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Presentation at the ISANA NZ 2018 Symposium – The International Student Experience: Connecting Research and Practice held on 8 November 2018 at Victoria University of Wellington, Rutherford House, Wellington, New Zealand.

Tēnā koutou. And in the four official languages of my country, Singapore, Good morning, da jia hao, selamat pagi, Vaṇakkam.

I am a PhD candidate, currently awaiting examiners’ feedback on my thesis. I came to New Zealand almost four years ago with my family, with the primary purpose of pursuing PhD study, and with the aspiration of starting life afresh.

Today, I’m not sharing about my research, but about being an international PhD student, or what I have termed, diasporic academic. While I will be drawing from my experiences to unpack what it means to be a diasporic academic, I hope that you, too, can relate to being diasporic academics yourselves.

In the past year or so, I have thought deep and hard about being a diasporic academic. The concept is not mine and I am indebted to Wendy Larner (2015) who introduced this term at a conference keynote several years ago. The concept has also been taken up by other scholars such as Yang and Welch (2010).

As far as definitions go, if you know the meaning of ‘diaspora’ and ‘academic’, you will arrive at a person who has relocated from one country to another, and is based in the host country undertaking some kind of research work. More than physical location, however, is the recognition of diasporic academics’ on-going connections with both home and host, and having the capacity to facilitate international and cross-cultural exchanges.

Diasporic academics manifest themselves in various other terms, such as overseas-born or foreign academics, visiting scholars, or what Larner points out, the new global academic elite who rotates between leading institutions. For example, there is a certain academic who is a Distinguished Professor at Beijing Normal University, China, Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a research professor affiliate at the University of Waikato. With the notion of the elite, also comes the notion of a hierarchy of diasporic academics, from those who are well-established and going around the globe, to those who have just relocated themselves physically – and intellectually. It is those who have just embarked on the journey that I’ll like to turn my attention to – those who move to another country to undertake doctoral study – international PhD students.

Being a Diasporic Academic – Identities in Flux from The Diasporic Academic on Vimeo.

New Zealand is attractive to international doctoral students for a range of reasons, such as full work rights, domestic fees, and hospitable family visa provisions. Partners of international doctoral students are eligible for work visas, and children are enrolled as domestic students, meaning, they do not pay international fees.

Too often, however, international students are perceived to be young and carefree. International doctoral students are typically more mature, have professional experience, and often have other obligations such as caregiving and meeting other needs of their family.

What are their aspirations? They may be here on scholarship given by their home government or host country. New Zealand offers doctoral scholarships such as NZ Aid which aims at capacity building in developing countries. They may be pursuing global careers where a doctoral qualification from NZ may be the link to a job elsewhere. Or they may consider NZ a migration destination for career development, family life, or pursuing a quality of life that safeguards their interests and personal beliefs.

What challenges do they face? Professional identities are often challenged in terms of their legitimacy and relevance in a new environment (Fotovatian & Miller, 2014), whether on the basis of one’s language, accent, colour, or worldview. The manifestation of such tensions can be seen in patronising attitudes towards the non-White, non-native English speaker (Kidman, Manathunga, & Cornforth, 2017).

Those with families face additional stress and need to reckon with transformations in their children and spouses – whether positive or negative (Loveridge, Doyle, & Faamanatu-Eteuati, 2018).

I myself have personally reflected in several of forums about the disinterest from my host community in the ‘others’ (see posts on forming academic networks (Lee, 2018) and the international PhD student experience (Lee, 2017))

What becomes of them at the end of their study? There’s not a whole lot of data on this, but anecdotally speaking, those who return home may be armed with a prized qualification, but little is known about their transnational networks, or what they do with such connections. Those who remain in the country, may not go on to academic jobs, and their career trajectories may be influenced by their partners’ job prospects as well.

I would like to offer a biographical reflection of my own experiences as an international PhD candidate, and share what I have learnt from ‘failures’ and what ‘success’ looks like.

Failure, as you can see, was for me being disconnected from things I so badly wanted to connect with. New Zealand friends, academic networks, professional circles. I think the more disappointing experience was acquainting myself with Kiwis. Conversations rarely progressed on to much else. Our lack of common backgrounds and histories, let alone some kind of ongoing collegial space, made it a seemingly insurmountable task.

My successes as the picture suggests, was building on the invisible but perceptible bonds I shared with fellow diasporic individuals, within and beyond the university. I found kindred spirits at conferences and on social media like Twitter, and we have formed our own networks on the fringes of New Zealand centric ones.

Being diasporic for me had become a valuable resource for personal sense-making. Being the ‘other’ was enough to attract those who were too. But banding together allowed us to understand our peripheral membership in one particular local place, but strengthened our positions as global citizens in connection with one another.

Being diasporic meant I saw myself as a broker between my Southeast Asian worldview, and the views from other places, whether you wish to call it North and South, or East and West. Instead of feeling frustrated by the disconnect, I decided to move on to spaces which allowed me to make connections.

Being diasporic enriched by my research. I wasn’t content to use the theories as they were. I wanted my participants’ non-English words, my out-of-culture interpretation to give life to my analysis.

Recognising the full potential of being a cultural bridge and knowledge broker led me to embrace the identity of a diasporic academic. I am the diasporic academic.

I hope that after my sharing about being diasporic, you will consider being reflexive about your experiences in your academic journey and subsequent career development. Who are you, where are you, why does it matter, what and version of yourself will you be tomorrow?

Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

 

References

Fotovatian, S., & Miller, J. (2014). Constructing an institutional identity in university tea rooms: the international PhD student experience. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(2), 286–297. http://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.832154

Kidman, J., Manathunga, C., & Cornforth, S. (2017). Intercultural PhD supervision: Exploring the hidden curriculum in a social science faculty doctoral programme. Higher Education Research & Development, 36(6), 1208–1221. http://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1303457

Larner, W. (2015). Globalising knowledge networks: Universities, diaspora strategies, and academic intermediaries. Geoforum, 59, 197–205. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.006

Lee, S. (2018, January 23). Being optimistic through academic networks. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://nzareblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/lee-academic-networks/

Lee, S. (2017, December 6). International doctoral students: The potential of diasporic academics. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://ieknow.com.au/2017/international-doctoral-students/

Loveridge, J., Doyle, S., & Faamanatu-Eteuati, N. (2018). Journeys across educational and cultural borders: international postgraduate students with young children. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39(3), 333–347. http://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2017.1351867

Yang, R., & Welch, A. R. (2010). Globalisation, transnational academic mobility and the Chinese knowledge diaspora: An Australian case study. Discourse, 31(5). http://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2010.516940

Presentation at the Global Knowledge Economy Seminar organised by the Postgraduate Students’ Association held at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, on 15 October 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My topic today was New Zealand’s fourth largest export industry in 2016, then valued at more than $4 billion dollars, and supported more than 30 thousand jobs across the country. International education is big business for New Zealand, as it is for the traditional players – the English-speaking nations of the US, Canada, UK, and Australia.

The recent International Education Strategy released by the Ministry of Education has declared is aspirations for international education to be the vehicle for global citizenship. But I do wonder whether the forces of global currency overwhelm such lofty, but certainly important goals.

First, let’s think about why international students come to New Zealand. While the perceived high quality of educational offerings is one factor, research suggests that the stronger factors are:

1. that New Zealand is overall a more affordable destination, and
2. New Zealand’s reputation as clean, green, and safe.

Next, let’s consider what international education contributes to New Zealand. As I mentioned earlier, international education is an export sector, meaning, education is treated as a form of goods and services.

Looking at the 2016 stats, there were about 130 thousand international students enrolled in schools, language centres, private institutions, the polytechnics, and universities.

Half of the international students hail from China and India, both emerging middle-income countries and engines of global growth.

Universities take the largest share, hosting a fifth of the international student population, and receiving almost 40% of the tuition income.

This thin slice of statistics reflects what keeps the sector humming along. The sellers – educational institutions – desire income and profit, and the buyers – Asian students – want decent qualifications from an English-speaking country.

You might think that I’ve painted a rather crude picture of international education, but I’ve yet to meet someone who has attributed the $4 billion dollar figure to the desire for world peace.

But even if world peace is not at the forefront or the producers and consumers’ minds, it doesn’t mean that international education is only worth in terms of dollars and cents. It is, after all, not a sector that deals with milk powder or premium beef, but a sector that is capable of transforming lives of all students, the educators, and the community.

The University of Waikato, for example, hosts many nationalities among its students. As an international student myself, I feel privileged to be able to interact with my peers from Vietnam, India, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Vanuatu , Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Timor Leste. I enjoy learning about their different histories and social customs.

I am beginning to build a global network of friends and colleagues. And while I cannot promise there will be world peace, I can say that I have grown to be more sensitive and appreciative of the different, and at times, conflicting, geopolitics across the world stage. In other words, I am learning how to be a global citizen. I’m not sure whether my Kiwi peers have the same experience, or feel the same way. But the research suggests that they are probably ambivalent or indifferent.

Perhaps Prime Minister Jacinda Arden could offer all of us some inspiration to become more globally minded and action-oriented. In her speech to the United Nations General Assembly, she said, and I quote:

“Given the challenges we face today, and how truly global they are in their nature and impact, the need for collective action and multilateralism has never been clearer.”

PM Arden was talking about climate change. I think the same applies to international education.

The value of international education must not remain solely at the level of trade. It has the enormous potential to build bridges across cultural and political divides. My conclusion is for you to take the first step in making it happen.

Peer support for doctoral students meets emotional and cultural needs outside power relations imposed by institutional structures and authority figures.

I was recently invited to contribute a blog post to the Trust Me! blog, an amazing resource for research supervisor development, helmed by Dr Kay Guccione, Chair of the University of Sheffield Mentoring Network. My post is based on a recent article I wrote about how peer support and student advocacy are important resources for supporting international (indeed, all) doctoral students. The original post is re-produced here with kind permission from Kay Guccione.

[Journal article ref: Lee, S. (2017). Peer Support for International Doctoral Students in Managing Supervision Relationships. Journal of International Students, 7(4), 1096–1103. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1035971]

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I start off this year with several goals, the biggest being completing my PhD. One of the main reasons for doing a PhD was to start an academic career, which I now realise, after several years of PhD-ing, is what James Burford recently referred to as Cruel Optimism (drawing on Lauren Berlant’s 2011 work). Briefly, cruel optimism describes the doctoral aspiration for the academic good life in spite the depressing reality of scarce academic positions and short-term contracts.

