Search

This paper explored the multiple layers of social and intercultural adjustment challenges experienced by international female doctoral students in Australia. The paper investigates multiple dimensions of sociocultural differences between the students' native and host countries, including sociocultural context, community engagement, personal and social lives, and the intersection of more commonly researched sociocultural identities. This investigation is undertaken within the epistemological positioning of feminist standpoint theory and intersectionality. In addition, a narrative inquiry approach and a thematic analysis are used to understand the students' social lives and issues of adjustment to a new culture. Themes like intercultural understanding, social connectedness and adjustment issues are used to encapsulate the students' views about their social positionality and understanding of their lives during PhD in Australia.

This paper explores international students' engagement with educational technology for self-regulated English learning at an Australian university. Despite the increased use of automated feedback systems (AFSs) for language assessment, students' critical engagement with them for independent learning remains under-researched. The study primarily employed a qualitative approach to understand the students' preferred AFS tools and critical engagement throughout their personalised learning journeys but it also included a small-scale quantitative component. Data were gathered from seven students' e-portfolios, focus group interviews as well as a survey among 32 participants. Results highlight positive perceptions and successful use of AFSs, with students leveraging these tools to identify improvement areas, track progress and gain confidence. The study emphasises the importance of course structure, teacher guidance and a combination of human and automated feedback, in fostering learner autonomy and emotional self-regulation. The paper underscores the potential for sustained use of AFSs beyond the cours, and the significance of guiding learners to critically use these tools for ongoing learning and growth rather than dependence. These findings have significant implications, as readily available artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT hold great pedagogical potential for self-regulated learning within and beyond the language learning field.

This paper focuses on Vietnamese PhD students' imaginative geographies of their destination countries. Using the data collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 Vietnamese PhD students, the study examines the participants' preparation for their sojourn before their departure, as well as their first multi-sensory experiences of the study countries on the first days of arrival, which then revealed how their imaginative geographies had been constructed and how they perceived the contrast between their imaginative geographies and reality. The findings of the study suggest that when the students chose to study overseas, they had diverse imaginations of the destinations that had been constructed over long periods of time thanks to the influences of movies, newspapers, media, and experiences of those in their social networks. Furthermore, the paper also highlights the collective imagination about countries in the West and the imagination of the collective West among Vietnamese students.

This paper examines the efficacy of academic support interventions provided by the Swinburne College Student Hub for international students enrolled in the Postgraduate Qualifying Program (PQP) or English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS). Interventions for PQP students encompass plagiarism checking, paraphrasing, proofreading, referencing, and essay structure guidance, while ELICOS interventions are skill-based workshops focusing on reading, listening, and writing. The study highlights the importance of tracking student progress to refine interventions effectively. Program-specific student trackers were developed, leading to significant improvements in student success rates in assignments and unit completion, as revealed by analysis of empirical data from 2022. The findings underscore the effectiveness of tailored academic support, with implications for enhancing the delivery of support services and improving academic outcomes for PQP and ELICOS cohorts in academic settings.

Chinese students studying abroad have been increasing rapidly in the past decades and become a significant financial contribution to receiving countries. Accordingly, understanding their enrollment choice is essential to facilitate college marketing and admission strategies. Though the decision process is believed to be different from domestic students, empirical analysis of Chinese students' enrollment choices is still lacking. This paper fills the void by examining the influential factors of Chinese students' enrollment choice with novel student-level data. We find that in addition to factors domestic students typically consider, such as financial aid and academic quality, Chinese students particularly emphasize college ranking, reputation, and location in their decision process. Furthermore, unlike domestic students who usually prefer colleges with proximity to home, Chinese students' location preference is linked to job prosperity. We also find that the impact of the factors varies for students from different regions of China, which can be attributable to uneven economic development within the country.

This paper examines the response by a Vocational Education and Training (VET) provider in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia to the travel and social distancing restrictions brought about by COVID-19. The paper commences with a description of the impact of COVID-19 on the VET sector. The paper then describes the VET regulatory environment prior to February 2020 and the responsibility of VET providers to comply with the requirements of the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA), in the delivery of VET programs to domestic and international students. A discussion of the lack of a specific vocational education pedagogy, the complexity of delivering VET programs online as well as current research findings in this area follows. A description of the College provides the context to examine the impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of programs in the Northern Territory VET sector. The paper describes how the College, which had a high international student cohort, migrated their courses online in order to remain viable in the highly volatile and unforeseen circumstances brought about by COVID-19. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the online delivery of course offerings, a questionnaire and a series of face to face and telephone interviews were conducted with key stakeholders. The mixed method approach employed in this research was consistent with contemporary social and educational research. The paper concludes with the call for a new paradigm and policy shift in Vocational Education and Training post COVID-19.

