Title:
|
Learner, customer or ambassador? : identity constructions of overseas students in the discourse of entrepreneurialism
|
In this thesis, I examine overseas students' identity construction in the context of
entrepreneurial discourse in relation to the way that the UK government, UK higher
education institutions, and university staff and overseas students interact with one
another.
Overseas students' identity is multifaceted. I am interested in how overseas
students' learner and customer identities are constructed and reconstructed in the
process of negotiating entrepreneurialism and its interrelated and competing
discourses, such as such as OSs as learners, OSs as customers, OSs as change
agents and OSs as ambassadors.
My empirical research is carried out as qualitative research drawing on
ethnographic approaches, and conducted in four UK universities. I interviewed
more than 50 postgraduate overseas students and 22 university staff at different
levels across universities. My analytical scope is influenced both by interactionism
and poststructural concepts of discourses and ideas, emphasising the micro/macro
links, rather than posing a dichotomy between micro/macro analytical levels.
My central argument is that the ways in which university staff negotiate the notions
of 'learner' and 'customer' influence overseas students' identity constructions. The
hidden debates on overseas students' learner and customer identities were latently
entwined with the construction of overseas students as victims, as problems and
as beneficiaries of the marketisation of higher education. These hidden debates
illuminate challenges which overseas students have to overcome, when they resist
and negotiate their learner and customer identities. My research should
counterbalance the one-sided and distorted perspective of overseas students,
particularly made by the media, which portrays them as sources of income as well
as sources of problems for the UK universities.
|