Admittedly, I am an optimist, even in the face of the ‘precarious’ academic existence (see this article for example). Job stability is, after all, not a defining characteristic of many contemporary jobs and careers. A friend in an administrative role in New Zealand remarked to me that since graduating about five years ago, she has had five different positions in two different organisations. While she would have liked a more stable job, she has come to accept that positions come and go as companies restructure, chop and change. Her conclusion: Build and maintain your reputation. It was personal recommendations that enabled her to move from one position to the next.

I have taken her advice to heart and my other goal this year is to build and maintain my reputation. But then I start asking myself, what exactly is my reputation about? To answer this question, I turned to recent ‘how-to’ books on being an academic: How to Be An Academic by Inger Mewburn from Australia (aka The Thesis Whisperer), and Optimising your academic career: Advice for early career scholars by Carol Mutch, a New Zealand-based academic. Their advice has affirmed what I’ve been doing to build my reputation as an emerging scholar.

From Mewburn, I learnt about the academic ‘gift economy’ where giving gifts (e.g., sharing a journal article, donating time to a project) has unwritten rules about timing, expectations and reciprocity. So building a reputation could be about building social capital where the giver gets to be recognised as expert/generous/etc., and the receiver gains something valuable/solve a problem/etc. through various social relationships. But what if someone in the lower rungs of the academic hierarchy attempts to give gifts? What kinds of gifts would be appropriate and accepted? What kind of capital can be built through experiences and other relationships? Are the actions of gifting necessarily calculative? And do lower status givers eventually run into the cycle of cruel optimism?

These are questions for one or several PhD topics, but my tentative response is that building relationships come first before getting involved in the gift economy. This was especially so as I had relocated from Singapore to New Zealand for PhD study, and did not have much of a Kiwi social circle to begin with. My experience with academic relationships, or social relationships for that matter, were initially disappointing. It seemed hard to connect with people or get the momentum going for more lasting relationships beyond the friendly his and byes. The faculty didn’t seem interested in engaging doctoral students in the wider academic community either, especially with restructuring and staff movement humming in the background. But over the years, having learnt lessons of patience and endurance, I’ve developed positive academic connections, some at the university, but mostly beyond my immediate physical location. As one academic shared with me, it’s unlikely that you meet a whole bunch of like-minded souls in the next room, or next corridor, or even the next building. Networks need to be built outside your immediate affiliations.

I have done the usual route of conferencing, and depending on which conferences, some were more rewarding than others in terms of finding my ‘tribe’. But as Mewburn notes, social media is an underrated and underused resource for building social capital, reputation and relationships. I’ve been a techie of sorts since high school and I embraced social media several years before I started thinking about academia more seriously. While I do not expect any sort of close friendships through social media, various channels have enabled me to build an academic network with relations of varying closeness. Facebook helps me keep in touch with conference buddies, some of whom have become friends. Following various academic-related people and organisations on Twitter has led me to staying in touch with trends and the latest research. ResearchGate, the social media networking site for academics, has done exactly that for me – I follow academics of interest, and participate with everyone else in a mini gift economy: sharing and recommending articles with the wider network.

While going social for academic purposes has its drawbacks such as potential time wasting, privacy issues, risk of having intellectual property ‘stolen’, I’ve come to embrace the benefits, mostly because I recognise my limitations. I came into academia relatively late in the game and I do not have an established professional network in New Zealand. Being an outsider and precarious on various levels, social media became for me a more level playing field. Even though there are clearly more established and experienced players in the academic social media space, it seems easier for me to navigate the rules and boundaries within a virtual space than the world of ‘real’. Some of my peers, however, see no immediate benefit in getting involved with multiple social platforms. I agree – the benefits are not immediate, and sometimes not even obvious. I’ve only seen the fruit of my social media ‘investment’ in the past year, after engaging with various academic others in the course of the PhD work of conferencing, publishing and the like. For example, through a conference call going around Facebook, I tested the social waters for interest in doing a symposium. After a few hits and misses along the way, our symposium made it to the 2017 New Zealand Association for Research in Education (NZARE) Annual Conference.

Going social has also helped me shape my academic identity and find my niche, a topic that Mutch devotes a chapter to in her book, Optimising your academic career: Advice for early career scholars. In that chapter, she takes us through a series of questions such as: Why is it we want to do research? What is our passion? What makes us excited? What disciplines and areas does our research relate to? What do we want to be known for? Where do we want to go from here? It’s not an easy task to answer these questions by myself because sometimes the answer is: I don’t really know. But surveying research interests on social media leads to other topics, other strands of thoughts, and sometimes leads me to the answers to Mutch’s questions.

So what can I conclude about my academic networks? Firstly, they are both real and virtual, one reinforcing the other. Sometimes the face-to-face relationships gets reinforced in the virtual, sometimes the virtual appears in the real. Sometimes the virtual will likely stay virtual, but who knows when a conference might change that. Secondly, my networks have grown alongside my PhD journey, again, one feeding the other. My PhD work not only results in the ongoing drafts I have to write, but also reflective blog posts, publications, and conference presentations. These more public endeavours lead me to virtual chats, meeting actual people, and expanding my sources for calls for papers and collaborative projects. Lastly, whether or not we call it social capital or gift economy, there is a sense that networks thrive because of everyone else believing that there is value in networks – the belief that you will find out about important information more readily, that you can throw up topics for quick discussion, and that you might find a gem or two (or a much needed recommendation) among these virtual conversations. And not to mention the sense of belonging to a wider community of scholars interested in the things you are.

