Exploring the Experience of Mainland Chinese Undergraduate Students at an American University PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Exploring the Experience of Mainland Chinese Undergraduate Students at an American University PDF full book. Access full book title Exploring the Experience of Mainland Chinese Undergraduate Students at an American University by Wei Wu. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Wei Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Previous studies of the experiences of mainland Chinese students in the U.S. have focused on graduate students, the most prolific Chinese demographic change before 2008. However, a significant increase in mainland Chinese undergraduate students has occurred in American universities since 2008, and these students have different features from Chinese graduate students. Meanwhile, research on the mainland Chinese undergraduate student experience was very limited. For example, what are the sources of stress of these Chinese undergraduate students? What were their coping strategies? What changes did they have in the process? How do they evaluate their experience in the U.S.? This study is an attempt to answer these questions. This study employed a qualitative research method and a case study research design to examine the experience of six mainland Chinese undergraduate students in a midwestern American public university. Convenience, snowball and criterion sampling were used to identify the participants, who were conducted a semi-structured interview with in-depth follow-up probing sessions to yield data. Berry's (1997) acculturation framework was the theoretical framework for the study. Patterns that emerged from the data include: (1) six stressors are discovered in participants' acculturation process: language barrier, cultural difference, life skills-related stressors, relationships with others, academic studies, and concern for the future (including job opportunity and pressure for marriages). The stressors vary based on individual factors and their length of time in the U.S; (2) participants used three coping strategies to cope with stressful situation: problem focused, emotions focused and avoidance-orientation strategies; participants mainly rely on friends or roommates to cope with problems and are not aware of university's resources for help; (3) participants experienced many changes in this process, including improved English skill, independence, stress management, changed perceptions about U.S. and China; (4) participants' overall evaluation of the experience is positive but they don't think studying in the U.S. is for everyone; they hope university to provide more help overcome the difficulties; (5) participants also talked about dissatisfaction about Chinese education, cheating problems at the American university, using agents when applying for universities, desire to return to China eventually and their family financial support. Themes emerged crossing all patterns included: (1) participants did not what to expect before they went abroad but managed to overcome difficulties in the U.S.; (2) participants are willing to make changes and improve themselves by overcoming all barriers with the resources they know; (3) participants desire more help from the university to overcome the barriers to a better education; (4) participants seek better job opportunities whether in China or in the U.S. soon after graduation, but they eventually will go back China; (5) participants' family fully support participants' endeavor to study in the U.S. As a conclusion, the study makes recommendations to American university administrators, professors and Chinese students who plan to come to the U.S. American universities should develop a holistic approach to help Chinese international students. Language and cultural training and engagement is important. Partnership programs between American students and Chinese students may be established to help them with language and cultural training. At the same time, life-skills, relationship skills, academic study skills and training are needed for students who came during high school or after high school. The university should also use standardized test for admission to ensure quality of students. Professional career help is a very critical need for these students in China and in America. Finally, the study recommends further research to better understand this unique population.
Author: Wei Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Previous studies of the experiences of mainland Chinese students in the U.S. have focused on graduate students, the most prolific Chinese demographic change before 2008. However, a significant increase in mainland Chinese undergraduate students has occurred in American universities since 2008, and these students have different features from Chinese graduate students. Meanwhile, research on the mainland Chinese undergraduate student experience was very limited. For example, what are the sources of stress of these Chinese undergraduate students? What were their coping strategies? What changes did they have in the process? How do they evaluate their experience in the U.S.? This study is an attempt to answer these questions. This study employed a qualitative research method and a case study research design to examine the experience of six mainland Chinese undergraduate students in a midwestern American public university. Convenience, snowball and criterion sampling were used to identify the participants, who were conducted a semi-structured interview with in-depth follow-up probing sessions to yield data. Berry's (1997) acculturation framework was the theoretical framework for the study. Patterns that emerged from the data include: (1) six stressors are discovered in participants' acculturation process: language barrier, cultural difference, life skills-related stressors, relationships with others, academic studies, and concern for the future (including job opportunity and pressure for marriages). The stressors vary based on individual factors and their length of time in the U.S; (2) participants used three coping strategies to cope with stressful situation: problem focused, emotions focused and avoidance-orientation strategies; participants mainly rely on friends or roommates to cope with problems and are not aware of university's resources for help; (3) participants experienced many changes in this process, including improved English skill, independence, stress management, changed perceptions about U.S. and China; (4) participants' overall evaluation of the experience is positive but they don't think studying in the U.S. is for everyone; they hope university to provide more help overcome the difficulties; (5) participants also talked about dissatisfaction about Chinese education, cheating problems at the American university, using agents when applying for universities, desire to return to China eventually and their family financial support. Themes emerged crossing all patterns included: (1) participants did not what to expect before they went abroad but managed to overcome difficulties in the U.S.; (2) participants are willing to make changes and improve themselves by overcoming all barriers with the resources they know; (3) participants desire more help from the university to overcome the barriers to a better education; (4) participants seek better job opportunities whether in China or in the U.S. soon after graduation, but they eventually will go back China; (5) participants' family fully support participants' endeavor to study in the U.S. As a conclusion, the study makes recommendations to American university administrators, professors and Chinese students who plan to come to the U.S. American universities should develop a holistic approach to help Chinese international students. Language and cultural training and engagement is important. Partnership programs between American students and Chinese students may be established to help them with language and cultural training. At the same time, life-skills, relationship skills, academic study skills and training are needed for students who came during high school or after high school. The university should also use standardized test for admission to ensure quality of students. Professional career help is a very critical need for these students in China and in America. Finally, the study recommends further research to better understand this unique population.
