Introduction

Internationalization of education is a complex and polysemic construct that draws on the educational institution’s different aspects and processes, namely: internationalization of the curriculum and research, inauguration of overseas campuses, distance education, academic mobility, amongst others (PERROTA, 2016). Such processes aim at integrating an intercultural and international dimension to education in order to respond to the planet’s sustainable development demands (^{MOROSINI, 2019}).

The entrance of globalization into the agenda of educational systems (^{SOUZA, 2018}) forced institutions and governmental and private agencies to adopt internationalization as a necessary strategy leading to the strengthening of debates about the topic and to an increasing number of initiatives from the Brazilian government through international academic mobility policies. In the realm of these initiatives, then, the Science Without Borders (SWB) and Languages Without Borders (LWB) Programs contributed to the expansion and internationalization of science and technology, innovation, and Brazilian competitiveness.

Commenting on the initiatives aimed at internationalizing Brazilian language teachers’ education, ^{Dutra (2015)} stresses that few are the calls for programs with that purpose. However, in the case of the internationalization of English teachers’ education, the federal government reached a cooperation agreement between Brazil and the United States in 2010 (BRAZIL, Decree nº 7,176 of May 12, 2010) and implemented the SETEC-CAPES/NOVA Program (hereafter Program), in 2016, in the context of the Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education (FNVSTE). This Program, governed by the Public Call SETEC/MEC number 01/2018, of September 22, 2015 (hereafter Public Call), aspired to capacitate English teachers at Northern Virginia Community College, in the United States.

Despite the Public Call did not bring objectives related to internationalization actions, it was observed a clear explanation that the knowledge acquired by the Program participating teachers should be applied in their home institutions to contribute with teaching, research and innovation, services, and internationalization activities.

Vis-à-vis, by considering the geopolitics’ phenomenon of knowledge, which contributes to the commodification of education and, consequently, provokes damages in countries that are in peripheral conditions (^{LIMA; CONTEL, 2011}), we analyzed the discursive representations of internationalization by participants of the Program’s 1st edition. As legitimized research influxes in the geopolitics of knowledge are polarized in rich countries (^{NEZ; FRANCO, 2018}), our objective is justifiable, for the teacher can naturalize discourses, knowledge, attitudes, and values assimilated in that country, applying them to their practices without critical analysis.

Furthermore, grounded on ^{Vavrus and Pekol’s (2015)} observation that discussions around representation about internationalization were absent in the literature, it is pertinent to emphasize the discursive representations by English teachers who have experienced international education. With that, courses of action to construct a new epistemology for internationalization can be proposed, so it favors human education and social transformation.

This article discusses internationalization from a critical perspective (^{VAVRUS; PEKOL, 2015}, ^{STEIN, 2019}), for it considers education as a social practice capable of transforming marginalized groups. Through teachers who are " [...] determined and able to work inside and outside their classrooms in order to change the inequalities that exist both in education and in society as a whole" (^{DINIZ-PEREIRA; ZEICHNER, 2008, p. 17}, our translation), one can promote social justice. Thus, in the Brazilian context, as well as in other developing countries, it is essential that the internationalization of language teachers’ education can take place in this perspective, to promote significant movements for social change. In addition, it is noteworthy that in the case of English, a language with a high demand for internationalization, there is a need to devise teaching-learning strategies that promote more collaborative and less imposing language education. This means that teachers and students teach and learn English to build opportunities for change in their localities and not as a mechanism for subjection and reproduction of discourses and hegemonic social practices.

We understand that language teachers are political agents who are influenced by the ideologies of educational policies (language and internationalization etc.), so that, by their means, such policies can go from formal statements (laws) to practices that gain local meanings. In this sense, understanding the discursive representations of English teachers on the discourses of power involving internationalization is crucial to think critically in language education strategies that meet the needs of Brazilian students.

This qualitative-based work follows the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (2003; 2016) in dialogue with the discussions found in ^{Vavrus and Pekol (2015)}, and ^{Stein (2019)}, regarding Critical Internationalization (CI). As such, considering the interdisciplinary perspective value of CDA, the possible relationship between CDA and CI lies in the fact that both have interests that somehow are interconnected, in the sense that they dialogue with other theories and areas of knowledge (^{MAGALHÃES, 2005}). The former is interested in promoting social change based on discourse as social practice while the latter is guided by equity, ethics, and social justice. Based on these premises, we sought to answer the following research question: How are discursive representations about the internationalization of education evidenced by English teachers who took part in the SETEC-CAPES/ NOVA Program?