While the thought of a difficult and uncertain future after the PhD seems truly cruel, my experiences with social networks tell me that shares, likes and comments, plus longer and deeper conversations elsewhere, go a long way. So I choose hopeful optimism to start this year–and for the years to come.

The year-end was a bumper crop of conferences, varied and productive but for different reasons. At the beginning of 2017, I had only planned on presenting at one conference, but along the way, other opportunities came along that were hard to turn down. Despite working up a hectic schedule of five presentations at four events over three weeks (and managing sore throats in between), it was an extremely rewarding period of connecting my work to a larger audience, establishing new connections, and reinforcing existing ties.

My first conference was the annual NZARE (New Zealand Association for Research in Education) held on home ground at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, from 20 to 22 November. This was my first NZARE conference and actually hesitated submitting an abstract because I had the impression that my field of international education was not of particular interest to an audience focused on domestic issues in New Zealand schools. However, being in contact with the ‘Students and Emerging Researchers’ caucus group representative led to several conversations on Facebook and I was able to gather some momentum for an idea to propose a symposium on international education in New Zealand.

Subsequently, I rounded up two other postgraduate colleagues who had similar research areas, and called on my supervisor to be our chair for the symposium. Preparation for the symposium took some effort to coordinate, such as tying our different research topics together and doing our own internal peer review of abstracts and presentations, mostly through email or online meetings I’m glad to report that we worked well together and our symposium attracted a warm and cozy audience of about 15 or so people. Although international education has yet to catch on as a special interest group or an important theme within NZARE, I’m pleased that I’ve made a start in raising the profile of this particular aspect of education in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I also presented another paper at the NZARE conference, not based on my research, but on my personal experiences as a PhD student in New Zealand, titled “The promise of diasporic academics: Potential partnerships between the local and global”. More about this presentation here, but would like to add that the presentation resonated with many in the audience, especially the postgraduate students. This then led to interactions with new postgraduate friends from other universities in New Zealand and Australia. Connecting with other emerging researchers in education was certainly one of the highlights of the NZARE conference, and I hope future iterations of the conference will consider having a larger focus on postgraduate students.

The next couple of events took place at the University of Otago in Dunedin, an institution which I’ve long admired from afar. On 26 November, I attended the Education, Migration and Translation Research Symposium organised by the Centre for Global Migrations. The one-day multi-disciplinary symposium was varied in its presentations ranging from the classroom, to community, to larger ideological issues operating in diasporic and multiethnic spaces. Despite the wide-ranging topics, I enjoyed and learnt from the high quality presentations, not least the keynote presentation by Professor Michael Singh who demonstrated strong theoretical and historical links among the three big themes of education, migration and translation.

This one day symposium was truly an unforgettable experience where we spent most of that Sunday in one seminar room, not only sampling a large array of research, but having rich conversations with one another. In contrast to the intimate setting of the symposium was the NZASIA Conference held from 27 to 29 November, also at the University of Otago. The disciplines represented at this conference stretched widely from studies on various Asian countries or cultures, in both the humanities and social sciences. The wide spectrum, however, meant that it was challenging to connect with others working in a similar field. In fact, only a handful of presenters were researching educational issues and were dispersed in various session across the conference.

Paper presentation at NZASIA Conference 2017

While the intellectual engagement was not as rich as I had experienced at the symposium, the pre-conference postgraduate workshops facilitated by representatives from Asia New Zealand Foundation were practical and immediately useful. In particular, the workshop on engaging with the media stood out for me as I learnt about how to interact with the media productively and how to maximize my social media presence. Something new I learnt was that Facebook is by far the most used social media platform in New Zealand, and that Facebook videos are becoming more mainstream in showcasing new ideas, policies and products.

The final conference I participated in was the ISANA/ANZSSA Conference held in the Gold Coast from 6 to 8 December. This was the one conference that I had planned on attending just as the last ISANA conference ended last year. The International Education Association ISANA conference is the one conference that brings together practitioners and researchers in the field of international education in the Australasia region. Having participated and benefited from the 2016 conference, as well as being involved with ISANA in New Zealand, I was looking forward to the 2017 edition, this time co-hosted with its ally organisation, ANZSSA (Australian New Zealand Student Services Association), the peak professional organisation for staff in the post secondary sector in Australasia.

The Gold Coast setting was probably popular with many, especially those who love the beach. Admittedly, I am not a Gold Coast fan and was missing previous conference venues such as Dunedin and Wellington. I did enjoy, however, staying at the Meriton Serviced Apartments which felt more like a 5-star hotel with its excellent amenities and service. Waking up to the 4:30 am sunrise meant I had several hours in the morning to do my rounds on social media and email, work on blog posts, and have a leisurely breakfast – all in the comfort of an air-conditioned living area.

My paper presentation was scheduled during the Doctoral Consortium breakout session on the first day of the conference. While I was not expecting a huge turnout as there were several other practitioner-focused breakout sessions to choose from, there was an enthusiastic response from the audience who asked questions relating to both practical and theoretical aspects of my research.

Apart from presenting my paper, I also managed to connect with various delegates from both Australia and New Zealand, and getting a sense of the nature and scale of international education business at different institutions. I also managed to meet other postgraduate students and academics with similar research interests. As brief as our encounters were, our conversations nonetheless sparked the possibility of future collaborations.

