Experiencing doctoral education in an emerging global knowledge hub: An exploration of international students’ experiences in China

• In Event: Navigating and negotiating the global higher education internationalization: pathways and tensions in Chinese higher education system

Proposal

Doctoral education plays a significant role in knowledge creation. Recruiting and training international doctoral students is a crucial pathway to enhancing the internationalisation of higher education. Existing studies have mainly focused on this cohort’s learning and research experiences in developed countries. However, relatively few studies have explored these students’ experiences in non-traditional learning destinations. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus, and broader notions of global-national-local imbrications, this study explores international doctoral students’ learning and research experiences in what can be understood as the Chinese academic sub-field. By interviewing 35 international doctoral students in a Chinese university, findings suggest that these students encountered certainty and uncertainty initially before some could navigate the Chinese academic sub-field more strategically. As a result, students progressively developed an in-between cosmopolitan habitus; this included exposure to both Chinese and international academic logic through learning with Chinese academic returnees. Students’ experiences suggest that the Chinese academic sub-field can be understood as an in-between field that imbricates the global, national, and local within higher education contexts. This study indicated that the internationalisation of doctoral education in the Chinese academic-sub field had shaped an imbricated model that may foster global scholars with Chinese characteristics.

Author

• Kun Dai, The Chinese University of Hong Kong