How international students navigate the social and academic practices of a South African university
type: CreativeWork
description: The aim of this thesis is to qualitatively explore how international students navigated the social and academic practices of a South African university. A sample of thirteen students was selected from the Humanities faculty at the University of Cape Town, each of whom was a visiting student for either one semester or a full academic year. Participants volunteered for one-hour, face-to-face interviews which were tape-recorded for later analysis. The interviews were semi-structured, as the author hoped to elicit particular critical moments in the student's study-abroad journey. Two groups of students were sought for purposes of validation and comparison: Group 1 consisted of nine American students; Group 2 consisted of four students from other countries. The focus, however, was primarily upon the experiences of the students from the U.S. The theoretical framework for the study was drawn from the work of social theorists James Gee and Pierre Bourdieu. Their interest in the differential distribution of power in the social world - particularly within academia - and in how the individual gains or loses power as s/he moves in that world provided helpful frames for exploring how international students negotiated often unfamiliar contexts encountered while studying abroad. To operationalize the theoretical framework, Anthony Giddens' concept of "fateful moments" was utilized. Following other researchers, the concept was altered to "critical moments." Critical moments are moments in a subject's narrative which cause disjunctures to arise in the life journey; they are moments of crisis which demand navigational choices to be made. In analysis of the data, these moments were located either by the interviewee's identification or the author's interpretation. In order to aid analysis practices were split into two domains: social and academic. Data was then clustered according to themes which arose in the interviews. In relation to social practices, common themes were related to "w…
abstract: The aim of this thesis is to qualitatively explore how international students navigated the social and academic practices of a South African university. A sample of thirteen students was selected from the Humanities faculty at the University of Cape Town, each of whom was a visiting student for either one semester or a full academic year. Participants volunteered for one-hour, face-to-face interviews which were tape-recorded for later analysis. The interviews were semi-structured, as the author hoped to elicit particular critical moments in the student's study-abroad journey. Two groups of students were sought for purposes of validation and comparison: Group 1 consisted of nine American students; Group 2 consisted of four students from other countries. The focus, however, was primarily upon the experiences of the students from the U.S. The theoretical framework for the study was drawn from the work of social theorists James Gee and Pierre Bourdieu. Their interest in the differential distribution of power in the social world - particularly within academia - and in how the individual gains or loses power as s/he moves in that world provided helpful frames for exploring how international students negotiated often unfamiliar contexts encountered while studying abroad. To operationalize the theoretical framework, Anthony Giddens' concept of "fateful moments" was utilized. Following other researchers, the concept was altered to "critical moments." Critical moments are moments in a subject's narrative which cause disjunctures to arise in the life journey; they are moments of crisis which demand navigational choices to be made. In analysis of the data, these moments were located either by the interviewee's identification or the author's interpretation. In order to aid analysis practices were split into two domains: social and academic. Data was then clustered according to themes which arose in the interviews. In relation to social practices, common themes were related to "w…
author: Gieser, James D
language: eng
date published: 2009
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:22:47Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: School of Education

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11909