NAVIGATING EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS IN THE TRANSNATIONAL CLASSROOM: A CRITICAL INTERPRETIVE STUDY OF KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE BETWEEN WESTERN TRANSNATIONAL FACULTY AND EMIRATI STUDENTS IN UAE HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This critical interpretive study examines the teaching and learning process in universities in the United Arab Emirates and what it reveals about hierarchies of knowledge in transnational higher education. Although UAE universities are framed as sites of global exchange, teaching and learning frequently take place through curricula organized around Western disciplinary traditions. Employing semi-structured interviews with transnational faculty and Emirati students, together with a critical content analysis of course syllabi from public and private universities, the study finds that Western knowledge is routinely centered as the dominant source of epistemic authority, while Emirati knowledge appears more as contextual examples. The findings show that this knowledge hierarchy is reproduced, negotiated, and contested through critical classroom dialogue, relational pedagogy, faculty efforts to connect course content to students’ lived realities, and faculty epistemic reflexivity. The study contributes to scholarship on transnational higher education by illuminating how the politics of knowledge in transnational higher education become visible in the everyday enactment of curriculum, pedagogy, and classroom interaction.