My conference season ended on a high with my paper being awarded the IELTS Student Bursary Award for Best Paper during the conference dinner. What made this award extra special was that previous award winners were two female academics whose work I admired and whom I also looked up to as role models in academia. This was definitely a positive step towards my aspirations to be a researcher in international education!

Thanks to #IELTS @ISANAnational @ANZSSA for award for my work on #internationalstudents informal academic learning #ISANAConf17 Inspired to continue to pursue scholarship in #intled pic.twitter.com/LOtHqf3cqU

— Sherrie Lee (@orangecanton) December 7, 2017

It has been a whirlwind ride of seminar rooms, coffee breaks and networking, but I’ve been enriched by the many different conversations in the past three weeks. To mark the end of conference season, I’d like to give out my own awards for the following:

Best conference city: Dunedin, New Zealand. The lovely weather sustained throughout the five days I was there was simply unbeatable.

Best accommodation: Meriton Service Apartments. The Nespresso machine won me over in an instant. Uninterrupted wifi came a close second.

Best intellectual engagement: Education, Migration and Translation Research Symposium organised by the Centre for Global Migrations, University of Otago.

Best response to my presentation: NZARE Conference presentation – “The promise of diasporic academics: Potential partnerships between the local and global”.

Most relevant for my PhD research: Doctoral Consortium , ISANA/ANZSSA Conference.

Most conducive for postgraduate networking: NZASIA Conference. While I did not meet many in my field, there were plenty of opportunities to meet other postgraduate students during coffee and lunch breaks.

Not sure what conference season will look like next year but here’s hoping for similar, if not better experiences!

I first heard the term ‘diaspora academics’ at Wendy Larner’s keynote speech at the 2016 ISANA International Education Association Conference in Wellington. Against the backdrop of the internationalisation of higher education, Larner presented an argument about the increasing importance of diasporic academics, that is, those who have multiple national affiliations. Examples of diasporic academics include researchers from one country based in another country working on a collaborative project; an academic from one country relocating to another country; as well as research students from one country carrying out research in another country, or travelling between countries for research purposes. These academics or researchers who stay on more permanently in the host country are known as diasporic academics.

Larner argued that diasporic academics are valuable in advancing universities’ internationalisation strategies and policies. They are valuable because they act as transnational knowledge brokers or academic intermediaries. They broker international relationships between countries by using “their experiential understandings, linguistic skills and ability to read cultural nuance by providing insider accounts” (Larner, 2015, p. 202).

Larner also highlighted that a significant portion of diasporic academics are former international doctoral students who subsequently established their career in the host country. While she did not elaborate on this particular group, Larner’s presentation did get me thinking about whether I, and others, consider international doctoral students as valuable diasporic academics.

The thought of international doctoral students as diasporic academics provoked both excitement and disappointment in me. As an international doctoral student myself, I was thrilled by the idea that I could be considered valuable to my host institution. But the excitement quickly gave way to the day-to-day realities. Instead of being engaged in some cross-cultural understanding between my professional and research experiences and that of the host institutional community, interactions with domestic peers and established academics and researchers were hit and miss occasions in the absence of an authentic community of practice. These nagging feelings resonated with my fellow international doctoral students, often in private or quiet conversation.

Then came along an opportunity to articulate those nagging feelings in a more coherent fashion at a conference presentation. What resulted was a well-received presentation at the 2017 NZARE (New Zealand Association for Research in Education) Conference, as well as an article based on the presentation.

In both the presentation and the article, I share my own experiences and observations of how international doctoral students do not seem to be meaningfully integrated into the larger academic community, but instead, remain within ‘international only’ circles.

Nonetheless, I remain hopeful that our value as diasporic academics can be realised through the indigenous Māori concept of mannakitanga, which means “… mutual care and respect for people, honouring one another or power sharing…” (Kukutai & Rata, 2017, p. 41). As I conclude in the article, if we truly value mannakitanga, then integrating international doctoral students into the fabric of university life would be less a burden and simply a way of doing things.

References

Kukutai, T., & Rata, A. (2017). From mainstream to Manaaki: Indigenising our approach to immigration. In D. Hall (ed.), Fair borders? Migration policy in the twenty-first century (pp. 26–45). Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books.

Larner, W. (2015). Globalising knowledge networks: Universities, diaspora strategies, and academic intermediaries. Geoforum, 59, 197–205. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.006

 

 

I’m coming towards the end of my data analysis involving Chinese/Mandarin data. It has been an exhausting process of working in two languages, whether at the technical level of translation or the analytical work of making sense of utterances in one tongue and articulating the analysis in English.

I’ve taken different approaches toward translation for two different types of data. For the data sets involving mobile phone messages, I did the translation on my own and asked my primary participants to verify my interpretation. I felt confident of undertaking the translation on my own as the data was textual and was therefore faster to process the meaning from one language into another in the same textual medium. Furthermore, I was able to dictate the style of translation, aiming for a similar informal style of exchange in English. Also, because I had continued contact with my informants who had provided the data, I was able to consult them to verify my interpretation of the text messages.

