Negotiating the temporal and spatial complexities: Chinese international students’ learning experience at home during the COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Many Chinese international students had to or chose to leave their host universities, receiving online international higher education (HE) at ‘homes’ during the COVID-19. Inspired by the ‘glonacal’ mode of thought, this qualitative study interviewed 16 Chinese international students at ‘homes’ to explore the potential complexities of spatiality and temporality regarding their online international HE experiences during COVID-19. Physically separating from host universities, our participants lost the sense of belongingness to the campus and felt disconnected with their academic communities. Their stories revealed a different ‘money’ value between gaining and losing regarding online international HE experiences at ‘homes’, and the disadvantages they experienced at host countries/universities. Our participants experienced temporal flexibility, temporal conflicts and temporal asymmetry simultaneously. Such spatial and temporal complexities intertwined with each other, making international student experience (ISE) during the COVID-19 unique. This article contributes to understanding of ISE and internationalisation of HE for a post-pandemic era.

KEYWORDS:

• International student experience
• glonacal
• temporality
• spatiality
• China

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Ms. Guo Xin for her assistance in collecting data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Joint Research Project of Faculty of Education [grant number ICER202005], Beijing Normal University.