Author: Dennis T. Yang
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149852169X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Pursuit of the Chinese Dream in America illuminates the hopes, expectations, challenges, and aspirations of this generation of Chinese students as they pursue higher education at American universities. Based on interviews with Chinese students, parents, teachers, and educational agents in Shanghai, this ethnographic study examines the cultural, economic, and social factors that have fostered the increase of Chinese undergraduates on American campuses. Dennis T. Yang describe the pivotal roles that parents, teachers, peers, and educational agents played as students embarked on the college admissions process for American universities, with an emphasis on the prominent influence of parents during the college decision-making process. Yang addresses how his interviewees, particularly the parents and students, interpreted and evaluated the importance of cultural, social, and economic capital in their lives, and how the drive to obtain these forms of capital, to varying degrees, affected the families’ decisions to conceive of and support the study abroad option.
Author: Xuya Chen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asian American college students
Languages : en
Pages : 62
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Wei Zuo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Get Book Here
Book Description
Under the worldwide trend of internationalization of higher education, the number of Chinese students studying in the U.S. has increased dramatically in the past ten years. In some American universities, such as a large research university in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. where this research was conducted, Chinese students are the largest segment among all the international students. Through the lens of poststructuralist conceptualization of identity (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2008; Hall, 1996), communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger,1998), investment (Norton Peirce, 1995) and imagined communities (Kanno & Norton, 2003), this research focused on Chinese undergraduate students' academic socialization experiences in the U.S., especially concerning their proficiency in English and academic knowledge, their interactions with professors, TAs and classmates, and their understandings of their identities over time. This study offered opportunities for Chinese undergraduate students' to have their voices heard and their stories shared. Through mixed qualitative methods with ethnographic characteristics, such as interviews and observations, the research interpreted experiences of six student participants, found differences and commonalities among them, and factors that influenced their experiences. By triangulating data from multiple sources and carefully analyzing data, this study has found that there are many differences among the six Chinese undergraduate students, and no major generalized behavior of Chinese undergraduate students could be identified. In some ways, Chinese undergraduate student participants in this study are not that different from their American peers, in the sense that there are discrepancies in students' frequency of visiting instructor's office hours and speaking up in class no matter where students are from. Factors such as students' personality and students' previous experience helped explain their behaviors. On the other hand, these Chinese international student participants showed some common tendencies and challenges caused by language and cultural differences, which distinguish them from American students. One should be cautious in viewing Chinese students as a homogeneous group or stereotyping their academic behaviors. Additionally, the researcher's reflections on the findings are presented along with suggestions to smooth the process of academic socialization for future Chinese undergraduate students. Suggestions were given by current Chinese international students, and their professors and TAs. Implications of the study for current and future Chinese international students, their instructors, as well as future researchers studying international students' learning are proposed. I propose that a joint effort should be made by international students themselves, their American peers, professors, TAs and university administrators to together ease international students' process of academic socialization.
Author: Chao Hong
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chinese students
Languages : en
Pages : 122
Get Book Here
Book Description
This study explored the lived experience of Chinese undergraduate students who study at one university in Minnesota. This university is a small size university located in rural Minnesota that has thirty-five Chinese undergraduate students. A phenomenological research method was used to reveal themes of the Chinese undergraduate students' study abroad experiences. Open-ended questions were asked in the one-on-one online interviews with seven undergraduate students from China at this university. Interviews were conducted in Chinese, and the English translations of the transcripts were analyzed. Five themes emerged after the analysis process, namely, (1) Unclear experiences and motivations; (2) Unique experience enhanced by differences; (3) Hardships and challenges as part of the experience; (4) Overcoming challenges is not easy; (5) positive experience. The findings from this study suggested that English language proficiency and cultural differences impact Chinese students' study abroad experiences. Lack of engagement with domestic students and limited assistance from the university influenced Chinese students' academic performance and also slowed down the process to fit in the local culture. Though the majority of the participants indicated they had positive experiences in the United States, they did not have clear expectations before they came to study at the university. The findings from this study provided opportunities to examine Chinese students' study abroad experiences from the micro level and offer a variety of perspectives for different groups of people such as parents, current Chinese students, faculty and staff, and future students.
