Education abroad, human capital development, and national competitiveness: China��s brain gain strategies

This is a documentary study of education abroad policy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) between 1978 and 2009. By examining the dynamics underpinning the PRC state’s efforts to shape the flow of Chinese students and scholars from and into China, this article reveals the major strategies that have enabled education abroad to become a source of brain gain. It argues that China’s brain gain strategies feature three characteristics: a proactive diplomatic approach to international educational relations; strategic dependence on foreign higher education resources and a decentralized economic mechanism to raise foreign-trained human capital. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of Chinese experience for our understanding of the complex and dynamic relations between the state, the market, universities and international relations as relating to cross-border academic mobility, international educational relations, and national development in a globalizing world.     

Getting there and staying in: first-generation indigenous students’ educational pathways into Chilean higher education

Drawing on a total of 26 life history interviews with indigenous students in higher education, the article examines the role of activating valued resources and personal strategies to navigate unequal pathways into higher education. In Chile, the historical inequalities for indigenous people’s access to higher education are beginning to be reverted, but these changes misrecognize ongoing disadvantages in regard to experiencing university life. Selection choices regarding the institution and course are based on restricted information sources and prior knowledge, whilst the capital required to succeed is heavily biased toward higher socioeconomic backgrounds. This notwithstanding, students’ transitions into higher education are marked by spontaneous adaptations to work routines, managing crises, and the activation of other resources for ‘staying in’. Emphasis is placed on the resilience expressed by these young people, as the first-generation from their families to access higher education, to negotiate cumulative disadvantages from low-quality educational establishments and poverty.     

Informational capital and the transition to university: First‐in‐family students' experiences in Austrian higher education

The agenda for widening participation in higher education has led to increasing numbers of students with a broader range of education and family backgrounds. However, transitioning to the university landscape remains a highly complex negotiation process, especially for first‐in‐family students, who cannot draw on previous experience from higher education in their families. Gaining access to informational capital—a combination of cultural and social capital—plays a crucial role in managing education transitions. We draw on rich empirical data obtained from 26 autobiographical narrative interviews with first‐in‐family university students in Austria to investigate how transitions to university are affected by informational capital. We also explore how access to informational capital was influenced by (1) institutional practices, such as initiatives to support students, especially first‐year students; and (2) cultural fit—the extent to which a student's cultural capital corresponded with the dominant cultural capital in the field of their chosen discipline or higher education establishment. Our findings show that gaining access to informational capital was strongly affected by the institutional practices at universities within the different disciplines, thus highlighting the importance of higher education institutions in supporting their students during transition processes. We conclude with policy implications for how higher education institutions can assist first‐in‐family students to succeed at university.     

Why university students choose an international education: A case study in Malaysia

Why has Australian offshore higher education become the educational investment of choice for many students? What benefits do students anticipate from this education? What is the relationship between educational goals and educational experience? To address these questions, this paper draws on findings from empirical research conducted with students studying at an offshore campus of an Australian university in Malaysia. It was found that students typically chose to enroll with the Australian university to receive an international education. Reasons offered for seeking an international education effectively delineated two groups of students. For Malaysian nationals, an international education was valued largely as a passport to employment with (Western) multinational corporations operating in Malaysia. Generally the Malaysian students made positional investments in Australian offshore higher education. For non-Malaysian students an international education was typically selected as an aid to procuring a new identity. These students chose an international education with the hope of expunging provincial outlooks. From international education, they wanted new ways of viewing the world, new habits of thinking and new skills and approaches. They sought a personal metamorphosis. These students, therefore, typically made self-transformative investments in international education. The paper further shows that investment choices influenced the way students experienced their education. Of the two populations distinguished by investment type, students who made self-transformative investments were more likely to respond positively to challenging education experiences associated with studying at the campus.     

