Abstract
This pilot study presents the preliminary results of a larger qualitative study based on narratives of organisational change related to the internationalisation of the doctoral schools of education studies (DSEd) in Hungary, which are characterised by an inherent ambivalent position of national embeddedness and heightened internationalisation imperative. The theoretical perspectives for the pilot are grounded on the intersection of major topics as very few previous studies of precise focus were found. We looked at internationalisation of the doctoral programmes in general, cases of educational studies including teacher education, and the developmental theories relevant to the field of higher education. Semi-structured interviews with four educational professionals at a research-intensive university in Hungary depict personal narratives and perceptions of internationalisation – a challenging yet necessary experience. The pilot framework presents preliminary findings retrieved from the initial sub-sample. Pilot results picture the fine-grained process of organisational change concerning the internationalisation implementation based on the perspectives of academic staff whose frame of reference is a niche in the current discourse.
Introduction
New settings of international relations and globalisation led to a series of shifts in higher education (HE), introducing changes in its organisational structure and revision of its objectives and outputs under increased attention of old and ‘new’ stakeholders (e.g., industry anticipating the results of empirical research). As a reactive policy area that gained momentum within the last few decades, internationalisation strategies are prioritised by higher education institutions (HEI) globally to remain relevant and contemporary (Altbach & Teichler, 2001; De Wit & Altbach, 2020). Integration of international, intercultural, and global dimensions into the purpose, function, and delivery of HE became an ever-growing imperative for the contemporary success of universities (Knight, 2004). However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution and policy implementation follows heterogeneous trajectories among the states and universities (Marginson & Van der Wende, 2007).
The premise of the larger overarching research is the process of organisational change within the third cycle of the Bologna system through the prism of educational professionals, whereas the focus of this pilot study is to add to the overall visibility of under-represented pilot studies in the educational research domain and to inform the larger audience on the preliminary results (Lees, Walters, & Godbold, 2022). The pilot phase as part of the broader study allowed the implementation of the research protocol and yielded significant findings validating its feasibility and empirical contribution (Van Teijlingen & Hundley, 2001). In what follows we present findings retrieved from the interviews collected from the initial sub-sample. It has also increased the researchers' experience with the study method as an important preparation step within the larger study framework (In, 2017).
The paper consists of a theoretical intersection of main perspectives followed by research questions emanating from the empirical gap, proceeding into the methodology section, and concluding with the results and the discussion.
Internationalisation of doctoral schools: Europeanisation
The internationalisation of HE become an integral element of university missions and strategic plans and is considered as an accelerator of university diversification that generates revenue (Woldegiyorgis et al., 2018). Various universities regardless of their size and profile jump on this bandwagon to safeguard certain positions in the highly competitive changing landscape of HE (Lannert & Derényi, 2021; Van der Wende & Huisman, 2004). Despite its recognition and avowal, the versatility of styles and approaches implemented by HEIs in practice is overwhelming. Depending on the opted rationale and concurrent objectives, certain activities hinge on the underlying end goal the university strives to achieve. The traditionally accepted rationales driving the implementation of the policy on all levels are clustered into four comprehensive categories - political, economic, academic, and socio-cultural (Zha, 2003). Against the backdrop of ubiquitous funding shortages, the overarching rationale of internationalisation is the economic impetus, whereas the political rationale is concerned with the country's position and its foreign policy (Knight, 2004). Academic and socio-cultural drivers focus on improving the quality of education and promotion of the culture and language of a certain nation-state or country accordingly (Chankseliani, 2017).
The era of internationalisation in doctorate programmes occurred due to a primary shift to a knowledge-based economy driven by the demand to create more solutions to societal and economic challenges swirled by globalisation. The heightened public interest in quality research outcomes anticipates cutting-edge findings, contemporary innovation “through original research” as well as innovative graduates who could fit both in academia and industry (Kovačević, Bitušíková, & Dagen, 2022b; Ruano-Borbalan, 2022; Zinner, 2022). In the European context, divergent doctorate programmes experienced regional harmonisation through the Bologna process and the Lisbon strategy that contributed to the creation of the European Research Area (Djelic, 2008; Woldegiyorgis et al., 2018). These initiatives resulted in the regionalisation of research and the creation of joint degrees, mobility opportunities and knowledge exchange within the university networks that in return provide an important avenue for enhancing the internationalisation of teacher education (Symeonidis & Schratz, 2022). If the Lisbon strategy called to improve the quality of research by attracting high calibre researchers and the best talent whose work would contribute to regional welfare (Kehm, 2007), Salzburg Principles recommend retention of diversity within the doctoral education across various programmes (Kottman, 2011). These policy documents established a supra-national legal foundation for the internationalisation of doctoral programmes that are diverse in practice within the national contexts.
