Internationalization vs. Globalization: What Can the Arab EFL Teachers Do to Assure Quality in Education?

Internationalization of higher education appeared as a counterattack to mitigate the impact of globalization on education. In a sense, it has entered higher education as a means for ensuring that graduates are a competitive workforce worldwide. Meanwhile, TEFL has been emphasized as the medium of instruction. The current paper investigated the roles of EFL teachers could perform at schools to prepare their students before joining internationalized higher education whether at home or abroad. Adopting a descriptive design, a quantitative data-gathering instrument, an opinionnaire, was designed to determine if EFL teachers in the Arab countries undertake their roles required for education quality assurance. The Arab EFL teachers were intentionally chosen as a community for this research due to possible curriculum-embedment of ideologies different from their national values. 86 EFL teachers from most of the Arab countries responded to the opinionnaire. Qualitative data were generated through analysis and interpretation of the numerical data of this opinionnaire to find out the extent to which those EFL teachers were aware of the internationalization process, and the challenges they face.


INTRODUCTION
Globalization gained prominence during the second half of the 20 th century for its enormous influences economically, technologically, politically, socially, and educationally. It has turned the world into a connected global society where ideas, goods, and services flow smoothly within and across borders. Consequently, today's world has turned to be increasingly "flat" (Beck, 2012;Cornelius, 2012;Burdzinski, 2014), which Hendriks and Kloppenburg (2016) describe this status saying, "the local is global, and the global is local" p. 30.
In response to this increasing global interconnectedness, education has become the means of maintaining flexibility, adaptability and innovation -characteristics not common to a traditional school (Molina & Lattimer, 2013) -it mainly aims at educating students to be global citizens (Ramos García & Pavón Vázquez, 2018). In this context of global citizenship, international education emerged to be a form of investment for enhancing the workforce competitiveness where students should be aware of the economic, political, social, and environmental issues. In addition, they should have deep understanding of languages, cultures, and histories to engage with people from other countries around the world (Beck, 2012;Cornelius, 2012;Leask, 2012;Burdzinski, 2014;Hendriks & Kloppenburg, 2016;Wan, 2018).
Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.14 As institutions started to internationalize their educational systems to prepare students for a labor market that is beyond national geographic boundaries, there appeared the concept of internationalization of higher education which refers to a process focusing on the programming of higher education activities in the areas of teaching, research, and service. That is through the recruitment of international students, cooperation or partnerships with foreign universities, and the establishment of branch campuses in countries around the world. In sum, while globalization refers to the process of blurring or dissolving borders, internationalization refers to an increase of transnational and transborder activities (Leutwyler, Popov & Wolhuter, 2017).
In response to the professional demands of globalization, several worldwide initiatives have been such as Déclaration de Bologne (1999), UNESCO Declaration (2003), UNESCO Strategy 2002-2007 to name a few. These initiatives focused upon internationalization of higher education as a means to leverage the impact of globalization on education. For Cornelius, (2012), internationalizing a college or university consists of integrating international, intercultural, and global dimensions into institutional rationales (e.g., policies, activities, and quality assessments).
Correspondingly, internationalization of higher education has become part of "the raison d'être for universities worldwide" (Shimauchi, 2018). Then, certain indicators for internationalization have entered higher education rankings as indicators of quality (Abdouli, 2008). Amashukeli (2018) mentions that "internationalization of higher education has a strong positive undercurrent, as it is expected to serve … quality enhancement" p. 3. For her, internationalization cannot be an end but mainly a means to attain quality assurance in higher education.
In this context of mutual relevance between internationalization of higher education and quality assurance, the introduction of English-medium instruction (EMI) has emerged as a growing phenomenon in non-English speaking countries to such an extent that Shimauchi (2018) mentions that internationalization equals higher education to be offered in English. Consequently, TEFL is emphasized as a benchmarking of quality assurance in higher education. Therefore, English is presented as the first foreign language and the academic lingua franca in multicultural environments. Finardi and Porcino (2014) assert that the informed use of technologies allied with TEFL are passports to information access and social capital formation. Thus, the advent of Web 2.0 with social media have produced more learning autonomy and expression channels. Besides, the current use of massive online open courses (MOOCs) enables EFL learners to access contents online, interact with native and non-native speakers of English, attend virtual classes, obtain academic support services, conduct research, and earn a degree without leaving the confines their own homes. Even, as textbooks go to print, new knowledge is created with immediate access at students' fingertips. Therefore, the educational delivery of knowledge production and dissemination is shifting to a pattern of technological transfer of knowledge (Cornelius, 2012;Wan, 2018).
All these premises have imposed several challenges for the EFL teachers at schools, who have to adapt to the increasing imperative to internationalized education embedding other countries' ideologies while being controlled by their social, cultural, and religious constraints. In addition, they are responsible for educating EFL students, who are unable to study abroad, to receive an EMI education "at home", which Wan (2018) calls this "internationalization-at-home". That is, they have to empower these students to be "global human resources" so that they could compete with their foreign counterparts while disseminating the values and attractiveness of their cultures throughout the world (Ramos García & Pavón Vázquez, 2018;Shimauchi, 2018). Nevertheless, EFL teachers do not have resources for internationalization other than their textbooks. This is in case they have sufficient EFL skills and conviction to participate in the process. For this, EFL teachers should receive more attention due to the roles they play in the internationalization of education until their students reach the postsecondary stages. Beck (2012) goes to denounce the business of international education proposing a post-internationalization era which would move away from commodification to educational and academic goals and values. In this respect, Shimauchi (2018) has pointed to the inclusion of outsider ideologies within internationalized education. He considers using English in the internationalized curriculum as a tool of "academic imperialism". In many ways, English language colonialism has been revitalized, not by imperial invasion, but by such means as the global university ranking system, for which one of the indicators is the citation index based predominantly on publications appearing in English language journals. It is as he puts, to "Publish in English or Perish" p. 82.

