The micro-politics of cultural change: a Chinese doctoral student’s learning journey in Australia

ABSTRACT

Considerable research has investigated Chinese students’ intercultural insights in different national contexts, where culture is understood as coterminous with nationality/regionality. However, few have explored the more micro-political aspects of Chinese doctoral students’ narrative experiences in national settings, within a more cultural framework. This article seeks to take such an approach through a reflexive narrative account of the first author’s experiences as a Chinese doctoral student in Australia. To do so, we draw upon Bhabha’s notion of ‘in-between space’, and work by Gill on intercultural adjustment. We show how the first author’s doctoral journey was characterised by a sense of ‘in-betweenness’ at the micro-political level, including in relation to the cultural boundary crossing associated with having to change fields of study and supervisors. This narrative provides a nuanced account of an international student’s experiences and reflects the usefulness of examining the particularity of international doctoral students’ learning experiences at a much more fine-grained level, via a more intercultural lens.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese doctoral student
• in-between
• intercultural learning and adjustment
• reflexive narrative

Acknowledgments

We thank editors and reviewers’ constructive feedback for us to improve the quality of this paper. We also appreciate Associate Professor Michael Mu from the Queensland University of Technology and Associate Professor Wenqin Shen from Peking University for their suggestions in the early stage of drafting this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

China Postdoctoral Science Foundation 2020M670007; National Natural Science Foundation of China [71974004].

Notes on contributors

Kun Dai

Dr Kun Dai is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Funded by China International Postdoc Exchange Program) at Graduate School of Education, Peking University. His research focuses on transnational education, international education, intercultural learning and adjustment, teaching and learning in higher education. His articles have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Higher Education Research & Development, and Compare. Dr Dai serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of International Students.

Ian Hardy

Dr Ian Hardy is an Associate Professor at the School of Education, University of Queensland, Australia. Dr Hardy’s research focuses on educational policy, globalisation, and teacher education. Current and future research also includes work about the nature and effects of Artificial Intelligence in educational settings, including how this influences educators’ work and learning in schooling and other (formal and informal) educational settings. He was an Australia Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow (2014–2018) and an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow (2012–2014). Dr Hardy serves as an Associate Education of the Australian Educational Researcher.