This article is organized as follows: in addition to this introduction, four sections and final considerations are included. The first section presents some notes about internationalization from a critical perspective, in the sense that it contributes to social justice, reducing inequalities and asymmetries. The second section discusses the internationalization of the continuing education of English teachers signaled by the Public Call that guides the Teacher Education Program. The third section addresses the theoretical-methodological assumptions of CDA that guided data generation and analysis. The fourth section presents an analysis of the discursive representations about internationalization reverberated by the participating teachers.

The internationalization of education from a critical perspective

As a result of global economic agreements, most internationalization activities are guided by economic and social imperatives (^{VAVRUS; PEKOL, 2015}). In the first one, educational institutions benefit financially from the reception of foreign students and international agreements, while in the second, these institutions promote greater international and intercultural awareness among their students so that they can compete in the global economy through guidelines from their social mission.

Although internationalization has gained importance in several parts of the world, educational institutions have to deal with neoliberal governments that reduce public investment in their activities, forcing them to adapt to limited funding. Thus, in the context of rich countries, institutions are forced to adopt market-based strategies, establishing partnerships with industries, increasing fees, and marketing programs and services, which have contributed to maintain their leadership. In the case of educational institutions located in economically fragile countries, with a shortage of public funding, the situation is quite different, as most of them do not have a globally recognized reputation or have difficulties in accessing private financial resources to carry out the most basic teaching and research activities (^{VAVRUS; PEKOL, 2015}).

Based on ^{Vavrus and Pekol (2015)}, and ^{Stein (2019)}, we aim at questioning the overwhelmingly positive and depoliticized approaches to internationalization, which value commercialization, competition, results, and the instrumentalization of educational and academic activities. Differently, we propose taking internationalization from a broader and more critical perspective, considering issues of equity, ethics, and social justice, to illuminate the inequalities embedded in internationalization.

From a critical point of view, internationalization starts from critical social theories applied to education and explains how inequalities are structured and reproduced. Therefore, the focus is on ideology, as it “[...] helps to explain the representational and symbolic dimensions of internationalization” (^{VAVRUS; PEKOL, 2015, p. 7}). For these scholars, the concept of cultural hegemony makes it possible to understand how the worldviews of the dominant social classes are naturalized by society, even though they contribute to the marginalization of the working class.

In this paper, we take discourse as a social practice constituted by the potential to provoke economic and political consequences through power relations. Therefore, as a practice, internationalization should not be naturalized as positive and politically favorable, but rather critically analyzed to see whether it fosters asymmetries or promotes fairer global relations. This way, it becomes possible “[...] to identify the continuation of enduring patterns of Eurocentric knowledge production, exploitative relationships, and inequitable access to resources” (^{STEIN, 2019, p. 3}). From this perspective, it is necessary to guide public decisions and studies with a view to internationalization for the public good, in a liberal perspective of human education; to internationalization for global solidarity, aimed at actions against the oppression and marginalization of cultures, and individuals (^{STEIN, 2019}).

Complementing these notes, ^{Lima and Maranhão (2009)} define internationalization as active and passive. Active internationalization is carried out by rich countries, which influences the world education system, and favors a hegemonic internationalization that contributes to imbalances and mismatches between the gains that central and peripheral countries obtain. On the other hand, passive internationalization is present in semi-peripheral and periphera countries of the world economy and is undertaken to enable an international academic and/or professional experience for students, teachers, and administrative technicians, so that they can access education in large academic centers, contributing to the modernization of some sectors of the educational institution. While in active internationalization there is the implementation of State policies and the export of educational programs, in passive internationalization, resources from peripheral countries help to finance education in central countries. Thus, it is important to resist the idea that internationalization is a naturalized and justifiable effect due to the globalization of the world economy, as it is not always guided by processes of integration, solidarity, and sustainability.

In several educational institutions, internationalization has been seen as a strategy that produces positive results, which naturalizes meanings and practices devoid of criticality on the part of some internationalization agents (teachers, researchers, managers, administrative technicians, among others). In this case, internationalization becomes a service that can be commercialized to raise the institution's position in international academic quality rankings. From a practica perspective, that occurs through actions of student and teacher mobility, partnerships between national and foreign researchers, publications, mainly in English, in international journals, etc. This internationalization perspective is validated by multilateral organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, disregarding reflections on the benefits of educational democratization (^{BRANDENBURG; DE WIT, 2011}).