Background of the Problem
Yet, all Arab educational institutions have included internationalization in their vision and mission statements explicitly or implicitly. For example, the Saudi Crown Prince (2016) announced Vision 2030 with several ambitious plans for the development of the education sector. Among the goals were to have at least five Saudi universities -instead of two in the present -ranked among the top 200 universities internationally, and to encourage students to attain higher than average performance in line with international standards. Taleb (2016) mentions some areas highlighted in Saudi's Vision 2030, which represent its orientation for the internationalization of education such as: • Continuation of sponsoring 138,000 Saudi students to further their tertiary education abroad, • Training 500,000 public sector employees through distance learning by 2020, • Training 1,000 teachers and education leaders overseas annually, • Increasing the number of Saudi universities to at least five in the top 200 world rankings by 2030 from the current only two universities, and • Encouraging collaborations and partnerships between Saudi and foreign universities. In addition, there are several initiatives for internationalization in other Arab countries like Egypt, UAE, Jordan,… etc. such as "Study in Egypt" to recruit additional international students. Nevertheless, there is little information on the extent to which the Arab institutions have been able to implement the international dimension in their curriculum successfully. In a sense, the internationalization of education is less self-evident than it may first appear, especially in the stages before high education. In fact, there is a gap between what students actually learn in schools and what universities require as students after graduating from high school spend from one to four semesters learning and enhancing their English language. As mentioned above, it is to focus on EFL teachers to see if they are ready for or even aware of it and to overcome the challenges which they face to take part in education internationalization.

Objectives of the Study
The main objectives of this research were to: 1) Determine the main concepts in the field taking up the growing evidence on the disparity of concepts, aims, and notions, 2) Determine the awareness and readiness of the Arab EFL teachers towards internationalization, 3) Identify a number of challenges for the Arab EFL teachers, which hinder their participation in internationalization, 4) Stimulate the exchange of the Arab EFL teachers' experiences in internationalizing education, and 5) Initiate a discussion on how education internationalization in the Arab countries could be improved.