Purpose: This paper aims to provide an overview of a peer-supported writing and wellbeing pilot program for higher degree by research (HDR) students in Australia. It proposes a six-month program is a beneficial service to HDR students that improves not only their productivity and writing confidence but assists with their perceived mental wellbeing as well. Design/methodology/approach: This paper offers a perspective of the piloted writing and wellbeing program for HDR students during the recovery period during the COVID-19 global pandemic. It includes generalized reflections of participation, content, and structure alongside future directions and further implementation. Findings: This research includes generalized, anonymous data regarding the success of the writing and wellbeing pilot program for HDR students and components to improve upon. It suggests that the overwhelming response from participants was positive, especially during various COVID-19 related lockdowns and travel restriction measures. Research limitations/implications: As this paper involves a small cohort of preliminary impressions from the pilot study, results will lack generalizability. Therefore, it is acknowledged that further research will ensue to examine the program further. Practical implications: The success, measured by adherence and wellbeing improvements, of the Write Smarter: Feel Better program can influence the way in which universities address and protect mental wellbeing of their HDR students. Originality/value: This paper fulfills an identified and growing need for mental wellbeing to be strengthened among HDR students.

The major analytical research question addressed in this paper is: What are Thailand's strengths and weaknesses as an international education hub for students from the Asian region? The key descriptive research question is: What is the nature of the educational experience of Asian students in Thailand? The two major research methodologies of the study are mixed research methods and comparative case studies, with the use of in-depth interviews of influential experts, surveys, and an autoethnography. In terms of major findings, there has been a dramatic growth of Asian students at Thai universities during the past two decades. Thailand's major advantages relate to low costs, location, quality campus facilities, and a welcoming attitude toward outsiders, while major disadvantages are the quality of many of Thailand's international programs often related to low English language capabilities. The paper concludes by presenting a creative new architecture for thinking about Asian study abroad in Thailand.

Purpose: Australia has enjoyed two decades of growth in international student enrolments. This phenomenon, combined with the evolution of quality assurance policy frameworks, has stimulated interest in the social and academic experiences of international students and their educational outcomes. The Australian Universities Quality Agency's (AUQA) second round of quality audits assessed and reported on the performance of Australian universities in the area of "internationalisation". AUQA findings and recommendations for required action send powerful messages to guide university priorities, practices and strategies in pursuit of quality enhancement in relation to student engagement. This paper seeks to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a thematic analysis approach to explore "internationalisation" in 14 AUQA audit reports published between 2006 and 2010. Findings: This paper identifies three key areas arising from AUQA audit reports that form a basis for discussion in this paper. These areas are: the social and academic engagement of both international and local students, and matters relating to English language standards and support. Observations arising from AUQA university reports direct attention to examples of initiatives that appear to be enriching the quality of the student engagement and indicate where further development may be required. Practical implications: In seeking strategies for enhanced student experience, AUQA supports collaboration across universities in devising models for identifying student needs and creating mechanisms that bring about quality student experience, engagement and language outcomes. This analysis of the reports will likely assist those stakeholders working in universities who wish to identify successful approaches to promote the engagement of international students and refine existing useful and positive strategies in implementing and developing ideas in their own individual university contexts. Originality/value: Analysis of the substantial text of AUQA reports have been underexploited by researchers to date. This paper is likely to be of interest to those stakeholders of international education in universities, not only in Australia but in other national contexts where international students are significantly represented.

This paper forwards the notion that languages are an important resource for sustainable development for modern societies. Informed by theories from both sociolinguistics and language economics on the value of language skills, it is suggested that language(s) have different kinds of value in multilingual societies. Sociolinguists often emphasize the value languages have to their speakers and highlight the importance of social justice and equality between languages. Language economists argue that proficiencies in languages other than the dominant language are a form of human capital that can have a range of direct or indirect benefits. In language economics this is captured by the concepts of non-market and market value. Based on the example of the situation of languages in Australia, this paper argues that migration-induced multilingualism deserves more substantial support from both perspectives. Employing a theory-generating approach, this paper argues that multilingualism forms an important addition to Australia's human capital. For sustainable development, both on economic and social levels, it appears necessary to maintain and support languages in order to enable the country to cater for present and future linguistic needs. These linguistic needs include job market demands, but extend to other aspects of social participation and cohesion.

International students are important for creating a multicultural learning environment in their host countries. Most studies on the internationalisation of education have focused on students at the university level and given scant attention to international students in the Australian school sector. This paper reports on a study that utilised a critical interpretive research methodology to investigate the contributions of international students to Australian independent schools and the support they receive from the perspective of schoolteachers. By interviewing 13 Australian teachers who teach international students in several subjects, this paper first reports on the importance of international students to internationalising Australian schools, including improving cultural awareness and competence, introducing culturally responsive teaching strategies and multiple learning styles, and diversifying teaching materials and methods. This paper also identifies supporting programs for international students provided by schools, which include language support; academic support; cultural and social support, and designated international students' EAL teachers. This paper argues that in practising international education in secondary schools, Australian teachers should recognise and acknowledge the contributions of international students to the school's internationalisation and support students by respecting their unique educational subjectivities.

Purpose: Although the international education sector is one of the significant contributors to the Australian economy, international students continue to experience various forms of social inequalities. This paper aims to focus on overseas doctoral researchers (ODRs) -- candidates and graduates -- and capture their experiences. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on the adaptive capacity framework, an exploratory qualitative study was carried out based on interviews with doctoral candidates (n = 6), doctoral graduates (n = 5) and supervisors (n = 4) in various Business Schools in Australian universities. Given this study's exploratory and interpretive nature, the research question was deliberately broad: what insights can be generated for key stakeholders by capturing the experiences of ODRs in Australia through the lens of adaptive capacity? Findings: Findings indicate that financial pressure, social exclusion and cultural bias were the three main challenges ODRs had to overcome; female ODRs perceived that supervisors and faculties often overlooked the mental health aspects; and better pedagogy of research supervision, institutional support and national policies are needed to develop adaptive ODRs. Research limitations/implications: If ODRs are to become an integral part of the knowledge economy, key stakeholders need to focus on support mechanisms for these researchers. That way, Australian universities can not only improve their image of treating international students only as a part of the revenue flow but also enhance the educational experiences of ODRs and set them up for future success. Originality/value: The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it demonstrates the utility of the adaptive capacity lens to capture the experiences of ODRs. Second, it discusses research implications for the three key stakeholders: supervisors, higher education institutions and the government.

In Australian higher education, there is a tension between international students' English language proficiency (ELP) seen as inadequate, thus prompting the need for firm gatekeeping for quality control, and on the other hand, the financial dependence on international student revenues, and therefore, striving to attract international applicants. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the way discursive forces interact in the context of ELP as an admission requirement. This paper analyses ELP admission requirements webpages of Australian universities, using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. It finds that the textual and visual data have distinct messages enabled by the linguistic features of the legal discourse and the neoliberal marketing discourse, respectively. Their combination creates a representation of ELP as a requirement for the idealized student lifestyle in Australia. This strengthens the monolingual mindset operating in Australian education by referencing the authority of legislation.

This paper presents data derived from a larger study related to the expectations and experiences of international students from the People's Republic of China with regard to studying in Australian secondary schools. The study involved 116 international students, and data were collected in two phases using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Findings suggest that English language experiences are a key concern and students do not always develop English language skills as expected during their period of study in Australia. To reduce dissonance between expectations and experiences of English language learning in Australia, it is recommended that substantial, ongoing English language support is embedded within the core curriculum for international students in Australian secondary schools.

Purpose: This study aims to explore how student recruitment practitioners at regional Australian universities strategise student recruitment efforts in Thailand. There is scarce research addressing regional universities, with prior studies focusing on metropolitan universities. Similarly, most prior studies have focused on high-volume markets, with little research exploring emerging markets such as Thailand. Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with student recruitment practitioners from regional universities that were responsible for recruiting Thai students. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify key themes. Findings: Regional universities lack strategic ambidexterity in their approach to recruiting international students. They viewed Thailand as requiring longer term investment and were unwilling to dedicate their limited resources towards developing this market at the expense of other markets that would yield enrolments to contribute towards short-term targets. Practical implications: Implications are provided with relevance to the student recruitment practitioner, with strategic ambidexterity discussed. Originality/value: The paper fills a gap in the research by exploring international student recruitment and contextualising both regional universities and Thailand as a recruitment market. This study provides useful considerations that may be relevant to other emerging markets.

