Globalization and academics' workplace learning: a case study in China

Globalization is the major confronting challenge of higher education worldwide. And internationalization has become a response of higher education to meet the demands and challenges of globalization. In the recent decades, Chinese government has developed different policies to steer education reforms in order to achieve the aim of internationalization. The internationalizing process has produced contradictory changes in academic workplaces. This study explores how globalizing processes affect academic work and academics’ workplace learning in China. It reports on a series of policy changes, and the effects of these policies on the workplace learning of academics. The changing policies positively affect academics by bringing rich information and resources to their workplaces. But at the same time, academic work is becomin