Abstract
The foreseeable plunging number of international students is worsening the financial crisis of the higher education sector in the UK. There is a need to explore new ways to find out how overseas students can be attracted and retained. While most student adaptation research are dominated by quantitative psychological studies, little has been known about how cultural coping and mundane practices contribute to overseas study experience. By collaborating with UK’s national and local governments, and student support bodies in universities, this study uses the rather novel walking-with method to leverage en-route physical prompts to explore the role of cultural consumption in students’ coping strategies. Apart from theoretical and practical contributions to pedagogical understanding, the study attempts to reveal the applicability of the unconventional walking-with method in social adaptation research, so as to provide innovative methodological insights to wider social sciences studies.
Research Objectives
- To understand the role of cultural consumption and practices in social adaptation amongst international students in the UK’s HE sector.
- Working collaboratively with stakeholders, to recommend practical guidelines to universities, student support bodies and local governments in attracting and retaining international students so as to leverage their contributions to economy.
- To explore the applicability, strengths and challenges of walking-with approach in social adaptation research.
Who will benefit from the project?
In view of the plummeting international student intakes and budgetary crisis of UK’s HE, the study uses a new method to unveil the under-explored cultural coping needs of students so as to provide collaborative insights to universities, student support bodies, national authorities (e.g. UKCISA – UK Council for International Student Affairs) and local governments to attract and retain international students, who will in turn obtain more rewarding study experience in the UK. Insights drawn from the method’s application will also inform social sciences and adaptation researchers on its potential and likely challenges.
Background
The walking-with approach (and similar methods such as go-along interviews) are proved to be effective in fields such as geography (Warren, 2017), psychogeography (Bonnett, 2017) and health studies (Capstick, 2005). However, its use and potential in other humanities disciplines such as adaptation research, including the experience of overseas studies and migration, are still under-explored. In her PhD project of evolving work identities in Asia (Mak, 2020), the lead applicant discovers the strengths of the method in understanding trajectory changes and how people cope with new environments. Her published paper in Qualitative Marketing Research (Mak et al., 2022) shows that, contrasting to sit-down interviews, the walking-with method can capture the sensational stimuli of the changing landscape in people’s mundane routes. This study aims to explore the applicability of this non-captive, mobile method in areas beyond organisational research and non-Asian context.
Due to changes in immigration policies and Brexit, the House of Commons Library (Sep, 2024)1 reports that the HE sector in the UK is facing a drastic decline of international students, who currently account for a large proportion in numbers (26% in 2022/23) and in income (23%). It also reports the worrying trend of students to other countries like Canada and Australia. We therefore need newer perspectives and methods other than the dominant psychologic quantitative approach (e.g. An and Chiang 2015, Berry 2006) to understand student adaptation. Sociological research shows that cultural consumption and know-how plays an agentic role in social adaptation (Bourdieu, 1984, 1990) but is scarcely attended in cross-border educational studies. By working closely with UKCISA, county governments and student support bodies, this project aims to capitalize the en-route inquiries to delve into the stage-wide needs and cultural practices for coping amongst international students. Accordingly, relevant support can be introduced at various levels to attract and retain overseas students, who contribute not only to the HE sector but also local economies in terms of consumption and labour supply. The data will also be compared to those collected by sedentary interviews in another project of the lead applicant that relate to the coping of Mainland Chinese students in Asia. Cross-cultural and cross-methodology comparison therefore can be made to generate broader insights.
Methodological design
‘Walking-with’ narrative interviews, each lasts for around 1 hours, will be conducted with 20 international students in the UK along their daily routes to and from study, shops and part-time work, as long as they are their mundane routines. Questions will cover their challenges, ways of coping and expectations on universities and local authorities or communities over various periods of their studies. Pictures along the routes will also be taken to juxtapose their narratives to understand the impact of physical prompts. We attempt to cover a reasonable spread of international students studying in different universities in terms of institutional rankings, city urbanisation and levels of studies (undergraduate vs post-graduate).
Apart from students, 5-6 online interviews (30-45 min. each) will also be conducted with organisations to collect views from different perspectives. These include student unions, student well-being, international offices of universities, and council personnel whose remits relate to student welfare.
Data collected from both groups of participants will be triangulated and cross-analysed to draw out thematic insights for the three objectives.
Project Team
Principal Investigator
Dr Connie Mak
Contact
Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, UK.
E-mail: cmak@lincoln.ac.uk
Dr Connie Mak is the Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Advertising and the Marketing Research Group lead at the University of Lincoln.
She obtained her PhD from the University of Leicester, as well as MSc and MLitt. from the University of Oxford (with Swire/Commonwealth Scholarship). She is interested in studying impression management, symbolic consumption, cultural capital and practice theories in the context of workplace, hospitality, migration and education.
Her publications can be found in peer-reviewed journals including Qualitative Market Research, Hospitality and Society, Higher Education, Tourism Management Perspectives, The International Journal of Tourism Research, Journal of China Tourism Research as well as proceedings of Global Marketing Conferences.
Before she became a full-time academic, she has over eight years of commercial experience in managing the branding and marketing communications of listed companies in Asia and Hong Kong. Recently, she was awarded the BA ECRN Seed Fund to explore the applicability of walking-with interviews for social adaptation research using international students in the UK as a case study.
Co-Investigator
Dr Abigail Ehidiamen
Contact
Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, UK.
Email: aehidiamen@lincoln.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-ehidiamen-phd-550011126/
Orcid: 0000-0003-3964-9248
Dr Abigail Ehidiamen is a Lecturer in Marketing at Lincoln International Business School. She is an early career researcher, and her area of interest lies in the field of consumer research, branding, sustainable practices, qualitative research methods and education.
Abigail has received research funding and in collaboration with internal and external colleagues. She is currently working on two funded projects:
- Applying the walking-with method to social adaptation research: the case of cultural coping of international students in the UK – Â Early Career Research Network (ECRN)Seed Fund 2024 and;
- Strengthening Academic Writing Skills, Building Networks and Fostering Mentorship for Early Career Researchers in Francophone and Anglophone West and Central Africa – International writing workshop – British Academy Flexi-Grant.