Who can help internationalisation of the curriculum happen behind the scenes?

The focus of internationalisation has broadened beyond student and staff mobility and shifted more towards internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC), embedding international and intercultural dimensions into the curriculum for all students. And with that shift came a new question: who is actually responsible for making it happen?

For a while, the answer seemed clear: lecturers. Professional development programmes were designed to engage and equip them, helping them explore different perspectives, uncover hidden biases in their teaching and open up their classrooms to virtual modalities. Professional development initiatives flourished and the topic became a recurring theme at EAIE conferences.

But despite all these efforts, institution-wide implementation remains challenging. It tends to rely on individual lecturers who champion internationalisation and IoC is often approached in an ad hoc and fragmented manner. For IoC to become truly systemic, we may need to look at a different stakeholder group entirely. Increasingly, there are calls to involve educational developers, but what do we know about this group and what role can they play? This blog is grounded in the voices of educational developers themselves, gathered through ongoing PhD research into their practices and perspectives on IoC.

Why talk about educational developers?

Connecting IoC to curriculum design and quality assurance can make internationalisation more intentional and systemic. Educational developers may be a vital cog in this. But why are they largely missing from IoC implementation, and how can they become more involved? Drawing on 42 interviews across 11 institutions in the Netherlands and Flanders, my PhD research suggests that educational developers can help make IoC more intentional, embedded, and sustainable. However, we need to better understand their complex institutional role and they themselves need to recognise what they can contribute.

Who are they?

In many higher education institutions across the globe, there is a group of professionals whose rolet is to support lecturers and academic programmes in educational design, delivery and innovation. They go by different names: educational developers, teaching and learning consultants, instructional designers, pedagogical advisors or academic developers are just a few of their job titles. They may sit in different departments and have different responsibilities. But what they share is their educational expertise and their unique positioning, occupying a liminal space between academics and managers.

What do they do?

These professionals are not programme directors, nor policymakers, nor disciplinary academics. Yet they are in dialogue with all three. They advise, question, design, facilitate and connect across disciplines and departments. They can help translate institutional ambitions into educational practice by asking critical questions: what does this mean for a course, an assessment or a learning outcome? They may not know the academic content of a degree course, but through their critical enquiry they help a programme team establish a clear rationale and build towards an internationalised curriculum that is aligned in content, delivery and assessment. In this way, a strategic ambition like "graduates with intercultural competence" becomes a concrete learning outcome, a redesigned assessment, or a new pedagogical approach. Since they do not belong to management or to a degree programme, they do not have a vested interest and their voice is impartial. They simply want to contribute to building high-quality teaching and learning environments.

Why involve them?

For those of us working in internationalisation, this group matters more than we sometimes realise. IoC often struggles with a dilemma. If it is left implicit, it does not happen. If it is explicitly framed as a requirement, it risks being treated as an add-on without much impact. Educational developers are uniquely positioned to navigate this tension. Their expertise in curriculum design, and in ensuring alignment between learning outcomes, activities and assessment, supports the process of embedding international and intercultural dimensions within existing structures.  As disciplinary outsiders without a stake in the programme, they can raise critical questions that encourage contextualised sensemaking and the unpacking of IoC. These are questions that may have become hidden or implicit for those who are part of the everyday realities of a degree programme.

What is the problem then?

On the one hand, many educational developers hesitate when IoC becomes the explicit topic of discussion. Some associate internationalisation primarily with mobility and policy frameworks. Many see internationalisation as the responsibility of the programmes since it affects course content.  But most importantly, the concept of IoC is often perceived as too broad and too vague. Without conceptual clarity, the field can appear diffuse and difficult to operationalise. This is where internationalisation practitioners have a role to play.

What does this mean for us?

Educational developers indicate that they need clearer frameworks, shared language and access to resources and concrete examples. But more than anything, they need an explicit invitation to engage and as internationalisation practitioners, we need to be clearer about what we can ask of them. Hardly any of my interviewees had ever been asked to support an IoC process, but once invited, they can facilitate conversations across departments, explore assumptions about what "international" means in a specific context, and help programmes map what is already there, align learning outcomes and review assessment. They strengthen coherence and connect strategy to curriculum. IoC needs to advance through curriculum work. And in that work, educational developers are essential partners. But who is going to ask them?

A poster on this topic was part of the 2026 EAIE Conference and Exhibition, click here to view it.