Alina Schartner - Intercultural Transitions in Higher Education: International Student Adjustment and Adaptation

Intercultural Transitions in Higher Education

Studies in Social Interaction
Series Editors: Steve Walsh, Paul Seedhouse and Christopher Jenks

Presenting data from a range of social contexts including education, the media, the workplace and professional development, the Studies in Social Interaction series uncovers, among other things, the ways in which tasks are accomplished, identities formed and communities established. Each volume in the series places social interaction at the centre of discussion and presents a clear overview of the work that has been done in a particular context. Books in the series provide examples of how data can be approached and used to uncover social interaction themes and issues, and explore how research in social interaction can feed into a better understanding of professional practices and develop new research agendas. Through stimulating tasks and accompanying commentaries, readers are engaged and challenged to reflect on particular themes and relate the discussion to their own context.

Series Editors
Steve Walsh is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University

Paul Seedhouse is Professor of Educational and Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University

Christopher Jenks is Assistant Professor of English and Intensive English/TESOL Coordinator at the University of South Dakota

Titles available in the series:

Visit the Studies in Social Interaction website at www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ssint

Intercultural Transitions in Higher Education

International Student Adjustment and Adaptation

Alina Schartner and Tony Johnstone Young

For Rupert, who is growing up to be a citizen of the world.

To Carolyn, Thomas and Anna, who are all the better for being international. With love.

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com

Alina Schartner and Tony Johnstone Young, 2020

Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jacksons Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4744 3124 8

The right of Alina Schartner and Tony Johnstone Young to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

FIGURES

TABLES

There are many people without whom this book would not have been possible. We would like to thank the series editors, Steve Walsh, Paul Seedhouse and Chris Jenks, for their support, encouragement and feedback. We also owe a great deal of gratitude to Mike Handford, Lou Harvey, Zhu Hua and Robert McKenzie, who acted as critical friends and generously gave their time to read and comment on draft chapters. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers, who offered invaluable advice and feedback on our book proposal and on its drafts. We owe our thanks to Edinburgh University Press for its support in publishing this book, in particular Laura Williamson, for her patience, advice and guidance. For research assistance on the retrospective student accounts presented in , we would like to thank Kirsty Blewitt and Estelle Yong-Dessouroux. We are grateful to all those colleagues who share our interest in the international student experience and with whom we have had the pleasure to work, both in the UK and further afield. Their work and camaraderie have inspired us and guided our thinking. They include Joana Almeida, Adam Brandt, John Edwards, Adrian Holliday, Hans Ladegaard, Yu Maemura, Rola Naeb, Maggie Pitts, Itesh Sachdev, Peter Sercombe, Navaporn Snodin, Sue Robson and Scott Windeatt. We have also had the pleasure of working with some excellent PhD students, who have developed and taken our work further; they include Fatimah Alsaadi, Yuwei Liang, Hanh Pho, Nattaya Srisakda and Xuan Zhao. A special word of gratitude is due to Carolyn Marr for meticulously checking references and helping us format our book. Last but not least, we need to thank the students, both home and international, whose stories we unpack within this book. We are indebted to them for sharing their experiences with us, and feel humbled and privileged for having been allowed to be part of their journeys.

We thank all of these people for their contributions. Any omissions or errors are, of course, entirely our own.

In June 2016, the International Association of Language and Social Psychology (IALSP) awarded Alina Schartner the James J. Bradac early career prize for her work on the international student experience. This recognition has inspired our book.

Research for this book was facilitated by a Newton Fund award to develop researcher links and support workshops as part of the Internationalisation of Higher Education:Developing Values-based Intercultural Research Approaches project. It was also facilitated by a Newton Advanced Fellowship co-funded by the British Academy and the Thailand Research Fund, Enhancing the Quality of the International Student and Staff Mobility Experience (AF160059). We very gratefully acknowledge their support.

1.1 AIMS, STRUCTURE AND SCOPE

This book addresses a global, international and intercultural phenomenon the fact that more than five million people are studying for a higher education (HE) degree abroad (OECD 2018). These numbers have grown considerably in recent years, and despite attempts by some governments to slow or reduce them, are still on the rise (UIS 2013; OECD 2018). In this book, we specifically address the human side of this phenomenon. We explore what it is like to be an international student (IS), and what makes it a positive and successful experience or otherwise. We investigate how, within this phenomenon, peoples experiences are researched, understood, supported and enhanced. The book is centred in ongoing research by the authors, conducted since 2011; some has been published elsewhere, some for the first time here. It also explores how others have investigated similar phenomena. We aim, essentially, to bring it all together in a conceptually new way and point to ways forward.

Specifically, we first present a survey and summary of our own and others recent research, drawing together and analysing thought and findings from across the spectrum of relevant interest areas social psychology, education, applied linguistics and intercultural communication studies. From this, we have developed a new heuristic integrated conceptual model of the IS experience that can gauge the adjustment and adaptation trajectories of this unique and important sojourner group. This integrates theory and recent empirical research exploring the academic, psychological and sociocultural aspects of, and influences on, the experience of study abroad. The model was developed through the deployment of a methodological toolkit that shows how different ontological perspectives on culture, interculturality and identity can be integrated into a mixed-methods research design. The toolkit will provide a guided practical application of the conceptual model by showcasing how qualitative process-oriented perspectives can be integrated with quantitative outcome-oriented approaches in the study of intercultural transition across different contexts. Through this toolkit, we will also show how the model can serve as a reference point for a research agenda. Another important contribution is a longitudinal perspective, which is very unusual in research in the area, where a phenomenon with effects that are likely to run through a lifetime is investigated. The data we present recognise that the international student experience begins with factors that influence whether, when and where to study aboard, extends into the experience itself, and continues into the effects of the experience on the future life of former alumni.