The naturalization of the positive aspects of internationalization has been questioned, with the proposal of looking at the phenomenon from a critica lens. In this direction, ^{Leal, Moraes, and Oregioni (2018)} propose seventeen categories for the critical-reflective analysis of hegemony and counter-hegemony in this scenario. For these researchers, internationalization is based on the dominant matrix of power, and education is a field influenced by economic principles. Among the categories, two are worth mentioning for this work, as shown in table 1:

Despite this dichotomous construction, it’s possible to work “[...] with the idea of hybridisms, conflicting latencies, the coexistence of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic internationalization in the same context” (^{LEAL; MORAES; OREGIONI, 2018, p. 124}, emphasis added, our translation). Furthermore, ^{Leal, Moraes, and Oregioni (2018, p. 124)} emphasize that the classification of an internationalization project should consider empirical issues and not “[...] just the discourse or intention of the actors involved”.

In the next section, we present the Public Call that guides the English Teacher Education Program, as well as some considerations regarding its internationalization perspective.

The Public Call as a policy of/for the internationalization of the continuing education of English teachers

The year 2015 had positive results in the cultural and educational fields between Brazil and the United States. These two countries signed bilateral agreements that included agendas of interest to both of them. More specifically, the Brazilian government, represented by the Secretariat of Vocational and Technological Education (SETEC), made public the FNVSTE International Program for the Continuing Education of English Teachers, through wide dissemination of the Public Call resulting from the SETEC-CAPES/NOVA agreement.

From this perspective, we adopt the notion of genre systems as “[...] interrelated genres that interact with each other in specific settings” (^{BAZERMAN, 1994, p. 82}) to affirm that the Public Call is a genre preceded by other genres that created adequate institutional conditions for its materialization. Let's see, below, the texts that make up the discursive network of the Public Call:

The Public Call was made possible from the documents that regulate CAPES. Thus, texts T1, T2, and T3 demonstrate that this agency is a public institution that is legitimated to decide on issues that interest the Brazilian State. Among these issues, the T3 text addresses the teacher education policy, together with Law No. 11.502, of July 11, 2007, which in its 2nd paragraph establishes CAPES as responsible for formulating teacher education policies at different levels. Finally, texts T4 and T5 evoke the public notice of the Public Call, resulting from the international cooperation agreement between Brazil and the United States (^{CAVALCANTE, 2019}).

According to ^{Cavalcante (2019)}, the discursive network that makes up the Public Call is based on decrees and laws that incorporate foreign language policies into Brazilian educational policies. This is because there is a lack of effective policies that address the implementation of language and language policies and their cultures in language teacher education courses. In practice, the Brazilian government official texts that govern the educational field are greatly influenced by texts written by international organizations. Thus, there is a unilateral reproduction of foreign educational policies in Brazilian educational policy, resulting from tensions arising from global imperatives of internationalization. As an example, the application of the exam prepared by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to Brazilian students allows us to observe that the country requires satisfactory levels of student results without offering educational conditions for that.

The Public Call is established in an institutional discourse order whose function is to guide English teachers who intended to enroll in the Program. Thus, in order to discuss the perspective of internationalization in that text, we consider its general and specific objectives. Notably, in the latter, the term “internationalization" appears not as an objective materialized by the verb "internationalize", but rather as a secondary “backdrop” action, which might occur through the participation of the teachers in their respective campuses, after their experience in the United States. Let's see:

(1) In return for participating in the Program, selected candidates must work through a work plan, for a minimum period of one year, in the actions of the Languages without Borders Program of the Ministry of Education, in their institution of the Federal Network or other public schools in Brazil, in order to apply the acquired knowledge and contribute to teaching, research, service, innovation and internationalization actions and activities, as detailed below (^{BRASIL, 2015, p. 1-2}, emphasis added, our translation).

