Chinese Characteristics and Experiences of Academic Socialisation of Doctoral Students Studying in China

• In Event: Supporting Academic and Social-Emotional Wellbeing of Students and Teachers: Cases from China

Proposal

"Building an important center of world talents and a highland of innovation" is the latest Chinese talent strategy put forward by General Secretary Xi. Cultivating high-level international talents and promoting the high-quality development of education for studying abroad is an vital path to realize it. Previously, study abroad education in China has focused on undergraduate and master's level, while the cultivation of doctoral students in China has not reached maturity. Along with the increase of the scale of doctoral students coming to China, the cultivation of high-level international talents as doctoral students, has become a foreseeable direction of reform, which is also a new key to improve the reputation of China's international education.

Under such background, it is necessary to pay attention to the quality of the training of doctoral students studying in China. This study attempts to compare doctoral students studying in China who have achieved different academic successes, and the central question is: what are the differences in their academic performance? Why do some of them adapt smoothly and excellent, but some fail to complete their studies when facing the academic challenges of studying abroad in the same cross-cultural arena? How to understand the differentiated outcomes of doctoral students studying in China, whether they are caused by individual factors, disciplinary factors, or cross-cultural social factors? Based on the realities of doctoral training in China, this study critically adapts and applies Weidman's theory of academic socialization to further explain the reasons for the differentiation of the academic achievements of doctoral students coming to China（Weidman& Deangelo,2020,p.24-25).

The research team chose Beijing,the city with the largest and most typical number of doctoral students studying in China. The team has initially completed an in-depth research on 22 doctoral students coming to China to study, covering various countries, genders, disciplines, and universities. Through interviews, we found that their academic achievements in their respective fields of specialization varied greatly, and they could be divided into three categories according to the level of academic socialization: the first category had excellent performance, published outstanding academic results and successfully launched new academic careers; the second category was basically qualified, barely completing the conditions for graduation; and the last category had a rough experience, either delaying or dropping out of their studies.

It is their academic socialisation processes and structural gap that lead to diverse outcomes. In short, firstly, the individual conditions of doctoral students studying in China are the most crucial, which include academic orientation, professional foundation and individual motivation. Moreover, both individual and social conditions exist dependently. If the individual conditions are regarded as the starting line and power source of academic socialization, the academic social network is the gas station and transmission of the cultivation process.The best-performing doctoral students are those who are supported by academic social networks (supervisors, academic communities, etc.) on the basis of their individual conditions. They also have stable and two-way interactions with members of the academic community, whether these relations are they take the initiative to make with each other or are provided by external organizations.

Last but not the least, the disciplinary factor is not critical, but more important is the type of language program in which the doctoral degree is pursued. This is the Chinese characteristic of the education of doctoral students studying in China. In China, there are two categories of incoming doctoral students, Chinese program and English program, and the program difference becomes a central variable in the ease or difficulty of academic socialization, implying different cross-cultural challenges. Compared to the English program, PhD students studying in Chinese program face tougher academic and cultural transgression challenges. PhD students in Chinese program not only need to immerse in Chinese supervisors and students in terms of language and integrate into the Chinese academic circle, but also need to fulfill the graduation requirement of writing and publishing dissertations in Chinese journals. Since the Chinese academic community has not been fully internationalized yet(especially in the humanities and social sciences), the Chinese academic community has its own tacit knowledge of writing norms, academic interpersonal culture, and potential rules of academic publication. Although these chinese program international students may have a basic grasp of Chinese as a language, they do not understand the Chinese academic and cultural scene well enough to acquire a truly Chinese academic identity. This is different from international students in English program, who are always in the English-language, internationalized academic norms and cultural circles before and after their studies.Their academic interpersonal, paper writing and publication specifications are relatively consistent.
For Chinese program doctoral students who face academic and cultural challenges, the interviews found that the Chinese characteristics of the "supervisor's door" (centered on the supervisor and the supervisor's students at all levels and in all kinds of categories) and the meeting of "supervisor's door" are the socialization fields that help them observe, exchange, and learn from the tacit knowledge.

In conclusion,this study attempts to extend Weidmann's model of academic socialisation by acknowledging that different program categories of doctoral students studying in China experience very distinct academic socialisation challenges, and that international students in Chinese and English programs both cross socio-cultural boundaries, from a foreign country to China, but they cross completely different levels of academic culture. Therefore, if the quality of education for doctoral students studying in China is to be improved, it is not only necessary to consider individual conditions in terms of enrolment and academic social network support in terms of institutions, but also to focus on the programmatic differences in training and to clarify the academic and cultural fields and elements that are faced by doctoral students studying in the Chinese and English programmes, in order to improve the educational process in a targeted manner. This is precisely the part of this study that is being deepened.

Author

• Qing Qing Liu, Beijing Normal University