Policy implementation particularly of doctoral schools of education (DSEd) from the perspective of the internal actors and their agency is quite an uncharted area of academic inquiry since educational professionals are in less limelight compared to the voices of international students (Nerad, 2010; O'Reilly et al., 2013; Sulaimanova, Csereklye, Győri, & Horváth, 2023; Teichler, 2004). Whilst the field of education studies, including teacher education, is strongly anchored in national frameworks, DSEds are prompted to adopt internationalisation strategies in a condensed manner (Alexiadou, Kefala, & Rönnberg, 2021; Leutwyler, Popov, & Wolhuter, 2017; Mantel, Kamm, & Buschor, 2022). Due to this inherent tension between the nature of educational studies including DSEd and the new institutional imperative, it is of utmost importance to investigate change dynamics.
Transitioning status of education studies including teacher education
Education studies (including teacher education) are disciplines in the transitioning stage, from exclusively long-term national embeddedness to being incrementally internationalised (Schratz, Červinková, Halász, Pol, & Tinoca, 2019). This process requires exploration of the endogenous and exogenous forces shaping its situatedness (Storberg-Walker & Torraco, 2004). Mikulec (2014) highlights the importance of internationalising teacher education and argues its complexity and peculiarity that has global but also local impact. According to Alexiadou et al. (2021), teacher education in Sweden, a field that was distant from internationalisation, now is vastly expected to integrate international and intercultural dimensions with an emphasis on less mobile domestic teacher students. Leutwyler and others (2017) present a comparison of three countries accentuating similar challenges to appropriately internationalise teacher education institutions that were traditionally embedded in local contexts. Pedersen (2021) and Mantel et al. (2022) explore accordingly the ‘conceptualisations of mobility’ and learning outcomes of students in Norwegian and Swiss teacher training programmes. Foregoing studies emphasise the ambivalent conditions of educational studies that are currently under the internationalisation imperative.
Central and Eastern European context: doctoral programmes of education in Hungary
Central and Eastern Europe provides a distinctive picture of educational reforms that emerged during the political transitioning period (Orosz & Perna, 2016). Their openness to integration and assistance from Western Europe as part of the ‘catching up’ reforms were aligned with the trend of Europeanisation (Dakowska & Harmsen, 2015). The evolution of the educational systems that took in Western Europe years if not centuries was levelled up in Eastern Europe within a few decades via rapid at times controversial interventions (Kozma, 2008). Despite the geographic proximity of countries and their accession to the European Union at the turn of the millennium, they differ in their international cooperation and ties with the West (Orechova, 2021). As an example of diverging practices on the national level, we highlight major milestones of doctorate education in Hungary.
Most studies regarding the HE transformations focus on governance changes. If HE steerage in Hungary, a former socialist satellite country, was state-controlled and ideologically linked to the communist allies (Polónyi & Kozma, 2022; Pusztai, Fekete, Ágnes Réka Dusa, & Varga, 2016), with political regime shift, massification, privatisation and the incremental integration of European dimensions occurred shortly (Zsatku & Kováts, 2023). Though the accession to the European Union and the three-cycle Bologna system were underway opening new horizons for academic development, research cooperation and academic mobility, it coexisted with the Soviet model due to internal opposition to change, unpreparedness, and lack of long-term strategy (Pusztai et al., 2016; Zakota, 2018). The enactment of the Higher Education Act in 1993 was consummated only in 2006 when universities eventually were granted the authority to award doctorate degrees – the former prerogative of the Academy of Sciences (Pusztai & Szabó, 2008).
Between 2006–2016, the growth in the number of foreign doctorate students compensated for dropping number of local students' enrolment (Lannert, 2018). Most doctorate students had a Hungarian background while holding citizenship from neighbouring countries (Pusztai et al., 2016). The next significant increase in the number of inbound doctorate students multiplied almost 10 times due to a new route of the state-funded scholarship scheme based on bilateral agreements between Hungary and sending countries (Kovacs & Tweneboah, 2020; Lannert, 2018). In parallel with other countries in the region, student mobility is a preponderant element of internationalisation policy (Kovacs & Kasza, 2018), and Hungary statistically holds a mid-level position now. The state-funded scholarship scheme encouraged a large influx of international students to all levels of HE, while most students enrol for bachelor's and master's degrees with more modest numbers in PhD programmes (Polónyi & Kozma, 2022).
Organizational dimensions
System-wide alterations (e.g. internationalisation, a deficit of funds, new public management) in HE led to novice organisational solutions in function and delivery of doctorate education that moved from a ‘license to teach’ towards a more structurally standardised complex system (Ruano-Borbalan, 2022; Taylor, 2004). Universities began incrementally adopting corporate organisational change strategies (Vlachopoulos, 2021), albeit, unlike the private for-profit sector, their inherent peculiar culture is based on independence and autonomy with frequently ambivalent goals difficult to measure (Boyer & Crockett, 1973; Sporn, 1996). Given the crucial role and specificity of organisational culture in performance and development, this system dimension cannot be understated or disdained when analysing the change process (Halász, 2010; Niedlich, Kummer, Bauer, Rieckmann, & Bormann, 2019; Sporn, 1996).
Among prevailing change models relevant to the system, two overarching approaches consider it as a planned or an adaptive mechanism appearing cyclically (Kezar, 2001). They also discern in treating human agency in the process of change whether it is individual or collegial/group level. Van De Ven and Poole (1995) place this dimension on the vertical axis defining it as a single entity vs. multiple entities. As depicted in Fig. 1 the biological or evolutionary model falls under the adaptive category and considers change as an external factor like the life-cycle approach that regards change as an imminent force or prescribed process. The teleological approach counts more for the internal drive toward change, whereas the theory of colliding forces constitutes the dialectic or political model (Kezar, 2001). Both teleological and dialectic theories explain change based on the internal constructive process, whereas two former ones consider it prescribed (Van De Ven & Poole, 1995).
Process theories of organisational development and change by Van De Ven and Poole (1995, p. 520). Retrieved from: https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Organizational_Learning_and_Change/Ven_de_Ven_Pool_Explaining_Development_and_Change_in_Orgs.pdf. The CC-BY 4.0 licence does not apply on the figure.
Citation: Hungarian Educational Research Journal 2025; 10.1556/063.2024.00297
We account for the model presented by Van De Ven and Poole (1995) as a solid theoretical framework for our preliminary analysis.
Research questions
This pilot phase tested the research protocol, namely the interview questions of narrative inquiry and primarily enabled to retrieve and present findings from the selected sub-sample. Analogous to the larger research setting, ‘how’ investigates the process of development that gradually shifted modus operandi within the DSEd while the answers to ‘why’ concern the participants' perception of rationale and the objectives aimed to achieve via internationalisation.
In-depth semi-structured interviews unveiled answers to two principal sets of questions:
Why have the DSEds decided to internationalise? What was the main driver according to the participant's perception?
How has IoHE impacted DSEds? What is the perceived impact of IoHE in DSEds based on key experts' views?
Emanating from the literature, questions of the semi-structured interviews of a pilot phase consisted of four themes: 1) inception of internationalisation, 2) rationale behind the change in teacher education PhD programmes, 3) actual changes 4) perceived process of change and its outcomes.
Method
In contrast to the preponderant experiences of students' accounts, we aimed to collect narratives saturated with meanings from the teaching staff to construct a coherent plot of a professional experience concerning internationalisation at home (McAlpine, 2016). We opted for the narrative inquiry and collected empirical evidence via semi-structured interviews with four HE professionals from a research-intensive university in Hungary. Participants were free to elaborate and emphasise during the interview specific elements of their interest.
The sampling followed the purposive logic (e.g. full-time employment in the respective institution at DSEd that offers an English language programme). All participants were educational professionals employed in the capital city with positions from the founding head of the DSEd to the core faculty member. We reached an even gender ratio with the age range of participants 50–70 years old. The safeguard the anonymity of participants they were given two lettered codes that indicate their position at the affiliated DSEd, the founding head of the programme is coded FH, whereas the former head of the programme is coded ForH, the current head of the programme is abbreviated – HP and the core member is CM accordingly.