International students in the first years of senior secondary schooling in Australia: Longing for belonging

Most research on international students’ experiences has focused on tertiary settings and consistently shows that this cohort negotiates significant risks during their time abroad. This paper draws on data from the first year of a three-year Australian Research Council funded study to address the un(der)examined cohort of young people who complete their secondary school education as international students and temporary sojourners in Australia. We analyse the data from the initial interviews undertaken with 60 Year 10 international students during their first year of the senior secondary schooling. Drawing upon the theoretical resources associated with the politics of belonging, we ask if, and in what ways, students felt themselves to be marked as ‘other’ to constructed educational and social norms. We note the significant role that online activity played in helping students deal with feelings of disconnect and exclusion.     

Working on arithmetic word problems when English is an additional language

There has been little research in the UK into how students learning English as an additional language (EAL) learn mathematics. This article reports results from a three‐year study of the participation of learners of EAL in Year 5 in an arithmetic word problem task. The research, drawing on ideas from discursive psychology, used discourse analysis to explore patterns of attention in students' interaction as they worked in pairs or threes. The article briefly describes four patterns of attention: to genre, to mathematical structure, to narrative experience and to written form. Further analysis explored how students used attention as part of the social activity involved in working on the task. The rest of the article illustrates how students used attention to narrative experience to make links between word problems and their own experience, as well as to negotiate their relationships with each other.     

Pathway from vocational education and associate degree to higher education: Chinese international students in Australia

Understanding factors influencing international students' decision to engage in international education is essential for education providers to better cater for students' educational expectations and enhance their attractiveness to international students. Whilst there has been extensive research on the reasons why international students undertake cross-border higher education, international students' motivations for enrolling in vocational education and associate degree programmes are still under-researched. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 30 international students from China, this research found that pathway to higher education appears to be the most important factor motivating international students to undertake vocational education and associate degree programmes. In addition, prospect of immigration, English language proficiency, previous academic performance, agent's recommendations and relatives' and friends' advice are amongst the important factors that students take into account in their decision to choose vocational education and associate degree programmes. This research also examines why Chinese international students have chosen vocational education programmes in a dual-sector university over vocational education colleges. It found that the flexibility to articulate to higher education, international reputation of the programme, practical training and favourable location are key issues that these students draw on when making their decision to study in a dual-sector university.     

高等教育大众化:困境中孕育希望

阐述了高等教育大众化的数量标准和历史形成过程，分析了高等教育大众化进程中存在的诸如教学质量、学生管理、生源竞争、贫困学生和知识失业等五个方面的问题，并从加大教育投资，深化高教改革，开拓国际教育市场，贫困生资助和构建新的学生管理及评价理念等五个方面探讨了解决问题的对策。     

What types of cultural capital benefit students’ academic achievement at different educational stages? Interrogating the meta-analytic evidence

The present study challenges the assumption that cultural capital benefits students' academic achievement regardless of their educational stages. Meta-analytic results from 105 studies published 2000–2017 indicated that nine cultural capital variables (e.g., home educational resources, maternal and paternal education, parental expectations, cultural participation, home support, school participation) benefited all students while five cultural capital variables exhibited a differentiated pattern of relationship with student achievement depending on educational stages. First, compared to students from higher grade levels, kindergarteners benefited most from parental education, parental academic emphasis, and parent-child reading. Second, compared to 1st–6th graders, 7th-12th graders benefited more from academic discussions. Third, compared to 1st–6th graders, both kindergarteners and 7th-12th graders benefited from parental school involvement. These results provide compelling evidence that while there are some forms of cultural capital that all students will benefit from, there are others whose association with students’ achievement depends on their educational stages.     

Student‐directed learning strategies to promote the progress of students with intellectual disability in inclusive classrooms

Student‐directed learning strategies involve teaching students to modify and regulate their own behaviour. Teaching students to self‐regulate behaviour has been identified as one means of promoting self‐determination, and promoting and enhancing self‐determination has become a valued outcome internationally. In addition, however, student‐directed learning strategies could prove important for including students with disabilities in general education classrooms by reducing the student's dependency upon others in the classroom setting. Four students with intellectual disability were supported to select an educational goal on which they wanted to work and were taught to self‐monitor their progress toward that goal in general education classrooms. Their progress toward the goal was evaluated through data collection activities and by using the Goal Attainment Scaling process. In general, students achieved their self‐selected goals. The potential contribution of student‐directed learning strategies to inclusion and promoting self‐determination are discussed.     