Thus, we identify in the semantics of the verbs “act”, “apply” and “contribute” actions to be performed by the English teachers in order to reflect on the quality of teaching offered by FNVSTE. However, internationalization, positioned as one of the axes to be benefited by the teaching work, is not evidenced as a dimension valued as a topic of the Program. In addition, we note that internationalization is designed as a process whose responsibility is delegated solely to the teacher, without any systematization and guidance strategy by a specialized team, government agency, or in dialogue with the international relations office of each participating institution.

Methodology

This work is guided by CDA (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2003}; ²⁰¹⁶; ^{RAMALHO; RESENDE, 2011} ), which considers that texts raise discussions about the notions of discourse, power, and ideology involving the symbolic systems of social practices representation.

CDA is a social theory of discourse that has been applied to socia scientific research, always linguistically and politically oriented towards socia change. Discourse, then, is analyzed from the three-dimensional framework: text, discursive practice, and social practice. Therefore, speech implies a mode of action that individuals apply to represent the world and influence others. There is a dialectical relationship of cause and effect between discourse (social practice) and social structure. The latter shapes and restricts the discourse through social and institutional relations and the agreed discursive norms. All dimensions of the social structure are directly or indirectly constituted by discourse so that it shapes social relations, identities, and institutions (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2016}).

Discourse is part of social practice and expresses modes of action, representation, and being. In other words, these modes are constructed through “[...] the relationship of the text to the event, to the wider physical and social world, and to the persons involved in the event” (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2003, p. 27}). The discursive representations about the internationalization of teachers participating in the Program were constructed in this way.

The discursive practice is constituted conventionally and creatively, which “[...] contributes to reproducing society (social identities, social relations, knowledge and belief systems) as it is, but also contributes to transforming it” (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2016, p. 96}, our translation). Although some discourses are fixed by social structures, there is an openness to discursive influences from other subjects and spaces that can cause changes in how the interactants perform a practice. That said, when analyzing any texts, it is essential to understand them beyond their broad sense as spoken or written language, as meanings are constructed from a social practice that encompasses political and ideological aspects.

The methodological processes of data generation started from the application of a structured questionnaire, consisting of 5 questions, through a digital platform and accompanied by a free and informed consent term of voluntary participation in the research. The questionnaire is organized as follows: the first part with questions to identify the participants (gender, age, marital status, children, teaching time at the institution, and academic background); and a second part focused on reflections on internationalization.

The questions in the questionnaire are: 01) What do the processes of internationalization of education mean for you?; 02) Based on the text of the Public Call for the SETEC-CAPES/NOVA Program, how do you describe the perspective of internationalization of education?; 03) Did the education processes developed by CAPES in partnership with the Community College Consortium, represented by NOVA, contribute to your teaching practice in English language and internationalization actions and activities?; 4) For an internationalized classroom, what strategies are needed by the English teacher? and; 5) Given your previous knowledge about the internationalization of education, your performance in the education course, and your practice as an English Language teacher, do you consider that the Public Call satisfactorily addresses the internationalization of education? If yes, what are the good points? If not, what should it address but which hasn't developed? In this article, we consider the data from the first question.

The Public Call intended to select up to 152 (one hundred and fifty-two) teachers, divided into two groups of up to 76 (seventy-six) participants each, who would be selected in two stages. The courses would take place from January to March 2016 (first group) and from July to August 2016 (second group). Each of these groups was divided into two subgroups, in order to carry out the Program at San Francisco City College, in San Francisco (California – USA), and at Northern Virginia Community College, in Alexandria (Virginia – USA). After the selection process, 156 (one hundred and fifty-six) teachers were included, 75 in the first group and 81 in the second.

Although the course was held geographically in different institutions, the second institution was responsible for designing the content, methods, and strategies of the Program. We note that the data generation questionnaire for this investigation was applied only to 34 teachers from the first group, who went to the city of Alexandria, including the first author of this article. Since these teachers interact through a group in the WhatsApp application, we chose to share the access link to the questionnaire, along with a term of voluntary participation in the research, so that the analytical empirical materials could be constituted. An email with the questionnaire was also sent to the teachers. After the deadline, we received 20 completed questionnaires.

As for the characterization of the participants, 55% are female and 45% male. They are aged between 36 and 40 years old (40%), 41 and 50 years old (30%), 25 and 35 years old (15%), and above 50 years old (15%). Regarding academic education at the undergraduate level, they have a degree in Portuguese/English Languages (60%) and English Language Arts (35%) or have a Bachelor's Degree in Portuguese/English Languages (5%). On what concerns graduate studies, respondents have Master’s (60%), Ph.D.’s (35%), and specialization (5%).

