the summarized findings derived from the website scanning of all Israeli education colleges according to the parameters of size, location, and educational stream. Clearly, Secular-Jewish colleges, the colleges located in the central region and the large colleges demonstrate a high level of international activities and more significant efforts in this regard, compared with peripheral and small colleges. The colleges in the Arab stream have introduced international operations similar to the Secular-Jewish stream despite a significant lack of resources and their peripheral location. The tendency to develop international activities in the Arab stream was demonstrated in the interviews as well. Palestinian-Arab institutions clearly emphasized internationalization “as a tool to break the glass ceiling,” as well as in promoting the potential for minorities to excel and develop a unique pedagogy. Yemini (forthcoming) in her study of Palestinian-Arab schools addressed the motivation to internationalize as a minority purposely taken strategy for social mobility through open ladder (abroad) instead of broken ladder (through Israeli lical track).

It is interesting to note that all academic institutions examined maintained active and updated websites. A small number of colleges (mostly from the Secular-Jewish stream and Palestinian-Arab streams) enabled browsing in other languages (mainly English and Arabic) in addition to Hebrew. It seems that internationalization is on the agenda of most institutions, although the implementation of the processes is partial and rarely found in the Religious-Jewish stream.

Moreover, we found that size of the institution and geographical locations significantly impact the visibility of internationalization processes on the website. Notably, a diversion in the finding might be evident since large institutions often have more significant resources to maintain and update websites. However, these trends were also found in interviews that were conducted with heads of institutions and are supported in the literature—for example, a survey of American universities in 2008 found similar findings considering institutions location (center vs. periphery). The uniqueness of the Arab stream arises from this study. Along with the minor involvement of this stream in the processes of decision-making in the educational arena (Arar, 2012), we can see the leading characteristic of this stream in the internationalization processes. This tendency is reflected as well in the research of Hannerz (2006), which indicates that departmentalized communities tend to seek out international support, apply global relationships, and abstain from the scene of the local dispute.

Summary

The rapid development of information and communication technologies, especially the Internet, has crucial impact not only in encouraging globalization but also in the assessment of internationalization processes. Moreover, these technological innovations offer additional assessment options that would be impossible to operate in their absence. This study shows the feasibility of large-scale assessment of internationalization in teachers’ colleges through the college websites. Websites—in this case those of academic institutions—were found to be a significant, dynamic tool that can be relatively easily used as a mirror to the institution’s attitudes toward internationalization and current state in the internationalization process.

This study focused on the internationalization process in teachers’ colleges in Israel regarding four aspects: institutional support; academic requirements, programs, and extracurricular activities; faculty policies and opportunities; and international students. The findings indicate that internationalization progress toward reflecting the globalized reality do in fact take place in the teachers’ colleges, but not to the extent that would be expected, considering that these academic institutions intend to prepare their graduates for teaching in the 21st century. Teachers’ colleges in Israel should begin by increasing the intensity of their internationalization policies, followed by expansion in their international programs and extracurricular activities.

Furthermore, the factors that affect this scope of internationalization were revealed. We found that the size and the geographical location of the institution have a significant impact on the visibility of internationalization processes in the colleges’ website. Clearly, Secular-Jewish colleges, colleges located in the central region and larger colleges demonstrate high level of and more significant international activity, compared with peripherally located and smaller colleges. The colleges in the Palestinian-Arab stream have introduced international operations similar to the Secular-Jewish stream despite a significant lack of resources and their peripheral locations. In the Religious-Jewish stream, however, the internationalization processes were found to be quite limited and underdeveloped.

This study offers a new simplified assessment procedure, based on institution websites for data collection and analysis. Indeed, Internet usage itself is associates with and relates to internationalization processes; therefore, websites provide an excellent means for assessing the internationalization processes at a given institution. This website-based assessment offers the advantage of efficiency, given that websites provide accessible information anywhere and at anytime; however, we cannot ignore the fact that the site may not reflect the full picture. It is possible that not all internationalization processes taking place at the institution are reflected on the site, or alternatively, international activities may be exaggerated for the purpose of publicity and prestige. To overcome this limitation, it is necessary to incorporate other research tools such as questionnaires or interviews with various stakeholders at the institution. In our study, the interviews contributed to validate the findings provided a deeper understanding of the context of the internationalization processes in the various institutions. Moreover, the interviews provided insights regarding the institution vision and policy, its goals and the educational implications of international processes on the institution, and the students and faculty members.

The website analysis is very easy to use, and can be applied to large numbers of cases. The website analysis enables us to assess the internationalization on both single-institution and large-scale level. The website analysis enables us to evaluate the internationalization of different types and modes of institutions and to compare among them. Consequently, the use of the website analysis is twofold: (a) to serve as a reflective tool for policy makers assessing internationalization and by that to contribute to (self) assessment and (self) understanding through completion other tools such as surveys and questionnaires, (b) to provide a large scale analysis for the institution’s decision makers (on the long-term policy level).

This study has offered a significant tool to be used on the educational, pedagogical, political, and economic levels: an assessment procedure covering the broad issues involved in internationalization. We have demonstrated use of the tool in a case study involving all academic teacher-training colleges in Israel. It is important to expand the research in this area, to examine the contribution of internationalization processes to educational institutions and their stakeholders, and to uncover their influence in various dimensions in order to draw conclusions and enable future action that will affect policies within the education system. Next step of this research is to follow internationalization processes in different institutions over time, with the new developed toolkit in addition to monitoring the internationalization related social media institutions’ performance. This will allow real time assessment and benchmarking for such activities and actions.

Developing a website analysis for internationalization could be part of the current debate on assessment and using the proposed tool can serve as assessment method and way to improve the internationalization process (at first its visibility but later its substantial outcomes). We hope that this analysis will make a contribution to the body of knowledge on internationalization, shed light on its implementation and provide a framework for comprehending this process.

Footnotes

Appendix 1 Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Anat Cohen, PhD, is a lecturer and researcher in the school of education at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Her main fields of interest are Internet Implementation in Higher Education, Educational Data Mining, and Innovative Pedagogical Practices using ICT.

Miri Yemini, PhD, is a lecturer and researcher in the school of education at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Her main fields of interest are entrepreneurship education, educational policymaking and internationalization in education systems.

Efrat Sadeh is a MA student at School of Education in Tel Aviv University.

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