This paper interrogates international and domestic peer relations in two Australian schools and how they are shaped by structural, cultural and discursive dimensions of schooling. In particular, it analyses intercultural relations between domestic and international students in the context of policies promoting "internationalisation-at-home". We argue that how international students are positioned within specific school contexts impacts their sense of inclusion in everyday social and pedagogical relations and informs their relationships with domestic students, whether viewed as a stranger or potentially as a friend raising questions as to who is responsible for intercultural relations.

This paper investigates readers' recognition of unsourced evidentials in texts in association with critical reading. To this end, we involved four Iranian postgraduate students at an Australian university in a collective case study where each student read four Persian texts and participated in in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Data analysis employed critical discourse analysis and discursive power relations to examine participants' positionalities and subjectivities. Our findings in general confirm the students' recognition of unsourced evidential in texts as an indication of critical reading. More specifically, it was revealed that linguistic sources (e.g. Persian indefinite suffix '-i'), as well as socio-cultural factors such as normalization embedded within the Persian oral narrative and discourse, play significantly in identifying unsourced evidentials. Pedagogical implications for critical reflection on texts containing instances of unsourced evidentials are suggested.

Reflection, reflective thinking and reflexivity have received significant attention in the scholarly literature on higher education yet there is limited research that explores these concepts in relation to international students. This paper consequently explores what reflection and reflective thinking might look and feel like for international students. We theorize the importance of supporting international students in becoming reflexive practitioners in their chosen area of study; particularly in respect to graduate attributes including reflection and employability. The paper attends to this theorization by sharing Rodgers' (2002) four functions of reflection, a reflective thinking model -- the 4Rs -- as well as Archer's (2000, 2012) notion of reflexivity. We explore how higher educators might consider these frameworks comprehensively when working with international students particularly in the area of workplace experience.

International students from culturally and linguistically diverse countries travel to Australia because of the opportunity to study courses in the English language with some coming to this country just to study the language itself. Such desires moreover create students to engage in creative strategies to improve their language skills. This paper, however, suggests that the desire to be skilled in English through immersion in an English-speaking country like Australia creates challenges to the mental wellbeing of international students. Reporting on interview data with 47 international students of Asian descent in the Australian city of Melbourne, this paper reveals these challenges to include lived and perceived notions of self and belonging, as well as loneliness.

Ensuring equitable work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities for international students can be problematic. This position paper explores this challenge within the context of the Master of Public Health course (MPH) in Australian universities. The availability and accessibility of placement and non-placement WIL for international students are examined through a desktop audit of MPH offerings across 27 public Australian universities. These findings, interpreted through the lens of cultural, social and financial capital suggest although international students stand to benefit more from WIL than their domestic peers, their opportunity to participate is lower. The paper argues a strength-based approach is needed to mitigate this issue of inequity. Suggestions are offered to improve equity in placement and non-placement WIL for international students.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the meanings and implications of mobility through the experiences of a group of Vietnamese women who decided to do doctorates in Australia. Drawing on the Deleuzian concepts of rhizome and becoming, our analysis of interview data suggests that mobility is made of multiple connections and is in constant movement, extending often reductive "push-pull" discussions of academic mobility. Each aspect shaping mobility connects to another that is multiscalar and multitemporal, where family, education ideologies, gender norms, economic globalization, neoliberalization within higher education, and the histories and biographies of mobile people come together. Power relations are immanent within structures associated with these connections and the women and mobility come together to create aspirations for educational, professional, and personal becoming. The paper offers a more nuanced understanding of international academic mobility rather than relying on economic perspectives and invites innovative approaches in supporting international doctoral students.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the word experienced periods of local, state and international immobility due to lockdowns, border closers and travel restrictions. For transient migrants such as international students, these kinds of immobility have resulted in disrupted lives with professional and personal futures suspended as careers and relationships become stuck in limbo. Moreover, such sudden and extended periods of immobility have not been sufficiently covered in temporality literature due to the novelty of the pandemic crisis in the international education, migration and mobility studies spaces. By conducting a pilot project investigating current and recently graduated higher degree by research (HDR) international students (PhD, Masters and Honours) from public institutions in the Australian city of Melbourne, this paper, thus, introduces the concept of 'shock temporality' caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Shock temporality takes place when the expected and finite temporary/transitory experience becomes forcefully broken and appears to be ongoing outside of the individual's control. While shock temporality has left HDR international students' professional and personal agendas and aspirations in suspension, students interviewed use the time to plan and prepare for truncated futures. The findings of this paper, thus, become relevant in assisting higher education student support services in creating potential approaches and strategies for a post-pandemic future.