For the data set involving audio-recorded interactions, I asked a professional translator to do the transcription and translation. The reasons for not doing the translation on my own were related to my  own limitations: i) The exchange was fast-paced and it would have taken me an inordinate amount of time to undertake the translation; ii) Translation was also difficult for me as I was not familiar with the style of speech of one of the participants. I wanted a full transcription of the audio data in order to do a comprehensive analysis, and I needed to have this textual form in a matter of weeks, not months, in order for my data analysis to progress and not stall. Thus engaging a professional and experienced translator outweighed the benefit of undertaking the translation on my own.

The process of the two different approaches have been illuminating in understanding the nuances of translation from the broader perspectives of pragmatics and linguistics. I learnt a few lessons about translation. One, there may be several possible translations but one may fit the cultural context of the interactants more appropriately than others. Two, in using a Conversation Analytic approach to analysis, there is an inevitable tension between idiomatic and literal translations.

The many face of 恩 (ēn)

In both text messages and face-to-face interactions, the character 恩 or the sound represented by the character 恩 was used throughout. In English, the sound of 恩 is equivalent to ‘uhm’ or ‘um’. If you heard ‘uhm’ in an exchange, it would be transcribed as such and be understood as a continuer in most cases. However, to transcribe it literally as ‘mhm’ would be to miss the point of the 恩 utterance in Mandarin. In text messages, it is more often than not, a response to acknowledge or agree with what was said in the previous turn. In verbal speech, it can be similarly used, or it may also occur as a continuer. Even in the use of as acknowledgement or agreement, there are choices when deciding on an English equivalent: ‘Yep’, ‘yeah’, ‘yes’, ‘ok’, and the like.

When translating the text messages, I read the original exchange several times before deciding on whether 恩 was a nodding ‘yeah’ or a resounding ‘yep’ or an agreeable ‘ok’. In my participants’ review of my translation, there were times where they indicated a preference for a particular translation, e.g. ‘yeah’ instead of ‘ok’, which I incorporated into the final translation. With another similar sort of acknowledgement, 喔喔 (ō) (the character is used in duplication), my initial translation of ‘oh ok’ was replaced with my participant’s preference for ‘O I C’, a common shorthand for ‘oh I see’ in text messaging.

How much translation do you need?

Another lesson in translation came about when I dealt with the audio-recorded data that had been transcribed and translated by a professional translator. After I had received the transcription, I listened to samples of the recording to check against the transcription. My translator had done a stellar job. There were parts of the conversation that were difficult for me to ascertain such as particular words and phrases and what was said during overlaps. But the translator had meticulously captured the details and I was satisfied that it was a job that I could not have accomplished as well on my own.

When I started to read through the transcription and the translation, I then noticed that the translator had taken a particular approach. She had chosen to provide an idiomatic translation at the sentence level, rather than at a phrasal level. This only became obvious to me as I had done the translation of the text message data set on a phrasal level to preserve as much of the sequence and structure of the original text. While it was relatively easy to do a phrasal translation for text messages, doing so for the verbal interaction was not so straight forward. There were many false starts and instances of careless speech which goes mostly unnoticed during actual conversation, but stand out most clearly in transcription. I could appreciate her choice of a coherent translation that conveyed the intended meaning of the speakers, rather than a slavish translation of odd sounding phrases.

However, as I read and re-read, analysed and re-analysed my data, I found myself amending the translation to bear closer resemblance to the sequence and structure of the original language, as far as it was intelligible in English. This allowed me to note what the speaker was emphasising, as well as identity specific points where topic changes occurred.

Another issue I had to grapple with was the level of detail I wished to show in my transcription. In the Conversation Analysis (CA) literature, Hepburn and Bolden (2013) recommend a three-line transcription comprising the original orthography in the first line, a morpheme-by-morpheme translation in the second, and an idiomatic translation in the third. I hesitated to incorporate this detailed level of transcription as I felt that the bulkiness of having a three-line transcription would detract the reader from ease of reading and understanding. Although I used a CA approach in analysis, my research was not solely centred around the CA methodology but rather CA was used as tool to support my analysis. Thus for the verbal data, I decided on a two-line transcription with the Chinese characters in the first line, and the English translation in the second. For the text messages, however, I wanted to re-create the appearance of the text messages as it was on the mobile phone which meant placing the original text in text boxes. The translation of the messages were then placed below the box, rather having it after each line of text.

And the moral of the story is …

Never work alone in translating your data. Tap on your own linguistic and cultural resources but also recognise your limitations. Apart from making accurate translations, other equally important considerations are understanding context and speaker preferences, as well as the analytical goals of transcription.

 

Reference

Hepburn, A., & Bolden, G. B. (2013). The conversation analytic approach to transcription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 57–76). Oxford, England: Wiley-Blackwell.

Sharing a personal journey of seeking mentors but finding mentors instead.

This post marks the start of a new blog – The Diasporic Academic. Starting a new blog allows me to choose a more appropriate title to reflect my current state of affairs. For the past two years, I was using Teacher Sherrie, a blog I started when I embarked on my MAT in TESOL, to write about my PhD experiences and research topics. I’ve been thinking about my academic narrative recently, and I realise that the ‘teacher’ label is simply not the right ‘frame’ for my current, and potentially, future endeavours.

I first heard about the term ‘diasporic academic’ from Wendy Larner during her Keynote Presentation at the 2016 ISANA conference. The presentation was based on her 2015 paper, and according to Larner (2015), the diasporic academic is defined as one with multiple national affiliations. Examples include a researcher from one country based in another country working on a collaborative project, and a doctoral student from one country carrying out research in another country, or travelling between countries for research purposes.