Author: Wendi Shen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Karolina Achirri
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this dissertation, I set out to explore and analyze the experiences of six international students from mainland China (henceforth student-participants), who are currently undergraduate students at a midwestern university in the United States (henceforth Grand Lake University or GLU), alongside the experiences of their four instructors (henceforth instructor-participants). In addition, I aim to investigate interculturality in the teaching-learning context. Participants include four instructors of three different courses (an English as a second language class, business management class, and a college writing class) and six Chinese undergraduate students attending these classes. As a multiple case study (Stake, 1995, 2006), this project comprises two collective case studies, a student-participants collective case study and an instructor-participants collective case study. The theoretical lenses are those of interculturality in education (Dervin, 2016b). I present a literature review where I identify the experiences of Chinese undergraduate students in the U.S. and these of their instructors thematically. I depict both enriching and challenging experiences that crop up during learning and teaching in the U.S. For my data in both collective case studies, I conducted semi-structured interviews as a main data source. I also observed classes for both case studies but conducted participant observations and collected artifacts for instructor-participants collective case study only. Additional data sources were a researcher's journal, field notes journals and email correspondence with both groups of participants throughout the process. I then applied holistic coding (Saldana, 2016) to derive codes and patterns from collected data and transformed them into themes in the findings section of this dissertation. I conducted transcript checks with all participants by sending them interview transcripts and asking for their feedback. Also, in my analysis, I emphasized the experiences of the participants (students and instructors alike) and how they construct intercultural learning and teaching. I discuss the findings from both collective case studies within the motif of transformative internationalization being possible through kindness (Abelmann & Kang, 2014; Loreman, 2011). I show that in order to reach transformative rather than symbolic internationalized learning environment, all voices must be heard. The four instructor-participants demonstrated open-minded approaches towards Chinese undergraduate students and positive perceptions of them, making the multiple cultures of learning they brought to their classrooms an asset rather than a barrier in a variety of ways and to different extents. The instructor-participants demonstrated not only culturally responsive pedagogies but also pedagogies that were interculturally rich and encouraging. Culturally, to the student-participants, kindness seemed to be a crucial factor. Wherever any instances of kindness were offered to them, either directly or indirectly, the student-participants thrived in their communication with instructor-participants and peers, in their social life, and in their evolving ideas about GLU. I also found that student-participants prepared thoroughly for their sojourns and depicted multiple types of motivation to study in the U.S. (including familial pressure and better career opportunities afterwards). I examined their language experiences at GLU alongside their sociocultural endeavors, which turned out to be challenging but educational and enriching. Based on these findings I also suggest directions for future research.
Author: Yingyi Ma
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545568
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Get Book Here
Book Description
Over the past decade, a wave of Chinese international undergraduate students—mostly self-funded—has swept across American higher education. From 2005 to 2015, undergraduate enrollment from China rose from under 10,000 to over 135,000. This privileged yet diverse group of young people from a changing China must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the two most powerful countries in the world. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does this experience mean to them? What does American higher education need to know and do in order to continue attracting these students and to provide sufficient support for them? In Ambitious and Anxious, the sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of this new wave of Chinese students based on research in both Chinese high schools and American higher-education institutions. Ma argues that these students’ experiences embody the duality of ambition and anxiety that arises from transformative social changes in China. These students and their families have the ambition to navigate two very different educational systems and societies. Yet the intricacy and pressure of these systems generate a great deal of anxiety, from applying to colleges before arriving, to studying and socializing on campus, and to looking ahead upon graduation. Ambitious and Anxious also considers policy implications for American colleges and universities, including recruitment, student experiences, faculty support, and career services.
Author: Anke Li
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Students from Mainland China are the largest international group in both United States and Canada, and their numbers have grown substantially. The influx of Chinese students has contributed to American and Canadian higher education institutions academically, financially, and culturally. However, due to rapid changes of social, cultural and political contexts in both home and host countries, new patterns of student mobility arise. Especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, higher education institutions in US and Canada need to understand international students' needs and prepare better to attract and serve international students. My dissertation employed interviews to explore in-depth perspectives from students within the tradition of qualitative research. I conducted in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 55 Chinese undergraduate students, 21 of them at Cheer University in the US and 34 of them at Tree University in Canada. My study shows that Chinese students' college choices were mainly influenced by push factors - by Gaokao and by the type of secondary education that developed in China under Gaokao. In addition, studying abroad was not only about knowledge or degree. It was also about with experiences, such as broadened views and skills. In this sense, middle-class families invested not only in knowledge and degrees, but also in the experiences of living abroad. Parents and their children strongly believed that the entire process is to their advantage in the future when they are compared to people who did not study abroad. Recommendations are made for both universities and future young Chinese people who want to study abroad.
Author: Mei Tian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000042413
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 150
Get Book Here
Book Description
Since China proposed its “Belt and Road Initiative” in 2013 to boost its influence on international affairs and “cultivate international contacts who are friendly toward China”, the number of foreign students in China has surge exponentially. Yet global political changes have added tensions and challenges to the education of international students. This book is one of the first works to discuss the educational experiences of international students in China. Using survey research and qualitative studies to study participants in degree-bearing and language programmes at regular universities and Sino-foreign universities located in different parts of the country, the book covers a variety of topics across education, including international students’ intercultural experience, teacher–student classroom interaction, learning and teaching Chinese as a foreign language, academic adaptation and identity formation in higher educational contexts. This book is essential for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers of international student education in China. It can also benefit prospective international students considering pursuing higher education in China.
