Understanding What Mainland Chinese Students Need to Transition to U.S. Colleges

Author(s):

Tang Heng(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

WERA Focal Meeting

Format:

Paper

Session Information

WERA SES 11 C, Higher Education Learning, Instruction and Student Preparation Across the Globe

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

17:15-18:45

Room:

305. [Main]

Chair:

Paul Conway

Contribution

Over the past five years, mainland Chinese undergraduate enrollment in U.S. colleges and around the world has soared. Amongst U.S. colleges, conversations are now shifting from recruitment strategies to best practices in supporting and retaining students. Chinese students face unique academic, social, and psychological challenges as they transition to a new learning environment(Bartlett & Fischer, 2011; Redden, 2014). In addition to student challenges, retention has become a growing concern as colleges face a rising number of international students who leave the institution prior to earning a degree as there appears to be a gap in understanding what students want and what they are getting.

Despite awareness that international students face more challenges, 64% of colleges involved in a survey reported that their offices were not engaging in specific practices to accommodate international students’ special needs (Fischer, 2014a). This necessitates an examination of what exactly international students want when they enter U.S. colleges. As mainland Chinese undergraduates constitute the largest proportion (one third) of international undergraduates in the U.S., this study investigates what 18 Chinese undergraduates claim they need to better transition to U.S. colleges.

I propose a conceptual framework—drawing upon concepts from anthropological, psychological, and postmodern work around culture—which I title “hybridized sociocultural framework.” This framework situates participants within their sociocultural contexts to attain a more holistic understanding of their experiences. Ideas from various scholars have been distilled (Abu-Lugbod, 1991; González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978) into three key tenets:

1) Humans are embedded within and shaped by their sociocultural contexts.

2) Humans participate in more than one sociocultural context, and their participation, motivations, attitudes, and behaviors may change within each context and across time.

3) Humans possess agency in improvising, interacting, or contesting the values, beliefs, and behavior associated with different social-cultural contexts.

This framework allows me to examine mainland Chinese students’ issues and needs within the differing contexts of China and the U.S., understand how shifting and multiple contexts shape their experiences and desires, and privilege their voices as they interact with and interpret the values and expectations in U.S. colleges.

While this research is conducted in the U.S., the phenomenon of Chinese student enrollment in higher education institutions around the world is not unique to the U.S. Thus, this research hopes to enhance cross-cultural understanding and inform institutions worldwide on how they can help their international students better transition to a new environment.

Method

This proposal is part of a larger study examining Chinese undergraduates’ experiences of and responses to U.S. colleges, thus data collection extended beyond the purpose of this proposal. I used a demographic questionnaire to collect background information about participants to better understand their personal circumstances. Each participant was interviewed thrice, approximately once a quarter, to capture their experiences over one academic year. The first interview focused on learning about the participants and understanding their schooling in China, and the second and third on their U.S. college experiences, changes they experienced, and how they wanted various constituents in college to help them better transition. To reduce memory recall bias and allow participants more time to reflect, I also engaged them in four journal entries to complement the interviews. Participants were recruited via snowball sampling. Eighteen participants were recruited—nine freshmen, nine sophomores—mostly studying business-related, mathematics, or science subjects, as more than half of mainland Chinese students pursue these subjects in the U.S. While I did not intend for findings of my study to be generalizable, I hope that the findings could be transferable across other cases with similar circumstances(Schwandt, 2007)(Schwandt, 2007)(Schwandt, 2007). As such, I selected participants who had backgrounds similar to many mainland Chinese undergraduates. All students were unmarried and under 20, held student visas, and had no prior educational experience outside of China, typical characteristics of Chinese students in the U.S. To facilitate face-to-face interviews, participants were recruited from colleges in a large northeast U.S. city in which the author resided. Data collected were supplemented with Chinese/English findings in existing research and non-research literature. During data analysis, I iteratively analyzed the data using LeCompte and Schensul’s (1999) item, pattern, and structural analysis approach. Item-level data was tagged (e.g. recurring people who helped), categorized, and regrouped within patterns, by examining items for similarities, co-occurrence, and corroboration with other data sources. Finally, a structure was derived to describe the patterns’ relationships. To enhance credibility, I triangulated data, and searched for discrepant evidence, negative cases, and recurring ideas.

Expected Outcomes

Participants’ responses have been organized into two main categories: social and academic well-being. In terms of social well-being, almost all participants referenced the desire to make U.S. friends and be accepted. Participants hoped to gain social acceptance through more warmth, encouragement, and interest from their U.S. peers and teachers. Participants shared that “Americans can be gentler to international students” and ought not to think of them as “America’s enemy”. At the same time, they suggested that the school could help them better transition by organizing more social and cultural activities for all students, such as home stays or mentors they can approach. Academically, participants hoped that there could be more empathy, flexibility, and accommodation from their teachers. They shared that when teachers take the initiative to ask them if they needed help, or “pay more attention” to them, they felt more encouraged to respond. Additionally, they hoped for more support from teachers, for example, in providing more contextual information and being explicit with expectations. These findings diverged from previous research citing that international students were most dissatisfied with the lack of access to jobs/internships, affordability, and scholarship availability (Fischer, 2014b), suggesting variability in needs between Chinese and other international students, and of Chinese/international students across institutions and cohorts. Thus, colleges need to disaggregate international students to better cater to their specific needs. Additionally, findings highlight the pertinence of enhancing inter-group/cultural awareness and social interaction across all constituents in the college to reduce stereotyping and promote social integration. Given how higher education institutions act as a platform for future diplomatic understanding, it is thus critical that colleges worldwide attend closely to understanding the needs of their international students.

References

Abu-Lugbod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In R. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present (pp. 137-162). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Bartlett, T., & Fischer, K. (2011, November 3). The China conundrum, The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com Fischer, K. (2014a). Campuses focus more on meeting international students' needs. Chronicle of Higher Education, 60(24). Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Campuses-Focus-More-on-Meeting/144825/ Fischer, K. (2014b). Retention is a growing issue as more international students come to U.S. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Retention-Is-a-Growing-Issue/146807/ González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gutiérrez, K. D., & Rogoff, B. (2003). Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational Researcher, 32(5), 19-25. Redden, E. (2014). Chinese students in the classroom. Inside Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/new-research-examines-how-chinese-students-respond-challenges-classroom#sthash.Yp8YDh6o.dpbs Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman (Eds.), Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (pp. 19-105). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Author Information

Tang Heng (presenting / submitting)

Teachers College, Columbia University

Singapore

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.