Apart from identifying academics as having links in more than one country, ‘diasporic’ further points to these individuals as being intermediaries, acting as transnational knowledge brokers. They broker international relationships between countries by using “their experiential understandings, linguistic skills and ability to read cultural nuance by providing insider accounts” (Larner, 2015, p. 202).

I remember being inspired by this perspective of foreign/non-native researchers. I wrote down personal notes on what this term meant to me and I discussed this term with some fellow international doctoral students. We concluded that the concept of the diasporic academic was promising but also lamented that the current university climate viewed international doctoral students as funding and research targets more than transnational knowledge brokers. My initial enthusiasm was snuffed out quickly enough.

Recently, however, the term ‘diasporic academic’ began to resonate with me again. In the past six months, I’ve been translating my data, analysing it through translanguaging efforts (Lewis, Jones, & Baker, 2012), that is, thinking in both English and Chinese to make sense of Chinese text and presenting the argument in English. I also finished a draft article on being a bilingual researcher, and presented about conducting cross-cultural research in an English-dominant environment. And then as I sat down thinking about who I was as an academic, what kind of narrative I was trying to write, the answer presented itself: I am a diasporic academic.

I am a diasporic academic, not only as a foreigner researching about international students in New Zealand, but also as a third generation Chinese Singaporean having to differentiate myself from other Chinese, both nationals and diaspora, to those unfamiliar with the ‘Chinese diaspora‘. I have to point out that ‘diaspora’ is a highly contested territory and many may disagree with how I have used the term. Nonetheless, I believe it is a term whose meaning is evolving with changing patterns of migration, whether temporary or permanent. And so the meaning I attach to being a diasporic academic will no doubt change in the course of developing an academic identity and career in the years to come.

 

References

Larner, W. (2015). Globalising knowledge networks: Universities, diaspora strategies, and academic intermediaries. Geoforum, 59, 197–205. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.006

Lewis, G., Jones, B., & Baker, C. (2012). Translanguaging: Developing its conceptualisation and contextualisation. Educational Research and Evaluation, 18(7), 655–670. http://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2012.718490

My reflection on the ISANA NZ Professional Development Day held in Hamilton on 16 June 2017: http://www.isananz.org.nz. (Original article archived here.)

ISANA NZ PD Day in Hamilton, 16 June 2017
Sherrie Lee, Student Member, ISANA NZ

The ISANA NZ PD Day in Hamilton was held on 16 June 2017 and facilitated by Terry McGrath and Sylvia Hooker. The ISANA NZ PD days across New Zealand were generously sponsored by Allianz/Marsh and Uni-Care.

Terry opened the session with updates to ISANA activities, most notably, the partnership with Education New Zealand(ENZ) to present eight workshops on the topic of pastoral care of international students at the upcoming New Zealand International Education Conference (NZIEC) in August. Another important update was the launch of The International Student Wellbeing Strategy by the Ministry of Education, and the funding available for education providers to implement ideas to strengthen international student wellbeing.
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​Terry also highlighted that ISANA NZ was looking at providing more professional development workshops and invited greater involvement from the ISANA NZ membership. With rapid developments in the international education scene, ISANA NZ is also looking towards increasing its membership and increasing funding for its operations.

Terry also introduced NZISA – New Zealand International Students’ Association – a student organisation in its early stages of formation. As a student representative of NZISA, I spoke briefly about how NZISA came about. Following discussions about the needs of international students and their student voice at the ISANA 2016 conference in Wellington, a group of international student leaders came together to discuss forming an international student organisation. Currently, the proposed constitution is in its draft stage and the students are working towards a formal establishment of the association. (Postscript: more info about NZISA as reported by PIE news.)

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Overview Update: International Education in New Zealand
Terry provided an overview of the international education landscape in New Zealand. International education is valuable for longer term migration with declining numbers in the New Zealand work force, as well as for international relations. He highlighted recent statistics of international student enrolments and the key stakeholders involved in international education (ISANA NZ, SIEBA, ANZSSA).

Terry then moved on to focus on the importance of pastoral care for international students. Supporting students’ living and social needs is valuable because it contributes to their overall experience of studying in New Zealand. He highlighted that the goodwill of international students is influential and important for New Zealand. He cited the example of Kiwi expatriates working overseas who have benefitted from such goodwill.

Terry also pointed out the implications of recent developments. Firstly, with the industry having a substantial economic value of more than $4 billion, one needs to ask where the money goes to. How is the government using the money to benefit international students? Secondly, the recent change to the Code of Practice of Pastoral Care for International Students means that the Code is now outcomes-based, which provides greater flexibility for education providers to implement the Code. With a pragmatic approach, how then are outcomes measured?

Workshop 1: Ensuring Well-being in Living Contexts
Terry and Sylvia presented an overview of accommodation issues faced by international students. They discussed the following dominant patterns that influence living choices:

i) social class
ii) communication of pre-arrival information
iii) thinking processes such as, prior expectations
iv) coping mechanisms, especially when living in isolation
v) economics
vi) leadership, e.g. being influenced by other international students
vii) lifestyle factors

One interesting example given, was how an international student would willingly spend a few thousand dollars on a car (because it was relatively cheap compared to buying a car back home), but was unwilling to fork out a couple of hundred dollars for a bed (because it seemed to be exorbitant).

