Workshop 1: Being an International Student
The Rationale for this Workshop
According to the last survey of outward mobility for the UK, nearly 20, 000 students studying in a UK higher education institution, participated in student mobility programs during 2012-13 (Carbonell, 2014). The time students spend abroad, the locations they choose and the reasons for opting to study away from home vary immensely, but it is undeniable that all participants in student mobility will be faced with observable differences between the higher education institution hosting them for a few months, and the UK institution organizing this exchange for them. The challenges that such variances between their home and host societies (and higher education institutions) pose to the sojourn were clearly identifiable in the qualitative data collected for the Languages and Social Networks Project (LANGSNAP), a longitudinal study which closely monitored 56 undergraduates participating in mobility schemes.
Our student participants spent nine months as Erasmus students in a French or a Spanish university. During the pre-departure interviews (available at http://langsnap.soton.ac.uk/project.html), the vast majority of the students showed at least some awareness of the fact that they were going to live and study in a place where a language other than English was spoken, and where the way of life could be somehow different from their own, even if their views on the possible contrasts they were about to experience were rather naïve, stereotyped or heavily based on their limited experience as tourists in these countries (pretest interviews, 156aSSF, 163aEDR, 164aEDR).
Strangely, students did not mention that these discrepancies would also have an impact on the way academic life is conducted and organized at universities in other parts of the world. However, as their period of residency progressed, it became more obvious that aspects such as the overall organization of the courses, the communication between students and academic and administrative staff and/or the learning and teaching styles most commonly used in a specific country, posed enormous challenges to international students trying to adopt a life in a foreign country (visit abroad 1 interviews, 108bKMcM, 118bKMcM, 121cKMcM, 168bNTV, 172dNTV), perhaps because students struggled to see these practices are also examples of behaviour rooted on and explained by the cultures, histories, and general way of thinking of the societies hosting them.
It was evident, from the data collected that participants would have benefited from an opportunity to reflect on the impact that cultural differences would have on education systems and, as a consequence, on their experience as visiting students.