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The motivational journeys of Chinese postgraduate students in a UK university : an ecological perspective for practitioners and academics
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Consoli, Sal (2020) The motivational journeys of Chinese postgraduate students in a UK university : an ecological perspective for practitioners and academics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3493076~S15
Abstract
Chinese students represent the largest cohort of international students on UK university campuses. However, little research has investigated this student population in Britain. Most studies have either examined Chinese students in other English-speaking countries or have conflated Chinese students with other international cohorts. Therefore, this thesis focuses on Chinese students with the aim of understanding their specific journeys in the UK. These experiences are understood through the concept of motivation which, in applied linguistics, has normally been studied in relation to learning a language for general purposes. However, this study offers a new perspective of motivation for learning English for academic purposes and for studying at university.
The focus is on a group of Chinese students who completed a pre-sessional course and a Master’s at a university in the Midlands. Data was generated throughout an academic year beginning with a stage of practitioner research (phase-1, duration of the pre-sessional) and qualitative interviewing (phase-2, duration of Master’s). Narrative analysis was used to draw out themes from multiple data sources.
The findings suggest that students were driven to Britain by their desires to actualise their ideal selves (e.g. building a successful career). Also, the study reveals several factors which sustained and enhanced these students’ motivations during the pre-sessional and the Master’s (e.g. dialogic teaching approach, timely feedback). However, other factors emerged which had a less positive impact on their motivations (e.g. lack of interaction with certain tutors, university assessment procedures, library resources).
Furthermore, this study challenges the view that Chinese learners are passive and uncritical learners. As such, this thesis suggests that rather than promoting a large culture (Holliday, 1999) approach to teaching and learning, we should deCentre our assumptions and fixed ideas (Holliday & Amadasi, 2020), and interrogate our beliefs to create ‘threads’ of understanding within small cultures thereby averting ‘blocks’. The notion of cultures of learning thus becomes relevant to account for the sheer diversity in student populations (Jin & Cortazzi, 1993).
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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| Subjects: | L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education L Education > LC Special aspects of education |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Chinese students -- Great Britain, Graduate students -- Great Britain, Motivation in education -- Great Britain | ||||
| Official Date: | April 2020 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | Centre for Applied Linguistics | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Ushioda, Ema | ||||
| Sponsors: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | 312 leaves : colour illustrations | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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