‘Some people might say I'm thriving but … ’: non-traditional students' experiences of university

The expansion of neo-liberal policies' framing higher education has contributed to an increase in participation rates of students from non-traditional backgrounds. While an increase of a wider range of students might be seen as contributing to a more just and equitable higher education system, research has shown that broadening entry points does not necessarily ensure inclusion or positive experience for these students. This research investigated the experiences of first in family, rural and international students as they transitioned into their first year of university. Focus group interviews and surveys were used to collect data. Using Bourdieu's theory of field, habitus and capital as well as Weiss's dimensions of loneliness findings illuminate a number of poignant experiences for non-traditional students. We suggest that facilitating the transition for non-traditional students might require a cultural change by universities and a move away from the notion that the students need to ‘adapt’ to university. Rather, the evolving university might provide for increasingly diverse student cohorts by embracing their habitus and unique features.     

Educational experiences of post-critical non-place

This ethnographic small-scale interpretive study investigates four international Study Abroad (SA) students’ mobile experiences of local coastal/beach sites, as part of a semester-long undergraduate outdoor environmental education unit ‘Experiencing the Australian Landscape’ (EAL) offered at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Their individual and collective experiences of the coast in EAL highlighted the problematic status of uncritically assuming and accepting place pedagogy in education practices. With a specific focus on the lived time experience of the four SA students, this study examined how the participants negotiated their meanings of the Australian landscape over the limited duration of the EAL unit. Three temporal themes related to non-place experience were identified: transitory; creative; and re-normalising. In discussing these findings, we recommend that any (eco)pedagogical conceptualisation, practice, and research of ‘place’ needs to attend empirically and theoretically to the non-placeness of the body-time-space-relation and their increasing abstraction within globalising processes.     

Engaging with Higher Education Academic Support: a first year student teacher transition model

The need for a redefinition of first year experience in higher education is advocated with the aid of two models, which, although focused on a sample of Australian pre-service teaching students, is proposed as generalisable across the first year. Introduction to the mores of higher education is generally supported by teaching institutions during Orientation days and into the first few weeks of study on the assumption that students are then prepared for academic study. Institutions have invested significantly in providing a range of resources and services to support this process but their effectiveness relies on their timely and appropriate use by students. It is proposed that first year students' transition be identified as the FYST, a unique and important experience and the first of a series of transitions that occur throughout tertiary study. It is also argued that student engagement should be explicitly linked to critical points in the academic programme. Student teacher focus group feedback suggests that Timely, Individualised, and Prioritised Survival [TIPS] support may be key to aiding students' transition to higher education and valuable to student retention.     

论高校留管教师的素质及培养

随着我国经济的发展和国际地位的提升,来华留学生的人数逐年递增,这给留学生的教育和管理工作提出了更高的要求。高校留学生管理人员是来华留学教育工作的主力军、教育战线上的外交官．其素质的高低直接关系到留学生教育工作的成败。因此,建立一支高素质的来华留学生管理队伍是发展和完善留学生管理工作的保证。     

Departing from the beaten path: international schools in China as a response to discrimination and academic failure in the Chinese educational system

International schools are commonly depicted in the academic literature and popular press as offering elite educational credentials to an elite, oftentimes international, student body. In this paper, I draw on a case study of a Canadian international school to argue that a new form of international school is emerging in China – one that offers a haven for domestic students from certain competitive and discriminatory features of the Chinese educational system. Fieldwork was conducted at a Canadian curriculum high school for Chinese citizens in Beijing. Most students at the school were internal migrants or children of China’s ‘new rich’ entrepreneurial class; that is, their families had economic resources but occupied precarious social positions in contemporary Chinese society. Analyses reveal that the international school offers a pathway to obtain baseline academic credentials in the absence of other opportunities for progress in the Chinese educational system. Together with evidence of dramatic growth in international schools and tracks in China, this case study suggests the emergence of a new type of international education programme that departs from a picture of international education as ‘elite’ in terms of student body, academic environment, and expected educational trajectories of graduates. The paper also develops our understanding of class and educational strategies in contemporary China.     

