Decoding Performance: Chinese PhD Students' Motivation, Finances, and Cross-Cultural Adaptation in Canada

• In Event: Confluence of Cultures: Discussing and Decoding the Experiences of Chinese Students and Researchers

Proposal

Introduction and Literature Review：
According to OECD Report (2021), in 2019, there were 6.1 million international tertiary students worldwide. At doctoral level, international students account for 22% of the total enrolled students. Thereinto, 19,308 doctoral students coming from other countries studied in Canadian higher institutions in 2018/2019 (Studying in Canada, 2021). As the second largest group of international students in Canada, China contributed to 142,895 international students to the world, accounting for about 25%. Although international student mobility has become a widely acknowledged research area (see Schartner & Young, 2016, 2020), also, the number of studies on doctoral education has also dramatically increased over the past 15–20 years (McAlpine et al., 2020), there is still a paucity of relevant studies in various experiences of international Chinese doctoral students in the particular country---Canada. This study seeks to fill the research gap and aims to investigate the influence of Chinese doctoral students’ experiences in Canada on their academic performance via three aspects---motivations, finance status, and their cross-cultural cognition.
In the past 20 years, the number of doctoral researchers has been rapidly increasing (OECD, 2016) as the governments have seen PhD graduates as means to improve the knowledge-based economy and international competitiveness (Hancock et al. 2015).
Alongside this growth, students are more likely to cross the nation border to seek more advanced tertiary education programs. PhD Students study abroad either for the degree or for an exchange (Shen et al., 2016), but this paper mainly deals with the former one as it is more typical. Following Schartner (2022), we define “international doctoral students” as “students who pursue the PhD degree in countries where they were not born or where they did not receive their first postsecondary degree”. Accordingly, the study reported here defines the participant group as people pursuing a PhD degree in Canadian Higher Education Institutions whose country of origin is China and whose primary education was received in China.

Research Question:
How much influence do different segments of Chinese international doctoral students’ experiences in Canada on their academic performance?
Sub questions:
What factors motivate Chinese students to choose Canada for PhD studies?
Do financial resources affect PhD students’ academic performance?
Do cross-cultural cognition affect PhD students’ academic performance?

Conceptual framework and Methodology：
Main research question was informed conceptually by the Segmentation of international students, developed by Lu & Schulmann, (2012, 2015), and segmented the Chinese international doctoral students along three dimentions: academic performance, financial statement, and cross-cultural cognition. Financial statement focuses on the sources of financial support, the annual amount of expenditure and working hours. Cross-cultural cognition, like social cultural adjustment mentioned by Schartner & Young (2016), refers to “cognitive and behavioral factors associated with effective performance in the host country, such as the ability to ‘fit in’ and interact successfully with others” (Schartner & Young, 2016). This is rated by interviewees from 1 to 5 for low to high level of cognition.
Meanwhile, to examine the relative importance that PhD students place on the following aspects when deciding to apply to Canada: academic reputation, career prospects, location, cost, culture, and policy, respondents were asked to assess the importance of the following sub-criteria:
Thus, our survey is further guided by three related sub-questions:
What factors motivate Chinese students to choose Canada for PhD studies?
Do financial resources affect PhD students’ academic performance?
Do cross-cultural cognition affect PhD students’ academic performance?

Sample and data collection：
Data was collected through one-to-one interviews with Chinese international doctoral students in Canadian higher institutions. We felt interviews can enable us accurately observe and then report the participants’ perspectives and experiences (Babbie, 2010). A total of 10 participants took part in the interviews, one conducted by the face-to-face interview, and nine conducted via the video media. To capture a relatively accurate level of experience from participants, all these participants were selected on the basis of meet the following criteria:
They are studying in Canada now or have graduated for less than 3 years, since we assume their experiences are representative of the status quo in Canada.
They received their postsecondary education in China, thus allowing us to explore their cognition for different cultures.
Also, participants are evenly split between men and women, coming from various disciplinary backgrounds including education, computer science, medicine, theology and others, and thus we can gain a wide range of experience levels. Participants were
recruited via email from different higher institutions.
Interviews lasted for 45-90 minutes and were video recorded with permission. The average time of interview was approximately 60 minutes. During the interviews, a step-by-step approach was adopted, and the inspiration from the last interview was used in the next one. All interviews took place in Chinese and then were transcribed verbatim and anonymized. Then, subject analysis of the transcript was conducted under the guidance of the conceptual framework provided by the author (Braun & Clarke, 2006) (Fig. 1). The transcripts were coded based on the focus of our research question and our conceptual framework, being divided into three broad analytical categories: financial statement, cross-cultural cognition and motivations.

Limitation, consideration and future study:
The primary limitation to this study is the small sample size considering the total number of international doctoral students enrolled in Canada. Besides, limited by the long distance and the cause of Covid-19, most of the interviews could not be conducted face to face, and we hope it will not have any influence on the result of the study.
Future study
Some directions for future researches are suggested by this study. It is necessary to investigate whether international PhD students worldwide have similar challenges in North America. In order to help international students improve their performance in a more targeted way, it is worth studying how supervisors evaluate international doctoral students, including their feedback on international students' academic performance and initiative. Since supervisors are the key for PhD students to complete their degree, the influence of communication between doctoral students and their supervisors and peers on academic output will be further studied in the research.

Author

• xuefan li, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto