Exploring the journey of international students’ identity development in transnational spaces through narratology

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Creating Space: Student Perspectives, Inclusivity, and Access in International Education

Proposal

International students come from increasingly diverse backgrounds. This study focuses on the personal journeys of students who attended international schools before studying abroad. As part of a longitudinal study, researchers interviewed 19 students, but three students were selected to further examine through narrative inquiry. All three share unique yet overlapping themes in their experiences as they navigate their multicultural and multinational life transitions from respective international schools to post-secondary institutions abroad.
According to ISC Research (2020), 5.65 million students attend international schools, a number that has continued to increase in the past few decades. Students seeking tertiary education abroad have surpassed five million, and a growing number come from transnational environments (UNESCO, 2019). It is important to have a deeper understanding of the experiences of the students at international schools so that higher education institutions (HEIs) can create a supportive and inclusive environment for the growing sub-population of international students who bring in prior cross-cultural experiences. The following research question guided our study: How do international schools and HEIs shape international students’ identity, sense of belonging, and self-formation?
Theoretical Framework
This study brings together the frameworks of students’ self-formation (Marginson, 2014) and transnational social fields (Fouron & Schiller, 2001; Schiller, 2005) to guide the narrative inquiry. Rather than thinking of students as those who need to undergo an “adjustment” during their study abroad experience, Marginson (2014) calls for a “paradigm shift” by seeing students as those with a sense of agency in developing their identities and paths as individuals (pp. 7-8). To situate the students’ narratives in the context, the study draws on transnational social fields, which provides a borderless perspective in the experiences of students attending international schools and HEIs, where they explore “ways of being and ways of belonging” (Schiller, 2009).
Methodology
Researchers utilized a constructivist paradigm, which acknowledges that truth is subjective and varies from person to person (Guba, 1990). Narrative inquiry has three commonplaces: temporality, people, and context (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). In this study, temporality implies that participants’ experiences include past, present, and future. Personal change can occur any time. Researchers need to retell participants’ stories by capturing different stages and changes. Contexts could yield different narratives (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). We focus on how participants’ experiences vary in contexts and how contexts, as transnational spaces, shape their identity.
Two participants lived in China and one lived in India at the time of the first interview, but they all had a different nationality than where they lived. One identified as male and two as female. Researchers utilized convenience and purposeful sampling (Etikan et al., 2016) and chose three countries to recruit participants from that diverse perspective and robust school systems which provided the opportunity to explore the scope of the research question in different contexts (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Two semi-structured, in-depth interviews lasting from 60-90 minutes were conducted with participants in April and May of 2019, and again in April and May of 2020.
Researchers developed an interview protocol based on the study purpose and the theoretical frameworks. Questions focused on prior mobility, experiences in international schools, HEI decision making, expectations for college, sense of belonging and identity, and career goals. Interviews were transcribed by an online service and then reviewed and edited by the researchers to ensure that the transcriptions were accurate and captured tone and other important elements. All three researchers reviewed and coded the interviews using descriptive and pattern coding techniques to help flesh out the components of the theoretical framework, establish a baseline understanding of the participants’ experiences, and facilitate building themes and groups (Saldaña, 2009). Study trustworthiness was addressed by taking field notes, asking probing questions, member checking, and bracketing the study (Creswell & Creswell, 2018).
Results
Using narrative inquiry as both the methodology and the phenomenon, participant stories were situated in a transnational context where they develop an identity in their border-crossing experiences as young adults and international students. International schools and HEIs, as transnational spaces, provided opportunities for students to embrace different cultures, find a sense of belonging, utilize their agency, connect with others, and shape their identities.
Aiden, Xiao, and Roshni all shared how their sense of belonging and identity was shaped by people and places. Aiden described her sense of belonging as primarily found with her family. She felt that each place she lived left an indelible mark and influenced who she was, but no one “place” was home to her. People played a significant role in Roshni’s definition of home and her sense of belonging. Despite traveling to many places, Roshni identified Ireland and India as her home because she lived in those countries with her family and stayed in touch with friends there. Xiao identified himself as an “international kid” who was born to an ethnically Chinese family living in Malaysia at that time due to his father’s occupation.
Aiden credited her upbringing and experiences in an international school as crucial in shaping her appreciation of diversity. Her understanding of diversity was further shaped at her U.S. HEI, where she was immersed in American culture through long conversations with her friends of color and experienced the racial unrest and police brutality during the pandemic. Xiao also gained an appreciation for diverse learning environments through the opportunities to learn about different cultures through daily interactions with his friends. In addition, college life helped Roshni to be more independent and responsible through cooking, doing chores, managing time, and balancing academics and life. In the full paper, the rich participant narratives are further explored through an analysis of how students’ self-formation and identity development is woven into the transnational social fields they encompass in various spaces and places.
Significance
Students from international schools represent a growing subset of the globally mobile student population, but the research about their experiences in higher education and as they transition to HEIs is underdeveloped. This study provides in-depth insights into the experiences of three international students by exploring their diverse connections and sense of belonging in secondary and tertiary institutions.

Authors

• Minghui Hou, Old Dominion University

• Asuka Ichikawa, Boston College