Significance of the Study
This study attempted to: 1) Fulfill the need for more research surrounding the roles of EFL teachers in internationalizing the EFL curriculum in the Arab setting keeping their national values as the focus in this kind of researches is always on sustaining economic competitiveness in an increasingly global marketplace, 2) Attract the attention to the importance of EFL teachers' awareness of the religious, social values side by side with the global elements in the EFL curriculum, 3) Help EFL teachers reflect on their own ideological motives and aspirations as internationalization is an ideological endeavour, 4) Help EFL teachers determine the challenges they face while participating in internationalization and 5) Help the Arab educational institutes formulate their professional mission as follows: • Developing and promoting excellence in TEFL, • Creating and maintaining a dynamic community of EFL teachers • Supporting and facilitating participation in mutual exchanges of information and expertise • Practicing TEFL at the international level via research and global scholarships

Statement of the Problem
There is a gap between what the Arab students acquire while learning EFL in schools and what universities require. Based upon this, students spend from one to four semesters learning and enhancing their English after graduating from high school. For example, the largest portion of the 2019 Saudi budget has been allocated for the education sector. However, Saudi Arabia ranks very low on English Proficiency Index (EPI). It ranks 83 rd out of 88 countries and the 8 th in the Middle East (English First, 2018). Al-Ghamdi (2019) asserts that Saudi educational system is not aligned with Vision 2030. This might be because EFL teachers in government schools, which represent 85.7 percent of the schools in Saudi Arabia, do not perform their roles in preparing their students for internationalization in the postsecondary stages. The Saudi position can be generalized to many other Arab countries. Therefore, the present research attempted to answer the following main question: • What can the Arab EFL teachers do to assure quality in education?
For achieving this, this study attempted to answer the following sub-questions: 1) To what extent are the Arab EFL teachers aware of the process of education internationalization? 2) What are the challenges for EFL teachers to prepare their students for internationalized higher education?
3) How can EFL teachers participate in internationalization within the confines of their schools?
Ardakani, Yarmohammadian, Abari and Fathi (2011) relate this to the fact that strengthening the international aspect of higher education leads to consolidating the international profile of a country. However, this concern for internationalization is mainly for student and teacher mobility while little attention is paid to the curriculum, and almost none related to pedagogy. As the focus in this paper is not on the internationalization of higher education, this section sheds some light on a few papers related to aspects of teaching, especially TEFL. The first of these papers is Briguglio and Smith (2012) which examined the needs of Chinese students in an Australian university. In this university, the English language question and academic literacy issues have been of major concern both within academe, and more broadly, amongst employer groups. The support provided by universities has moved through a series of different philosophical approaches. It began with a focus on English language support, at first perhaps conceived in a remedial light, and gradually developed to include consideration of a number of related socio-cultural factors and moving towards an inclusive curriculum approach in teaching and learning. More recent thinking promotes the embedding of academic literacy skills and supports through all disciplines across the curriculum.
The study of Molina and Lattimer (2013) was carried out as part of a larger international education project undertaken with support from the Longview Foundation. It examined the understandings of international education held by teachers, administrators and students in the Southern California region. This foundation's mission is twofold: (1) to increase the number of schools that integrate international knowledge and skills throughout the curriculum so that students are internationally competent and college-ready, and (2) to raise awareness about the importance of international education through policy and provide resources about the world. The researchers recommended that more research needs to be done for a better understanding of the long-term impact of international education on students' knowledge, skills, beliefs and dispositions. This information could help to strengthen and shape learning within both the K-12 and teacher education communities.
Using the knowledge which they gained teaching English abroad, Teixeira and Pozzi (2014) organized a World Englishes course around the discussion of the concentric circles of English (Kachru, 1985), moving from inner-, to outer-, to expanding-circle. In Spring Quarter 2013, the course was an elective for international seven students at California University. Throughout the course, they aimed to explore student perceptions of the native-speaker model and inner-circle privilege in which the internationalization of English teaching has only recently taken hold, by means of critical writing reflections, an exit questionnaire on English as an international language (EIL), and a pre-and posttest on accent recognition.
Students concluded that the native speaker should be the "base" for comparison of nonnative accents because the more similar a foreign accent to a native speaker accent, the more understandable one's speech. Likewise, the fact that the majority of the students indicated that the course influenced their opinion that inner-circle English is not better than other Englishes and that each country has the right to its own English.
In the same mainstream, Kang, Thomson and Moran (2019) examined the effect of incorporating a variety of international English accents into a simulated TOEFL listening comprehension test. Therefore, the researchers adopted speakers from six English dialects to provide speech samples for a mock TOEFL iBT listening test. Listeners who spoke the same six English dialects were then asked to take these listening tests. Results showed that when the English accent is intelligible, listening test scores in response to outer-circle dialects of English are not significantly lower than they would be in response to inner-circle dialects of English.
It is clear that most previous studies investigated the experiences of international students, restricted attention has been paid to national students and their adaptation to the internationalization of higher education. Yuan and Yu (2019) tried to fill this gap, examining a group of Chinese university students' experiences in an internationalized curriculum in China. The findings showed that the participants tried to interpret, construct, and refine their individual, academic, and cultural identities on a daily basis. They specifically negotiated three identity paradoxes, (i.e. "dedicated learners" vs. "disoriented bees", "global citizens" vs. "proud Chinese", and between "team players" vs. "independent fighters"). The study has useful implications for university management, teachers, and students in response to the internationalization of higher education.
Based on this analysis of previous studies, educational institutions are obliged to move beyond this concern for internationalization in higher education in order to provide access to multilingual and multicultural competences. Such kind of access can be provided inside the classroom; in case that these institutions empower efficient EFL teachers to perform their aspired roles in internationalization.

