1. Re-situation challenges for international students 'becoming' researchers.
- Author
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Franken, Margaret
- Subjects
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FOREIGN students , *RESEARCH , *GRADUATE students , *UNIVERSITIES & colleges , *ACADEMIC achievement research , *SERVICES for students - Abstract
This paper presents data generated during a semester-long programme to support international students from countries in Melanesia and Asia embarking on masters research in education in a New Zealand university. All were scholarship recipients. The researcher-and facilitator-of the programme, was interested in documenting and understanding the nature of the students' experience as they planned and wrote research proposals. The process of developing a research proposal, as one of the early stages of 'becoming' a researcher, highlighted a number of challenges for the six case study students. The challenges are viewed from a transition or 'resituation' perspective (Eraut in Stud Contin Educ 26(2): 247-74, , ) rather than an adjustment one. A resituation perspective assumes that students brought with them 'personal expertise, practical wisdom and tacit knowledge' (Eraut , p. 42) which needed to be reconciled with what was demanded of them by different aspects of the research planning process. The resituation challenges experienced by the students included situating a perceived problem or issue in the research literature; reconciling personal research goals with the limitations of one's own agency as a researcher; integrating new learning with research goals; and reconciling the new role or identity as a researcher with the previous role as colleague or community member. The paper presents a case for providing a context for postgraduate students in which explicit recognition of what they bring to the research task, and acknowledgment of the resituation challenges can take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
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