There were two breakout groups (under 18s, over 18s) to discuss accommodation issues. I joined the group focusing on over 18s. It was interesting to find out the preferences of different demographics of students. For example, Chinese students preferred homestay arrangements at least in the initial period, Indian students tended to opt for rental accommodation with fellow nationals, while European students, particularly those who were on short-term courses, looked to Airbnb for living arrangements.

I also shared with the group my personal experience of looking for accommodation for my family and pointed out the difficulty in getting up to date and specific information about property rentals prior to coming to New Zealand. In my interactions with other postgraduate students, I found that personal networks provided valuable information related to living arrangements.

NZQA Update
A representative from NZQA (Harsha Chhima) presented on the updates to the Code of Practice for Pastoral Care for International Students. Harsha highlighted the available resources related to the Code of Practice, such as, resources in different languages for international students. She also highlighted that the new focus on outcomes was based on the principles of ‘high trust and high accountability’. Signatories are required to submit a self-review to review their pastoral care practices and procedures to see if they meet the outcomes of the Code of Practice.

I asked the question of whether there are checks and balances since signatories may be biased in providing evidence of their own conduct. Harsha responded that the department scrutinises the documents submitted by signatories and will act promptly if there are any discrepancies or there is insufficient evidence.

Workshop 2: Pastoral Care in a Cross-cultural Context
Sylvia and Terry presented on the multi-faceted and complex topic of pastoral care (which is itself complex) in a cross-cultural context.
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There were several important aspects which could have been workshop topics of their own, and which I highlight below.

i) Pastoral care is demanding and those in such positions need to recognise the need for self-care, e.g. identifying close contacts whom they can talk to, ask for support from, etc.

ii) Responding to religious sensitivities regarding serious issues (e.g. death) require knowledge and appropriate communication. A useful resource was highlighted – A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity.

iii) Intercultural competence can be thought of as different levels: i) having cultural literacy (knowledge of different cultures), ii) cultural intelligence (being able to function in culturally diverse settings), and iii) cross-cultural competency (having the necessary skills, attributes and behaviour to interact meaningfully between different ethnic cultures).

iv) Elements of social cohesion: i) Belonging, ii) Participation, iii) Legitimacy, iv) Inclusion, v) Recognition.

v) International Student Cycle – the most neglected aspect is probably the post academic transition stage and how students can be supported to transition to employment in New Zealand, back to their home countries, etc.

Immigration NZ – Update on policy changes
A representative from Immigration New Zealand (Bridget Harrison) presented on the latest policies and visas related to international students. The details can be found on Immigration NZ’s website pages specifically for education providers. Bridget also shared about the recent Pathways Visas which was potentially attractive to students as well as education providers (in terms of reducing administration), but was however, not clearly understood and therefore there needed to be greater clarification of the requirements. One of the points reiterated was that evidence of having sufficient funds was an important visa requirement, and that international students cannot expect to be guaranteed paid employment as a means to fund their studies.

A significant policy change was the requirements for the Skilled Migrant Category visa – notably the minimum remuneration of $48,859 per annum, and the increase in selection points (140 to 160). This then has an impact for students who consider overseas education in New Zealand as a pathway to migration. A few in the audience considered the minimum remuneration to be unrealistic since New Zealander workers would not typically receive such pay even after several years of working experience. Bridget said that there would be consultation in the near future regarding these recent changes and how they affect international students. Bridget also highlighted that students who were considering post-study migration should ‘be smart’ about their work rights and make full use of such opportunities to get their foot in the door.

I then raised the point about how there seems to be conflicting messages about providing students’ work rights, and then advising them about the challenges of finding paid work. I suggested that this was going to be an ongoing challenge with students having high expectations of finding work (e.g. as promised by agents) and the reality of paid employment for students.

 Workshop 3: Sharpening our Tools
i) Handling workload & avoiding burnout
ii) Building an inclusive student body
iii) Enhancing cultural literacy amongst staff
iv) Marketable features in our support programmes

I participated in discussion groups on ‘Building an inclusive student body’ and ‘Enhancing cultural literacy amongst staff’. In our discussion on building an inclusive body, I was asked what I thought would be an ideal inclusive body. I shared that it was having friendships and networks with locals like domestic students. I personally found this one of the most challenging aspects of relationship building. It was much easier to connect with fellow international students who had an immediate understanding of what you were about. Several in the group noted that internationalising the campus was about creating opportunities for greater interaction between domestic and international students.

The group also talked about how buddy programmes were useful by intentionally pairing a domestic student with a new international student. I suggested that for postgraduate students, a group of buddies, rather than individual persons, might be more effective in helping students and often the families they bring with them in the initial transition period.

In the discussion group on enhancing cultural literacy, all of us recognised the challenges of building such skills among people who may have limited exposure to different cultures or who hold strong views about those outside their own culture. For institutions to equip staff with cultural competency, it is necessary for management and decision-makers to recognise its importance and the integral part it plays in pastoral care.

Personal reflection
Staff working in roles supporting international students face a set of complex challenges such as, institutional culture and agendas, diverse student backgrounds, and ongoing global developments and unexpected events. The PD day was an important time to gather collectively, not only to hear the latest news, but also to share and learn from experiences from other people and organisations. ISANA NZ plays an increasingly important role in facilitating the professional development of individuals, who in turn shape the culture of international education in practice.