大学的收益:留学生教育中的经济学意义

留学生教育的经济收益是国际教育服务贸易中的重要部分,国外有关学者、政府机构和国际组织都非常关注,但在国内,人们对留学生教育的认识还主要集中在政治和文化层面。通过建构的经济收益测算模型(包括图式模型和数学模型),并以上海一所大学的留学生样本进行试测,研究显现出我国高校留学生教育的经济学意义:留学生教育促进了教育服务贸易,增加了我国经济总量;能够缩减我国在国际教育服务贸易中的巨大逆差;增加了高校的"预算外收入";改变了高校的教育资源结构,提高了教育管理效率。     

Higher education in Vietnam: key areas need assistance

Many developing countries are in the process of restructuring their higher education system to meet their nation's socio-economic development. As their educational budget is not unlimited, working with international educational institutions has become one of the attractive solutions to improve the quality of their education and to make it relevant to meet their nation's educational demand for economic development. This paper identifies some key issues which have prevented the Vietnamese higher education system from serving effectively its country's open-door policy and provide necessary recommendations to help Vietnam overcome its short-comings and weaknesses. The issues identified together with recommendations, on the other hand, may help some educational policy makers from developed countries select their fields of assistance or cooperation as well as to establish their long term educational strategies to deal with developing countries such as Vietnam.     

Choices of destination for transnational higher education: “pull” factors in an Asia Pacific market

Traditional assumptions favouring native English language countries in transnational higher education (TNHE) overlook experiences of international students in new emerging Asian education hubs. Specifically, there has been limited research relating to international students’ choice for studying in Malaysia. Drawing from the “push-pull” model of factors influencing the movement of international student destination choice, this study identifies determinants of student destination decision for TNHE. While acknowledging perceived qualities and values of individual institutions as important criteria, findings from interviews with students that are currently enrolled at international branch campuses also indicated key influences driven by “pull” factors of country image – attractive features of Malaysia, i.e. comparatively low cost of living, low tuition fees, safe country for living, stable government, modern amenities, proximity in culture and religion and freedom from discrimination – as focal motives in their choice decision. These findings provide implications for policy-makers to deploy their educational resources as well as develop effective promotional and marketing strategies in promoting the local reputation and amenities in order to attract more international students.     

Cinderellas and ugly ducklings: Positive turning points in students' educational careers—exploratory evidence and a future agenda

Positive turning points touch upon the essence of education. They epitomize its power and reflect its core agenda: maximizing human capital. Paradoxically, previous studies have not looked into this important phenomenon. The current exploratory study fills this lacuna by building on extensive empirical research of key educational experiences to shed light on four aspects of turning points in students' educational careers. Data come from a sample of 3045 key educational experiences. The article uses a narrative analysis to describe four features in students' changing trajectories, suggesting that the opportunities to experience a positive turning point are organizationally produced and socially distributed to the advantage of higher socio‐economic status students. It is concluded with pointers for policy and practice and opens up questions for future studies in this important domain.     

国际教育和职业发展之关系研究——以中国留英学生为例

国际教育在全球化时代已成为培养二十一世纪人才十分重要之途径。通过与12名接受英国高等教育的博士毕业生个人访谈,分析研究对象之定性、定量数据,发现国际教育有助于积累个人文化资本,其本身包含着明显的象征资本。得出结论：留英经历对中国学生个人事业发展和取得成功起着里程碑的作用;国际教育影响中国高层次人才之培养。