Shaping hybridized academic identity: An exploration of international returnees and local scholars in China

• In Event: The opportunity and challenge of academic mobility: Experiences of students, early career researchers, and spouses

Proposal

The higher education system in many countries is becoming a glonacal and hybrid space that imbricates different sociocultural, economic, and policy features from global, national, and local perspectives (Marginson, 2008; Lingard, 2021). Influenced by such complex situations, academics may encounter various challenges to achieve individual development, which could influence their academic identity formation and how they make sense of themselves as academics in a higher education context. For some academics, cross-system mobility may significantly impact their identity formation as scholars as well as their individual development. Such mobility is becoming one of the most significant components in the current global HE field (Shen et al., 2022). On the one hand, academic mobility may refer to the cross-system movement of academic activities (e.g., transnational programs, exchanging study and research) (Dai, 2021; Shen et al., 2022). On the other hand, it is characterized as the movement of academic individuals (e.g., university professors, research fellows, and doctoral students) between different higher education systems with distinct cultures, norms, and standards (Greek & Jonsmoen, 2021; Shen et al., 2022); it is this latter conception of mobility that informs this research.

Many studies (e.g., Chen, 2017; Anikina et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2022) have explored the latter approach to understand how researchers understand their academic identity formation in different social, cultural, and spatial settings. These authors argue that identity formation is never complete or permanent but is constantly changing and developing in response to exposure to different contexts. Existing research mainly focuses on two main subjects of academic identity formation: internationally trained scholars trying to integrate into their home or a new educational community (i.e., academic localization) (Hao et al., 2017), and locally trained academics’ development under the influence of internationalization of higher education (Xu et al., 2019). However, existing studies lack analysis between these cohorts as a vehicle to better understand how academics identity formation is (re)shaped at different stages of learning, teaching, and research in the Chinese HE context. This is also a context which reflects the complex imbrication of the interplay between international influences and local circumstances. Analyzing these different cohorts’ academic identity formation is important to both Chinese and international higher education contexts, which increasingly interweave with one other. Moreover, the factors that contribute to such formation are critical to explore in detail to interpret the complexity of the early stages of academic identity formation (e.g., postdoctoral/research fellows, lecturers/assistant professor before getting a tenured position).

In the Chinese context, fostering internationalization is a popular trend (e.g., undertaking doctoral studies overseas, publishing international journals, and collaborating with foreign researchers). However, this trend towards internationalization is not unchallenged, as evident in the recent policy push for scholars to publish in Chinese, and in Chinese journal/publication outlets, and emphasizing a more national orientation. These conditions may influence academic formation and are crucial to consider under current policy settings in higher education. In the current Chinese context of increasingly national orientation, exploring whether and how international returnees and local scholars make sense of their work is becoming increasingly important to make sense of their academic development. Notably, this academic identity formation is important in the early phases of academics’ development, when it is perhaps most obvious and fluid (Billot, 2010). How academics navigate through the different opportunities available to them in these early stages is key to identify how they understand the nature of their work and development into the future. The research question guiding the study is: How do international doctoral returnees and domestically trained scholars form their academic identity in the Chinese higher education context? Narrative inquiry was utilized to document 10 (five are international returnees and five are locally trained scholars) participants’ educational experiences and understand their academic identity formation processes and the key factors contributing to such formation.

This study found that global, national, and local factors comprehensively influenced academic identity formation of both international returnees and local scholars. These scholars reflect a complex amalgam of apprehension, confusion, and more active construction of hybridized academic identity, incorporating a mixture of international and local academic characteristics. The research found that the rules and standards of the Chinese higher education context (for example, the academic evaluation policy) affected the construction of a hybrid academic identity. Moreover, the collaboration between international scholars and local scholars was mutually beneficial and ultimately promoted the construction of a hybridized academic identity in the Chinese higher education context. The study indicates that academic identity formation is a complex process in an increasingly hybridized but also conflicted environment, characterized by increasing nationalism alongside concurrent global influences. And these influences play out in multifarious ways in different academic sites at the local level.

During the student period, some participants had not yet developed a clear understanding of their academic identity, but they had developed some knowledge of academic internationalization, including how this was localized in international contexts. During the transition period, the global, national, and local policy contexts played complex roles in academic identity formation. After the confusing stage in their early career, returnees and local scholars seemed to gradually manage the inherent tensions that characterized global-national-local imbrications in the Chinese higher education context. The result was the creation of a hybrid space to integrate academic internationalization and localization of higher education. As a result, many scholars developed a hybridized academic identity, reflecting a sense of global-national-local imbrication (Lingard, 2021).

The findings suggest that the academic identity formation is characterized by initial confusion, but also, potentially, the development of a more hybridized academic identity. Such an identity reflects complex and multifarious local-national-global imbrications. These contextual factors play out differently for different groups of scholars and are important in guiding scholars’ future academic directions. National policy and local institutional orientations in different academic communities all have complex impacts on the reintegration of international scholars and the decision of local scholars to pursue academic internationalization. The Chinese higher education context creates an environment where academic internationalization and localization, with strong national inflections, co-exist in a complex, at times contradictory, imbricated space.

Author

• Dai Kun, CUHK