Setting
During the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020, 45 EFL teachers at Egyptian and Saudi schools of all stages before university were asked to answer an opinionnaire concerning certain issues related to internationalization. Such issues reflected their awareness of and challenges they have for carrying their roles for internationalization.

Instruments
An opinionnaire was designed to specify the challenges of EFL teachers to be in line with the internationalization process. Before, it intended to infer these teachers' awareness of the whole process. It was administered online to EFL teachers around the Arab World on 14/11/2019. Its link was available for two weeks. On the 30 th November, the responses were analyzed.
Before administering the research opinionnaire (RO), the participants were informed that it was an inquiry to investigate the challenges they, as EFL teachers, face in the process of education internationalization as a response to the professional requirements of globalization, so that they should feel free to share them for the success of this investigation. The RO consisted of:

Part I
It consisted of 10 points. It aimed at identifying demographic information of the participants especially their age, nationality, qualification, experience and the stage they work in.

Part II
It consisted of 15 statements that aimed at identifying EFL teachers' awareness of the internationalization process. The EFL teachers were asked to choose an answer either yes, no, or not sure.

Part III
It consisted of 15 statements that aimed at determining the challenges that EFL teachers face in the internationalization process at the stages before higher education. The participants were asked to choose an answer either yes, no, or not sure. It concluded with asking the participants to suggest other challenges.

Part IV
It asked the participants to determine which of Mobile apps, YouTube Channels, Websites for keypals, Language exchange partners, and Live classrooms via Skype they can use with their students for "internationalization at home"; to participate in the process within the confines of their schools.

Validity and Reliability
For validating the RO, it was electronically designed to be administered online using Google Forms and its link was sent to an Egyptian EFL teacher, a Saudi EFL teacher, an assistant EFL professor and another associate professor. They approved its validity asking for minor modifications in its format, which were done correspondingly.
Sharing the RO on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, EFL teachers were invited to participate in it. When the number of participants reached 30, 18 Egyptian EFL teachers and 12 Saudi ones, its reliability was measured using Coefficient of Cronbach Alpha in SPSS Statistics V25.0. The coefficients (Table 1) proved the internal consistency for its components as shown: It is only Part II whose coefficient was lower than above 0.7. Therefore, a calculation was carried if one of its items were deleted. The result was that if item 14, "The use of e-learning in the form of digital apps constitutes a basic requirement for internationalization" was to be deleted, then the reliability coefficient would be 0.704, which gave no high difference. It was decided that the application of the RO would be the same with its components. The total coefficient of the RO (0.842) gave a lot of confidence in its reliability.

