Title: Reflecting on research with international students as a thematic subfield of higher education research
Time: 21 November 2024 at 16:00-17:30 (HK Time)
Abstract:
Research with international students becomes a vast subfield. A challenge for researchers, then, is identifying research gaps and developing critical reflections on why identified omissions are problematic for knowledge, theory, or practice. To respond to this gap, this seminar reports on our mapping of the subfield of existing research with international students through a series of systematic literature reviews and reflects on constructionism in research methodologies within broader education studies. Referencing Macfarlane’s (2012, 2022) visual mapping, this project has recreated an “ideological seascape” of research with international students and highlighted several critical points about the subfield (see Figure 1). We argue that much of the research adopts deficit narratives of international students, depicting them as wholly experiencing “challenges” or “struggles”. Pedagogic research also often problematically attempts to “fix” perceived deficits through assimilative lenses. We draw attention to the criticality of future studies and the need for the explicit theorisation and/or conceptualization of objects and the social processes pertaining to international students.
Source: Mittelmeier, J., Lomer, S., Cockayne, H., & He, R. (2024, p. 24)
Speaker:
- Dr Jenna Mittelmeier: Senior Lecturer in International Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, where her research focuses broadly on the internationalisation of higher education and more specifically on the experiences and treatment of international students.
- Professor Catherine Montgomery: Professor of Education and Deputy Executive Dean Global in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health at the University of Durham, where her research focuses on mobilities and immobilities in higher education and the internationalisation and decolonisation of curriculum and knowledge.
- Dr Heather Cockayne: Lecturer in Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, where her research focuses on the experiences of international students and how internationalisation shapes pedagogy and curricula.
- Dr Rui He: Lecturer in Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, where her research focuses on international and intercultural education and cross-cultural and developmental psychology.
- Pinyan Lin: PhD candidate at the Manchester Institute of Education, where her research focuses on educational leadership, school-to-school collaboration and critical policy studies
- Dr Ying Yang: Post-doctoral fellow at Centre for Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies, where her research focuses on international student recruitment, accessibility of international higher education and education agents.
Please contact CHELPS for more information about the event details.
Email: chelps@eduhk.hk
Website: www.chelps.eduhk.hk