The discursive representations about internationalization evidenced by English teachers

In this section, we discuss the discursive representations of internationalization evidenced by English teachers from the understanding of ideology as a worldview that is implicitly manifested in intellectual and collective life (^{GRAMSCI, 2019}). For that, we also consider the maxim that discourses are "[...] ways of representing aspects of the world – the processes, relations and structures of the material world, the 'mental world' of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and so forth, and the social world” (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2003, p. 124}).

Interdiscursivity was manifested in the generated data and, therefore, it was chosen as a category of analysis. It is constituted by the presence of different, and even antagonistic, discourses in the same text, which occurs by choosing words and lexical items to establish semantic relations between text elements, and also by observing other aspects as presuppositions and metaphors (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2016}). In this sense, one cannot speak of homogeneous discourse, as the speaker manipulates the lexical items in the struggle to build a meaningful discourse to evoke practices that order this discourse and enable it to act in a certain context (^{BATISTA JR.; SATO; MELO, 2018}).

Interdiscursivity is related to representational meanings. Therefore, the following questions are made to the empirical material:

What discourses are drawn upon in the text, and how are they textured together? Is there a significant mixing of discourses? What are the features that characterize the discourses which are drawn upon (semantic relations between words, collocations, metaphors, assumptions, grammatical features...)? (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2003, p. 193}).

The answers to these questions indicate possible representations of different discursive identities. For ^{Ramalho and Resende (2011, p. 170}, our translation), “[...] the identification of a discourse in a text consists in identifying which parts of the world are represented (the central 'themes'), and in identifying the particular perspective by which they are represented”.

In table 3, we can see the answers to the question: “What do the processes of internationalization of education mean to you?”. It should be noted how the participants’ lexical choices evidence internationalization based on two interdiscursive axes.

It can be noted in the selected excerpts that the participants used different entities to nominalize their understanding of the internationalization process. This is because of their perspectives of the world, their personal and social identities, and their relationships with other people (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2003}), including the relationships they establish based on the FNVSTE institutional discourse they share. Thus, although all the concepts presented by the participating English teachers can easily be classified as positive ones, there are hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discursive representations that permeate them, albeit indirectly.

The use of nominal entities to designate processes is explained by ^{Fairclough (2003)}, in the sense that processes are "nominalized" and can be classified as "nominalizations" or "process nouns", that is, nouns with the quality of verbs. However, as seen in excerpts (2), (8), (9), (10), (11), (18), and (21), respondents apply verbal entities to designate the internationalization process, which can be related to the question of which verbs have the most significant illocutionary force of action.

We developed the analysis a little further considering that for the CDA analysis procedures, “[...] it is more productive to focus on how different discourses structure the world differently, and therefore on semantic relationships between words” (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2003, p. 129}), namely: synonymy, hyponymy and antonymy. In addition, the theoretical discussion of CI encourages confrontations in the face of impositions and naturalizations arising from the order of neoliberal colonialist and mercantilist society discourse.

According to ^{Souza (2018)}, the current globalization process in the capitalist world stimulates an internationalization guided by naturalized principles of hegemony and cultural homogeneity, against which it seems impossible to resist due to the absence of alternatives. In this way, globalization starts to guide internationalization, sometimes through the economic imperative, sometimes through the social, which means that the difference lies in the alignment that countries and institutions promote with a neoliberal discourse aimed at profit, or with a discourse of social cohesion. This can be reconstructed from an economic perspective as “[...] ‘human quality’ and ‘the ability to work as a team’ and as a ‘source’ of ‘efficiency and adaptability’” (^{FAIRCLOUGH, 2003, p. 128}). Furthermore, according to ^{Fairclough (2003, p. 128)}, “different discourses entai different policy priorities – policies to enhance competitiveness on the one hand, and social cohesion on the other”.

Concerning the discursive axis of "hegemonic internationalization", we found nominal phrases and enunciations such as: "opportunity for cultural enrichment" (4), "consequence of globalization" (6), "policies aimed at student mobility" and “preparation for insertion in the global labor market” (12), “opportunity to expand knowledge” (14), “ways to guarantee opportunities for improvement in studies and careers” (16), “quality improvement in the teaching and learning process” (18) and “unique opportunity for linguistic and cultural immersion essential to teacher education” (20). These lexical choices evoke an instrumentalist approach to internationalization with activities, objectives, and arrangements that are configured within a political-economic orientation that encourages competitiveness among students, ensuring the maintenance of that global economy model (^{VAVRUS; PEKOL, 2015}).

