Grounded Identities, Transient Lives: The Emergence of International Student Voices in an Era of Cosmopolitan Learning

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of the identity negotiations of two international undergraduate students at a public research university in the United States. Studying abroad constitutes a culturally contested space for educational sojourners, with ruptures that require constant sense-making and negotiations of identities as students attempt to combine the foreign and the familiar. Situational contexts, interpersonal interactions, and the imagination all determine what students learn and how that learning occurs. However, the influence of cosmopolitan learning on the identity negotiations of students is little understood. The experiences of foreign students in many ways challenge the traditional understanding of an international education and the categorization of a traditional international student. Focusing almost exclusively on nationality as an organizing agent and bereft of significant and robust concepts that bring into view the content of international student sense-making, international education discourses neglect to explore the complexity and meanings students ascribe to educational sojourns.

L2 Students’ Adaptive Transfer Beyond First-Year Writing

“…In addition, international and multilingual students can be regarded as transnationals living between worlds, connected to both their home and host countries, and working towards future academic mobility (Gargano, 2012). Their sociocultural histories and shifting identities will also influence how they respond to the learning context and the assigned work in a certain classroom.…”

An interpretive phenomenological analysis of how international students make sense of information literacy

“…Because there appears to be less information written about sense making, the next subsection will touch upon studies that show the ways in which international students make sense of their experiences taking courses in the United States from a more general perspective. Gargano (2012) showed that international students need to make sense of their home identities and reflect on cultural changes or barriers that may exist in the university they are studying in. To truly understand the needs of these students, researchers need to go beyond "quantitative inventories and surveys" and engage the students in critical conversations (Gargano, 2012, p. 154).…”

“…To truly understand the needs of these students, researchers need to go beyond "quantitative inventories and surveys" and engage the students in critical conversations (Gargano, 2012, p. 154). There are many important lessons to take from this study, including that it is important to understand how international students create their own cultural identities and how that can impact their work (Gargano, 2012). Krsmanovic (2020) used Berry's (2017) acculturation model to show how students adapt or integrate in different ways when they study abroad.…”