Internationalizing the curriculum without mandate: Students’ recognition of international and intercultural values in everyday teaching

As higher education institutions increasingly pursue the Internationalization of the Curriculum (IoC), existing research has largely focused on institutional strategies and policy rationales, leaving everyday pedagogical enactment underexplored. Addressing this gap, this study examines students’ recognition of international and intercultural values embedded in classroom learning. Drawing on survey data from 95 Vietnamese students and follow-up email interviews with 12 participants, the findings reveal three patterns. First, students recognised the presence of international and intercultural values but reported uneven pedagogical enactment across courses. Second, these values were interpreted mainly through professional and career-oriented lenses. Third, students expressed a desire for stronger structural coherence in IoC. Based on these insights, the study tentatively proposes the notion of Embedded Internationalization of the Curriculum (EIoC) to capture how internationalization emerges through interactions among institutional orientation, teacher initiative, and student engagement in non-mandated contexts.