Thus, it is necessary to reflect on the fact that hegemonic discourses of power are infused in the “heart” of internationalization, as even the teachers participating in this research, who have already undergone an internationalized continuing education Program and most have a solid academic education, reproduce Eurocentric and colonial discursive representations in their speeches. The participants' hegemonic lexical choices inform an internationalization that is related to what ^{Stein (2019)} classifies as neutral, inevitable, and responsive to contemporary patterns of globalization.

In the axis of "counter-hegemonic internationalization", the teachers also made use of some nominal constructions such as: "integration of the institution's actions with other institutions abroad" (3), "the possibility of personal and professional growth" and "the quality of my work delivered to the community" (5), "exchange of experiences that add development to the institution" and "opportunities for academic, professional and human education for subjects" (7), "educational development" and "acceptance of the cultural diversity that shapes the world ” (9), “it goes beyond academic mobility” and “development of global citizens with a high level of intercultural competence” (11), “public policies” and “opportunities of knowledge expansion” (13), “expansion of access possibilities to knowledge", "development of more intercultural awareness" and "opportunities for plural experiences" (15), "significant exchanges among institutions, people, students, professors and academics [...] from different countries", "exchange of experiences" and "construction of knowledge that, when shared and globalized, becomes humanized" (17), "international cooperation among institutions [...] with foreign institutions" , “teaching/learning processes”, “carrying out collaborative research” and “personal and professional development” (19), and “society development” (21). The lexical choices positioned on the counter-hegemonic axis indicate meanings of internationalization that aim to minimize the differences in privileges between groups and encourage collaborative activities (^{VAVRUS; PEKOL, 2015}), as well as are guided by values such as partnership, exchange, and mutual benefit (^{STEIN, 2019}).

The analysis points to two distinct perspectives that guide the discursive representations of the participants regarding the understanding they have about internationalization, based on their experiences within the scope of the FNVSTE 's international continuing education Program for English teachers. On the one hand, there is a naturalized, imposing, and inevitable discourse of internationalization, legitimized by the conception of globalization as a phenomenon that stimulates the economic progress of the nation-state through the educational agenda. This internationalization, described as “hegemonic”, is materialized through instrumentalist and functionalist practices. On the other hand, the analyzed data evidenced discursive representations that also inform a “counter-hegemonic” internationalization, motivated by movements of exchange, collaboration, and social justice. From this perspective, human and social development is recognized as a dimension that can be stimulated by internationalization.

We emphasize that the dichotomy “[...] hegemonic internationalization” versus “counter-hegemonic internationalization [...]” is not well defined, and its descriptors may coexist in a hybrid and conflicting manner (^{LEAL; MORAES; OREGIONI, 2018}). This can be seen in the excerpts: (4), (16), (18), and (20), which present phrasal elements related sometimes to the concepts of enrichment, education, quality improvement, sometimes to the linguistic and cultural exchange, the cultural and sociopolitical approach, and the opportunity for critical reflection. Thus, it is considered a complex task to delimit the meanings present in the discursive representations on internationalization constructed by the teachers participating in the research.

Final considerations

In this article, we analyzed the discursive representations of internationalization reverberated by a group of English teachers from the Federal Network of Vocational Scientific and Technological Education (FNVSTE) participating in the SETEC-CAPES/NOVA Program for continuing education.

Following the theoretical-methodological guidelines of Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Internationalization studies, we perceived, through data analysis, that the teachers in question built inter-discourses of internationalization guided by the concept of globalization as an inevitable phenomenon that establishes the modes of operation of an economy highly based on market logic.

However, the ideologies of power signaled by the lexical choices of the participants evidenced two axes of discursive representation, that of hegemonic internationalization that values result and mainly stimulates international academic mobility activities, and the axis of counter-hegemonic internationalization, which values collaborative practices that impact the development of society.

Based on the data, we consider a complex task to delimit hegemonies and counter-hegemonies in the discursive representations reverberated by the participating teachers about internationalization, as hybrid and conflicting meanings coexist in these representations.