Interviews were audio recorded and manually transcribed. Data text was read, and re-read multiple times, whilst both inductive and deductive analysis with the thematic extraction allowed to construct consequent themes (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008; Maxwell & Chmiel, 2014; Willig, 2014). We utilised qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti in the analysis phase. The transcribed data was coded into an extensive pool of basic codes that were clustered in return multiple times into groups until we arrived at the code hierarchies (exemplified in Table 1). We applied narrative analysis that differs from content analysis in its focus on the idiosyncratic narrative and content of the lived story (McAlpine, 2016).
Coding process example of data analysis
| Quotation excerpts | Basic codes | Code hierarchy |
| “…of course, the topic of the project was also interesting for those professionals who were involved in that in the European teacher education…” | Professional curiosity | Rationale of internationalisation |
| “Because this made it possible to increase our income through the… the… the fee paid by the… from this scholarship by the international students” | Financial objective | |
| “…well, you have to do that because it gives the money for the university…” | ||
| “…but that was an inner pressure as well that we see around the world and say ok…” | Inner pressure |
The deductive analysis enabled the juxtaposition of data against findings in the literature, whereas the inductive approach presented afterwards findings that augment the internationalisation narratives in the Central and Eastern European region.
Before data collection, full approval from the Research Ethical Committee of Eötvös Loránd University was received to safeguard participants and their identities. The personal data was anonymised for precautionary matters – securing their identities (unless the participant wanted to be revealed). Participants were at liberty to withdraw at any time during the interview if they felt afflicted. The further processing of data text for this research was also consented by the participants. All recordings are stored until the expiration date approved by the Research Ethical Committee on the secured device with exclusive strict access of the authors only.
Results
Major topics that emerged from the analysis are summarised in Table 2. The verbatim below corroborates the idiosyncrasy of the regional Europeanisation process in Central and Eastern European countries. Participants covered multiple topics while unfolding important aspects of internationalisation in DSEd asserting its complexity. At the outset, participants shared the process of professional growth and progress. During the interview participants retrospectively depicted shifts that occurred on a macro-level due to political changes that provided a gamut of opportunities for personal growth ranging from obtaining the Western type of a doctoral degree to access and embeddedness in the international academic community. The fine-grained topics of perceived rationale, source of change, unexpected drawbacks and challenges surfaced the narratives. Each participant was immersed in verbalising their lived experiences, but also retrospectively reflected on their journey and idiosyncrasy of internationalisation within their faculty and programme in question.
The main topics that emerged from the interviews
| Research questions | Topics/sub-topics | |
| Internationalization rationale | Why did the DSEds decide to internationalise? What is the main driver of internationalisation? | Financial incentives – economic rationale. |
| Seizing the opportunity for internationalisation in the field (decision of the leadership). | ||
| Seizing the opportunity of building up the long-term degree programme based on joint project experience and learnings. | ||
| Professional curiosity. | ||
| Process of change | How has internationalisation impacted DSEds? What is your perception of DSEd internationalisation? | Top-bottom implementation – the contingent scenario created a stringent climate. |
| Generational transition and English language of instruction (younger faculty members were tasked with introducing change interventions). | ||
| Contradictory organisational culture – a combination of cooperation and competition with no community. | ||
| Weak academic integration of international students and limited cultural and research diversity. |
In what follows we present results that correspond to the main research questions.
Internationalisation rationales of DSEd
I have to make a difference because, in the case of our first program, we had a well-funded project, so we got a huge amount of money… we could employ a project manager and… an administrative … And when the state-funded scholarship wave came we were using this project the project resources… (ForH).
I think mainly it was a professional curiosity to work together with those people. And the… of course the topic of the project was also interesting for those professionals who were involved in that in the European teacher education… (ForH).
The original program, which was European Union collaboration, I started to work from the very beginning… (CM).
Because this made it possible to increase our income through the… the… the fee paid by the… from this scholarship by the international students (ForH).
…well, you have to do that because it gives the money for the university, but that was an inner pressure as well that we see around the world and say ok, if we want to eh eh come up with the standards of other universities, we have to do it… (FH).
I think they have seen that this internationalization eh its eh it’s a topic that has to be pushed eh and that is a good way to doing that (HP).
So, I think that globalization influenced teacher education a lot, so that is eh that is a fact now… We can say that it’s an international eh… not consensus, but it’s influenced by the international theories (HP).
Yes, nationally focused doesn’t mean that we have to concentrate only on the national. If we want to understand and do better the national, we have to look how other people do that (FH).
…in that respect, we can say that education is much more nationally anchored than other disciplinary field… (ForH).
Organizational change process
Most of the colleagues were absolutely unprepared for this… (CM).
