Abstract
The crucial role of social integration for the academic success of home students is a common theme in pedagogical research, but for international students the emphasis has been much more on cultural factors and the challenges of transition. The findings of the International Students’ Experience Project at the University of the Arts, London suggest that this is far from the whole story. International students come to the UK precisely to make cosmopolitan friendships, but are held back—by language and communication, but also, less obviously, by differences in age, qualifications, experience and expectations, and by the need to adapt rapidly to an environment which is new in every sense. While home students surmount the challenges of social integration with relative ease, international students thus need more support. By coming to understand the needs of these students in all their complexity, institutions can play a key role in facilitating integration.
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Notes
I propose to deal more fully with this issue in a future study on teaching and learning issues for international students.
For a fuller discussion of the methodology see Sovic 2008b, pp. 6–7.
Home students were asked ‘How easy it is for you to make friends?’.
Compare Gill 2007. The issues are nicely encapsulated by Murphy-Lejeune (2002 pp. 233–234): ‘Travelling and living abroad for a period of time in this context implies crossing into a new time-space, discovering new horizons where old and new blend, going through tempest and calm, avoiding rocks and perils, unearthing strange customs through secretive language, pioneering new methods and strategies to negotiate the unexpected, exploring one’s resources, meditating over sameness and difference, trying out potential identities, and all the time learning’.
See also Sovic 2008a, pp. 150–151. Similar concerns have been detected in Australian and American universities with a high proportion of international students (Perrucci and Hu 1995; Volet and Ang 1998; Burns 1991; Samuelowicz 1987). The unconscious discrimination this imposes on non-native speakers has been described by Grimshaw as ‘native-speakerism’ (Grimshaw 2008).
This is in line with other studies; see for instance Mullins et al. 1995.
Similar findings were reported in UKCOSA 2004, p. 67.
Of course international students do not have a monopoly of shyness. However, among home students it may be no more than an initial barrier. This home student’s remarks encapsulate the point:
Personally I am quite shy when I meet new people but when I get over that it is quite easy to make friends and I get quite comfortable with people. For example at the beginning of this year everyone was quite quiet and shy and reserved, but now we are in the third term and everyone seems very comfortable with each other and we have groups of people who work well together.
Home student.
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Acknowledgments
I am most grateful to Dr Margo Blythman and Dr Alison Shreeve for their comments on a draft of this article. An early version was presented at ‘Using Formal and Informal Curricula to Improve Interactions between Home and International Students’, a conference at the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University, 20 June 2008.
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Sovic, S. Hi-bye friends and the herd instinct: international and home students in the creative arts. High Educ 58, 747–761 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9223-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9223-z