The implications of international collaborative partnerships and within higher education institutions

Recent decades have seen the encouragement of international collaborative partnerships in various guises. The aim of the paper is to consider the practical implications of international collaborative partnerships between and within higher education institutions (HEIs) in terms of the development of an international programme in Special Needs Education as well as its implementation. We argue that contextualising these demands within wider international and European demands creates unforeseen challenges for the participants both institutionally and individually. Attention is also paid to how fundamental tensions around internationalisation of the curriculum and knowledge-sharing and the extent to which this is being managed at the Consortium. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.