How to Become Competent Members? -Comparing Chinese Ph.D. Students’ Academic Socialization Across Disciplines

• In Event: Roundtable Group 15
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Language, Interaction, and Agency in Educational Settings

Proposal

Problem Statement
There were more than six million students taking tertiary education outside their home country in 2019(UNESCO, 2022). One of the significant needs the host higher education institutions face is to facilitate international students' integration into local academic life (Schneider & Jin, 2020) and local social life. Historically, the notion of an assimilation-oriented adjustment paradigm has been utilized to interpret international education (Marginson, 2014). Consequently, international students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, particularly those not originating from the Anglosphere, are often perceived as passive recipients with limited options, assumed to be molded by the host country’s institutional practices and norms (Matsunaga et al., 2021), and their agency and capability of self-formation have long been neglected (Tran & Vu, 2017). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore and compare how Chinese Ph.D. students in the United States use English as a medium to become competent members of the academic community.
Theoretical Framework and Research Question
This study employs self-formation theory (Marginson, 2014) and language socialization (Duff, 2007) as lenses in concert to investigate the participation and self-development of Chinese graduate students in an English-speaking environment. Marginson’s (2014) self-formation theory critiqued the use of an assimilation-oriented adjustment framework to understand international students’ experiences in the host countries. Instead, he emphasized international education as a self-formation process and highlighted international students’ reflexive agency. Language socialization (LS) studies the process by which beginners or new participants in a society or culture acquire communicative skills, membership, and legitimacy within the community (Duff, 2007, 2010). The process is facilitated by language and aims at mastering language norms, understanding pragmatics, and adopting suitable identities, perspectives, ideologies, and other behaviors linked tot he the group in focus and its standard practices (Duff, 2007). Academic discourse socialization (ADS) as a form of language socialization studies the social, intellectual, and cultural mechanisms, beliefs, and practices that occur, particularly within higher education (Duff, 2010). More specifically, ADS research explores how newcomers and their peers acquire the skills to engage in different forms of academic discourse within their communities and other social groups and how their interactions with peers, faculty, and cultural and social customs have either facilitated or impeded their socialization into the use of academic language (Kobayashi et al., 2017; Burhan-Horasanlı, 2022). Although significant advances in previous research provided deep and comprehensive depictions of L2 students' ADS experiences, there is a need to focus on newcomers’ voices while they adopt community values and a need for situated studies at program and institutional levels (Kobayashi et al., 2017). This study aims to respond to the call. This study could inspiration to international Ph.D. students, faculty, policymakers, and student service staff.
Overview of Methodology
To frame this study, I will apply constructivist grounded theory as the research methodological approach to addressing the research question. Data collection will occur between August 2023 and December 2023 at American universities. The snowball method will be utilized to recruit participants. Data collection will be through the use of semi-structured interviews with participants and socializing agents who participants suggest, participant-generated written narratives, and reflective written materials.

Author

• Xiaoyuan Chen, University of Dayton