So, there was… there was a big pressure… from the from the faculty leadership that we should attract scholarship students because they bring money… (ForH).
… who were able to see that the old way of a leading a doctoral school or working in a doctoral school is not good anymore (FH).
…majoring in history, education, and English… and that time my English knowledge give me some advantages in in education… (FH).
…I collected enormous amount of international experiences in my academic field – education… I am also teaching all the time in English… (CM).
But since that time there was no choice, we had to start this program, we had to start teaching in English, so first… when I was first time teaching in English, I was not able to sleep, you know… so I had to learn every word… (HP).
… there is a too too many competition among the teachers about this organizational climate (HP).
I rather would say you … how we tell this, not separated, but isolated… (CM).
Of course, that is a tremendous increase of a workload. And not only because of numbers, because of quantity – having more students, but also because in international environment you are using different working methods (ForH).
And this change of mindset it’s a it’s general… you know this constructivism and I really think that that is a way of changes in people’s mind. And that you are… you have a lot of new information, new requirements and so on… (HP).
So, for instance, we had to prepare English language doctoral program within quite brief time, so it meant a lot of background work so to say… but it meant background work elaborating programs in English and setting up some new regulations that enabled us to receive international students… (FH).
…So, we have to develop a lot of things to help … during … study and not only at the study level but also at a study level we should help you much more… (HP).
… we should integrate international students more into Hungarian research community, not to ‘hungarize’ them we don’t have to make Hungarian researchers naturally… but … are rootless in this sense… (CM).
Discussion
Narrative inquiry via a semi-structured interview setting provided an avenue to collect the lived experiences of this sub-sample and reached its goal of including the invisible agency of educational professionals. Given that students are the primary actors of HE, there is prevailing monovocality of their perspectives, while the voices of professionals and their agency rather omitted (Dewey & Duff, 2009; Kondakçı & Van Den Broeck, 2009). Internationalisation of HE including the doctoral cycle pursues an interrelated set of rationales that predominantly seeks to resolve funding challenges (De Wit & Altbach, 2020; Lannert, 2018; Lee & Stensaker, 2021). Inbound student mobility is a prevailing pillar of the internationalisation at home policy in the region (Kovacs & Kasza, 2018; Kupriyanova & Ferencz, 2022; Lannert & Derényi, 2021; Teichler, 2017) whilst the state scholarship scheme of the governmental foreign policy interest points at political rationale (Kozma & Polónyi, 2022b). These findings support the literature on intertwined rationales that gear universities to manoeuvre on the verge of change (Knight, 2004; Zha, 2003). The education studies and teacher education field are the disciplines that are enduring transformations under the impact of multivalent factors. The participants asserted the global aspect of education and corroborated its internationalisation imperative due to its position as an ultimate social justice enabler (Alexiadou et al., 2021). Teacher education universities enact revision of curricula and promote internationalisation at home – integrating international dimensions into the education of domestic students (Agnew, 2012; Knight, 2012; Leutwyler et al., 2017), however, it is far from bearing ripened fruits in Hungary where integration of foreign students is minimal (Kudrnáčová et al., 2020; Senci, Hendrickson, & Debevc, 2022). The ‘introverted’ inward-looking institutional culture and low proficiency in foreign languages pinpoint some of the predicaments within the region (Lannert & Derényi, 2021; Sporn, 1996). The English language as an apple of discord in the non-Anglophone world (Fabricius, Mortensen, & Haberland, 2016; Ryan, 2012) has been mentioned multiple times throughout the interviews as the main denominator of professional development. The generational solution to lead the process of change was not mentioned in the literature, however, this finding is most probably also related to language acquisition skills. Orechova (2021) asserts how the internationalisation policy in the region is perceived more as a managerial task rather than an initiative saturating the teaching and learning process.
Internationalisation policy is associated with change, risks, heavy workloads, and learnings on the go. The peculiar culture of academia is quite a perplexing set of social norms and values (Burke & Noumair, 2015) that indubitably impact the change phenomenon. A loosely coupled system (Weick, 1976) undergoes tension due to top-bottom management decisions (De Wit, 2020). Van De Ven and Poole’s (1995) model portrays four major theories of change. Life cycle and teleological change quadrants imply the cyclical nature of prescribed change driven by dissatisfaction and consequent growth within a single entity that contradicts the inherent feature of academia rooted in the plurality and autonomy of multiple entities (Tierney, 1988). In the upper quadrants of the model (Van De Ven & Poole, 1995), the dialectic and evolutionary modes of change are based on the competition and conflict metaphors of multiple entities that are more adherent to the HE domain. In the evolutionary mode, change is considered prescribed and exogenous, whereas the internationalisation policy has constructive and responsive features implying the external necessity and internal decision (Altbach & Knight, 2007). Hence, we confer that the dialectic model of change depicts transformations in HE more precisely than the evolutionary type. According to Marsh and Smith (2000), this model adopted from political studies reads as “an interactive relationship between two variables in which each affects the other in a continuing iterative process” (p. 5). In other words, the colliding entities – old-fashioned doctorate school and the decision of management to internationalise – created change that eventually led to the emergence of an English doctoral programme in education studies. All major analysed notions contain dialectical participle, e.g., education studies are transitioning between competing notions of international imperative and local embeddedness, whereas internationalisation itself has the ambivalent dialectic substance of response and the agent of globalisation (Knight, 2012).
Conclusion
Accommodating change comes with a price, however, predicting the totality of challenges and contingencies is nearly impossible. This pilot study offers preliminary findings and adds the learnings of HE professionals frequently omitted from the overall picture (Kondakçı & Van Den Broeck, 2009; O'Reilly et al., 2013).
The preceding experiences depict a picture based on the participants' perceptions of the reforms in Hungary in the region less investigated (Dakowska & Harmsen, 2015). The intended overarching contribution of this phase is to motivate comprehensive and systematic internationalisation interventions propelling a more socially responsible educational system that benefits the larger public (Altbach & Knight, 2007). More precisely these findings can inform relevant stakeholders outside of academia on policy implementation and its impact and could be shared in teacher education doctoral networks in the region (Schratz et al., 2019). Diversified research outcomes and methods on teacher education enable appropriate teacher education policy and serve as a valuable resource at practitioners' disposal. Only mutually informed synergy of teacher education research and policy ensures sustainable system that is beneficial for all (Symeonidis, 2024).
Limitations
The phenomenon of internationalisation is multifaceted and a complex matter that requires a variety of methods. These four narratives provided a glimpse into the internationalisation of DSEd where participants engaged in the reflexive depiction of their professional change period. Critical limitations of the paper refer to so-called ‘validity threats’ of the narrative inquiry by Polkinghorne (2007) that reside in probable divergence between the language or perception and the experience. It may imply the partial depiction of the lived experience that relies on participant's self-representation, language competency and highlighting certain aspects over others (Polkinghorne, 2007). Hence, the data presented here is limited to the meanings revealed by the participants who could leave out certain aspects of the events. Nevertheless, the outcomes of this pilot began weaving a Central and Eastern European experiences picture into the internationalisation tapestry (Olenina, Bamberger, & Mun, 2022).
About the authors
Nazgul Ternai (Kyrgyzstan) is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. Her current doctoral research focuses on organizational development and change within the doctoral schools of education studies or teacher education in Hungary. Her field of interest includes the internationalisation of higher education and organizational transformations taking place currently within the sector of higher education. Her professional journey comprises work at various student services and key team member roles in university management and administration for almost a decade at renowned universities in Central Asia and Central Europe. She is currently working in the position of senior international coordinator at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest.
Dr. Erzsébet Csereklye is an Assistant professor at the Institute for Intercultural Psychology and Education, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She also fulfils the role of a guest professor at the Institute of Professional Development in Education, University of Graz, Graz, Austria. Her research focus is on multiculturally conscious pedagogies, educational innovations and diversity in education, her works focus on social aspects of education such as inequalities and equity as well as social and international mobilities in education.
Dr. János Gordon Győri is a Professor of Education at Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Institute of Intercultural Psychology and Education, Budapest, Hungary. His main professional interests cover teacher education and teachers' professional development, the cultural aspects of education, the internationalisation of higher education, gifted education, and formal and non-formal contexts of learning and teaching. In the past 20 years, he published more than 100 articles and chapters and gave a high number of conference presentations on all continents of the globe.
Conflict of interest
The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Data availability
The data supporting this pilot study findings are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Funding
No financial support was received for the study.
Ethical permission
Full approval from the Research Ethical Committee of Eötvös Loránd University was received to safeguard participants and their identities. The personal data was anonymised for precautionary matters – securing their identities. Detailed data on Ethical permission can be provided upon request.
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