Setting
The current study was carried out including administering the RO to 86 EFL teachers from some Arab countries. The link of the RO was shared on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin to EFL teachers to participate in. The RO was available for the students for 16 days starting from 14-11-2019 to 30-11-2019.

EFL teachers (males=45 & females=41)
, from different Arab countries, completed the RO concerning their awareness and the challenges they have in the internationalization of education. Table 2 shows the distribution of their nationalities. These numbers of participants do not mean that they work in their countries. The Egyptian, for example, are of the greatest number may work in Oman, Kuwait, or any other countries. The same case for all the other nationalities. Their average age was 36 years old. Chart 1 exhibits their experience while Chart 2 does for the stage they work in.

Design
Using a qualitative data-gathering instrument, the RO, a descriptive design was adopted in the current study. Qualitative data were generated through analysis and interpretation of the numerical data from Part II to find out the extent to which EFL teachers were aware of the internationalization process in their schools, and from Part III to deduce the challenges these teachers face in this.

Data Analysis
A descriptive analysis of the quantitative data was conducted by computing mean scores and percentages. The answers to the two open questions in Part III and Part IV were analyzed for commonalities and differences and then interpreted in relation to the scores.

Limitations
For several constraints, only 86 EFL teachers accepted participated in the opinionnaire. It was hoped that more than 500 EFL teachers from all Arab countries would accept participating in it. For its limited number of its participants, the results cannot be generalized to all EFL teachers in the Arab World.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results of investigating the problem of the present study can be shown in the following way:

For Answering the First Question: To What Extent are EFL Teachers Aware of the Process of Education Internationalization?
Part II of the RO consisted of 15 statements. These statements mainly focused on EFL teachers' awareness of education internationalization. Giving their opinions, the participants should choose either yes, no, or not sure. Means of these responses were interpreted using Table 3 which specifies the intervals of 3-point Likert Scale. Table 4 gives the results for each statement which got high agreement (means) from the respondents.
These results prove that the participants are highly aware of internationalization. It is obvious that they consider that internationalizing education should not only be concerned with teaching the language skills, but mainly with equipping students with adequate tools, so that they can be prepared to an increasingly pluralistic society preserving their national values. Therefore, these EFL teachers showed their inherent awareness of several internationalization dimensions like the importance of English in this process, its embedment in the vision and mission statements of their schools, the relevant aims and content of curriculum, exchange of views among EFL teachers around the world, and the role of e-learning and its use of, for example, mobile apps, and YouTube channels for improving students' English.
Regarding the dimension of vision and mission statements on internationalization often function as a framework for schools, but these statements on internationalization vary in their degree of detail and the activities that they prescribe, and in some cases are lacking altogether. They are transformed into objectives and guidelines for the educational process as a whole, accreditation, financing and administration (Hendriks & Kloppenburg, 2016). Table 5 gives the result for the statements which got moderate agreement from EFL teachers. Krechetnikov et al. (2016) view that internationalization of education is characterized by facilitating individual mobility around the world (i.e. students and teachers), comparing qualifications acquired at various institutions, ensuring that these qualifications meet the needs in the labor market, and proving graduate competitiveness. Besides, there is a lot that is unique and unusual that internationalization has to offer. Ardakani et al. (2011) consider that its most culturally important goal is to extend the students' values and principles of their national culture while respecting the rights and values of the nations. That is, it makes the students ready for the global market to take part in the international scenes and promotes effective communicative skills and a philosophical spirit which are required to make multi-cultural harmony.
Statements in Table 5 got either disapproval or uncertainty more than consensus from EFL teachers regarding their students' readiness of to be global citizens, who can be a competitive workforce, and their ability to disseminate the values and attractiveness of their culture around the world. EFL teachers expressed the needed sensitivity to the curriculum-embedded ideologies of other cultures. In addition, they did not agree on the sufficiency of the specified hours for adequate learning of the language. Many educators (e.g., Cornelius, 2012;Wan, 2018) believe that internationalizing the curriculum contributes to qualitatively better future graduates "at home". Overall, the respondents were dissatisfied with what has been achieved in terms of their schools' international ambitions. For this reason, the level of internationalization achieved by their schools is unacceptable.

