Research on foreign students in China - Satisfactions Survey

[cliveloughlin]

Hi there

Another random question from me i'm afraid!

I'm thinking about doing my thesis on how international students currently studying in China feel about their life/study experience in China (limited to universities, not language schools) but am finding it hard to find any good research that has been undertaken in this area. Of course, this is quite a lot about what Chinese students think about universities overseas, but their circumstances may be a little different to foreign students in China.

Does anyone know of any literature which deals specifically with how foreign students (from any country) perceive Chinese universities, teaching methods, facilities etc? Chinese, Korean, Japanese and English documents are all welcome!

Please note, i'm not looking for the "I love Chinese culture"/"I learned Chinese because of my Chinese girlfried" type of essay/speech competition material. What I　really would like is some scientific research, perhaps based on questionnaires/interviews etc.

Thanks so much in advance.

Clive

[amandagmu]

"What I　really would like is some scientific research, perhaps based on questionnaires/interviews etc."

Isn't that what you should be doing for your thesis if that's the topic? I suggest creating some of these and handing them out to foreign students you see at universities here. I've met quite a few students from African and East European countries on campuses. Why not try approaching them with a survey you create?

[roddy]

You'd be breaking the Statistics Law, I think. Not, of course, that anyone would care.

Not aware of any research. Do it by hanging around campus and you're only getting the students who turn up. To do this properly you'd need support from the Ministry of Education or Hanban, and frankly I think they might rather you didn't bother.

[amandagmu]

@Roddy: hadn't thought of that. You do need approval to do that kind of "official" research.

I guess it might be worth asking the Access Asia people about their stats. I just finished reading "Fat China" and there sure were a lot of stats in that one.

[yonglin]

Actually, there seems to be quite a few articles written on this topic in Chinese. Obviously, the quality will vary. The content will vary too. Most Chinese academic articles are available full-text through the cnki database (I think your university library will be connected).

Are you approaching this topic from the perspective of anthropology? sociology? education policy? cultural studies? As it stands now, the "feeling" of foreign students seems like a very broad topic. What are you really interested in? In my field, a more well-posed question would be "Can <<some intervention/act/policy>> by <<the school/education ministry/whoever>> improve the experience of foreign students in China?" If there has been "questionnaire studies", I would be very skeptical. Since "feeling" and "experience" are all very subjective, the results you will get may not be very informative. At most, you would learn something like "there is a very wide range of differences in feelings about studying in China". This is not very informative.

Once you have sufficiently narrowed down the question, you may start to look for data. Depending on the question, you will run into different problems. For example,

(1) Suppose that you want to know how obtaining a scholarship changed the experience of students while they were studying in China. Then, you would probably want to compare the feelings of scholarship and non-scholarship students in a particular school. You will also have to figure out how to deal with the fact that students who received scholarships might have been different from those who didn't receive scholarships.

(2) Suppose that you want to know how the experienced of foreign students in China have changed over time (e.g., China has become richer, more open, etc.). Then you may want to compare students studying there ten years ago with students studying there today. However, you need to take into consideration that students who went to China ten years ago were kind of "pioneers": these are likely to have been very passionate about China in the first place. Today, many more students go to China, so they're likely to be less passionate on average.

(3) Suppose that you want to know how studying abroad in China compares with studying abroad in other countries. Many universities conduct exchange programs to a wide range of countries, including China. Students are usually asked to evaluate their study-abroad program after they return to their university, so such data would be helpful in answering that question. However, you still have to remember that students who choose to go to China might be different from those that choose to go to other countries (e.g., "more adventurous").

I guess my point is: suppose you did have survey data from a random sample of foreign students in China on their "feelings" about studying there. Would that in any way be informative about anything? Would it help you answer any interesting questions?

[cliveloughlin]

Hi guys

Thanks a lot for the responses to date, especially Yonglin! Great ideas there!

Actually, the point of looking for statistical research before doing any research myself is really to see if I would be able to add any value to what already exists. I will design and administer a questionnaire by myself but, before I do so, I would like to know what is already out there. I don't want to reinvent the wheel!

This piece of research is merely my BA thesis; it won't be extremely detailed and definitely wouldn't be offered to government, apart from BNU where I'm studying obviously as it's a requirement (assuming that I target students from other unis apart from BNU). I have already talked this through with my would-be supervisor and she sees no reason why this would need any form of government sanction and the international students office at BNU thinks its a good idea. You're right that to undertaken a comprehensive, really meaningful piece of research this would need to be quite big and probably need the go-ahead from the powers that be, but this is not my aim. I would be happy doing a localised piece of research focusing only on the students at BNU, obviously factoring in scholarships/nationality/previous experience with Chinese/China in the questionnaire.

As for my "perspective", this would be fleshed out when I have an idea of what others have done, but, I'm guess I will still go with the broad "feelings" and "对留学生活的满意度" aspect. As this is only a BA thesis I'm not planning to do anything big, just enough to pass (I'm becoming less and less motivated!) and perhaps provide recommendations on what may could be done differently. There is a strong feel among the BNU BA Chinese foreign students that the university doesn't pay enough attention to our situation (e.g. problems with the new HSK requirements and mistakes with bachelor student results/study credit allocation). These, in the scheme of things, are small factors but they may affect the reputation of the uni (at least from a BNU BA students point of view) and may mean that Korean students (who often are affected from the views of current students) may be put off choosing BNU and go to Qinghua/Beida instead.

amandagmu - thanks a lot for the "Fat China" recommendation - I'll try to find a copy As for AccessAsia I've been there but nothing came up!

Thanks again for taking the time to reply!

Best

Cj

[roddy]

That sounds plausible. Would be interesting to tie in stuff like attendance stats and HSK results, degree to which any particular teacher affects outcomes, and no doubt a load of other stuff.

[Liebkuchen]

Poking my nose in as I did Educational Studies as my undergrad degree...Roddy- how does the Statistics Law affect individuals looking to do a uni project like cliveloughlin? I'm looking at the document but aside from the idea of benefiting the nation and not falsefying stuff its all a horrible fuzz...what's the layman (ie thickie) explanation?

Cliveloughlin- how interesting a project?! If there is a lack of Chinese data, could you cite UK and US research into foreign students? There would be big differences and lots of things to caution- but that's all part of the joys of a literature search isn't it?

Totally agree with yonglin- you need to really narrow it down. If your project is wishy-washy sounding, its not tight enough. And avoid 'qualitative' data as much as you can- its more trouble in this situation than its worth...

How about using some existing stats to compare and contrast? Say, gathering trends in nationalities and numbers of students and explaining why these are? Or ask the people who use the CSC scholarship- would they have still studied in China or gone elsewhere?

Or going completely off tangent, do something from books or other media e.g. stereotyping of foreign nationals in Chinese in text books (wouldn't know if there is or isn't but surely some local schools might help in exchange for a foreign visitor helping in an English lesson...) or the cultural issues in translating a very British book like Harry Potter into Chinese...

I didn't get to analyse gender stereotyping in children's magazines as an undergrad and i'm still miffed 10 year later! I got stuck with "what is history?" and interviewing a bunch of anxty PGCE students...it wasn't very good.