For Answering the Second Question: What are the Challenges for EFL Teachers to Prepare their Students for Internationalized Higher Education?
Part III of the RO consisted of issues relevant to EFL teachers' different practices in internationalization, so that they can be considered challenges for them. Table 6 shows the RO statements that received agreement from the majority of the respondents. Rather, they confessed their ability to confront these challenges. This was deducted from the high means of these statements as interpreted using Table 3.   Table 6 shows EFL teachers' efficient commitment to the requisites of internationalization practices such as continuous improvement, open-mindedness, sociability, collaboration among EFL teachers around the world, effective utilization of social media in TEFL, acquaintance of the needs of modern age, usage of social networking apps for educational purposes, and highly motivated students to improve their English. In contrast, Table 7 displays the RO statements of Part III which did not get the same approval from EFL teachers as their means of moderate level.
These statements could be considered to be the barriers to internationalization, which can be summarized as follows: • Incompetency of EFL teachers to help their colleagues improve their teaching skills, • Disapproval of schools of allowing students to communicate with other classrooms around the world classrooms using, for example, Skype, • Inefficiency to connect an EFL teachers' classrooms with others around the world, and • Unawareness of students' parents of the importance of English as an international language. Furthermore, it could be assumed that schools' principals are not only well-informed but also unconvinced of the importance of the international dimension of TEFL.
Part III ended with an open question for EFL teachers to add other challenges they face but not mentioned in the RO. For this question, only 28 responses were collected. Thus, this limited number of responses allowed the researcher to carry out a thematic analysis manually to identify the recurring themes in them. Other challenges were identified in Table 8 These challenges can be classified under these major themes as follows: • Bureaucracy • Absence of vision and mission statements in some schools • Principals' Unawareness of internationalization goals • A gap between a school's vision and its practices of education To better illustrate these challenges from the point of view of the participants, Figure 1 was employed.
The challenges given from the point of view of the participants added the above-mentioned ones constitute the barriers for internationalization which EFL teachers have to overcome for achieving quality assurance in education.

Confines of their Schools?
The international dimension is mainly an integrated and mandatory part of the whole curriculum for all students. Having full awareness and overcoming the majority of challenges, the participants were asked in Part IV of the RO to choose among five options the methods through which they can encourage their students to fulfill the internationalized dimension of curriculum so that they would be ready before joining the university.
The RO ended with the sentence "I can participate in the internationalization efforts within the confines of my school encouraging my students to use": • Mobile apps • YouTube Channels • Websites for keypals • Language exchange partners • Live classrooms via Skype EFL teachers were asked to add other methods like the above. The total numbers of the respondents who chose each method are illustrated in Figure 2.
It is clear that EFL teachers added other methods such as having online English courses by native speakers, setting up software like Hot potatoes and Cambly.

CONCLUSION
Internationalization of higher education appeared to face the effects of globalization. The current study has shed light on the Arab EFL teachers' roles in preparing their students for joining higher education. Despite the limited number of the Arab EFL teachers who responded to the opinionnaire, those teachers were chosen as a sample for two reasons: (a) internationalization is an indicator of quality assurance which cannot be achieved without English-medium-instruction, and (b) the Arab teachers have to keep their inherited values and be aware of other embedded-curriculum ideologies. Expressing their awareness of internationalization and ability to confront several challenges, the respondents suggested several methods they can use to help their students internationalize at home. It is recommended that further studies would compare some experiments of different Arab countries in the internationalization fields (e.g. individual mobility of students and staff, program and provider mobility, curriculum, and campus). Besides, awareness-raising of people is a key aspect of education internationalization so that parents, for example, should have a role too. Moreover, EFL teachers' development is vital and should not be overlooked to ensure that students would develop their interpersonal communication skills in English to be in contact with others around the world.