Although scholars have noted the detrimental nature of the various changes in higher education prompted by neoliberalism, its impact on the experiences of international Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students has yet to be adequately studied. Informed by Bourdieu's concepts of "doxa," field, habitus, and capital, this paper examines the ways in which neoliberalism as "doxa" in the Australian higher education field has "colonised" the perception and practice of Chinese international HDR students whilst some students were able to demonstrate resilience to the pervasive neoliberal practices. The paper draws on a larger qualitative research project including interviews with 18 Chinese HDR students from four Australian universities. Data suggest that Chinese HDR research students gradually developed intensified dispositions of self-reliance and self-exploitation in response to neoliberal academic practices whilst others were enculturated into a "floating habitus" (or vulnerable position) in relation to academic publishing as they attempted to negotiate the tensions across fields and over time. Data further reveal that some participants demonstrated resilience to neoliberalism when empowered by their supervisors with less utilitarian and more critically reflexive supervisory practices. The paper argues that the embrace of neoliberalism in the Australian higher education field has become widespread yet controversial, and that thinking and enacting resilience sociologically may de-neoliberalise the higher education field in Australia and beyond.

The higher education sector has learnt a great deal in the online delivery shift due to COVID-19, however, student voice has been underrepresented in literature. This paper reveals 15 student perspectives, including both international and domestic students, who were studying a Master of Teaching (Secondary) at one university in Melbourne, Australia, during heightened social distancing restrictions. The inductive thematic qualitative data analysis collected through semi-structured interviews showed opportunities and challenges of learning experiences. Emergent themes found affordances of convenience and challenges of relational and structural aspects of teaching and learning. Relational aspects of learning were more challenging, including peer collaboration, seeking informal advice and feedback from academics, and participation and engagement. We recommend the inclusion of student voice to guide post COVID-19 teacher education design recommend several areas of support to guide a humanising and personal connection into the remote learning environment.

This paper investigates the learning experience of Chinese students' learning experience in the business Faculty of an Australian university. Chinese students are often characterized as "rote learners" or stereotyped as "reduced Other". Areas of concern are limited to addressing the differences in learning styles, language, and sociocultural barriers. However, learning occurs in many forms. There is an absence of discussion about what practices Chinese students use in order to learn. Based on practice-based theory, a longitudinal ethnographic study of the journeys of five students was traced and investigates what practices Chinese students use in the learning and how these students "put things together" in the journey. This paper reports on two of the five students from the larger study. In particular, this article brings attention to the students' everyday life and insights into their doings, sayings, and relatings between people, other beings and material artefacts. Chinese students' learning involves foreground entanglements, co-construction, and relationality of practices from both educational and sociocultural perspectives. This paper provides new insights about Chinese students' learning and encourages academics and institutions to be aware of the impact of their practices and to deepen their understanding of the complexities of Chinese students' learning.

This paper presents a critique of an article that explores the internationalisation of the curriculum. First, to facilitate critical reflection, the main Western paradigms of positivism, interpretivism, critical theory and postmodernism are described and the differences between them emphasised. The article focused on in this paper can be situated largely within an interpretivist paradigm. Big-tent markers, which are employed to evaluate qualitative research, are then critically implemented to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of this article and offer relevant suggestions regarding ways in which it can be improved.

The increasing internationalization of education has brought diversification to university student populations. The demographic changes pose great challenges to interview practice as interviews are increasingly occurring in cross-cultural contexts and often involve participants from diverse cultural backgrounds. Recent research has demonstrated that the cultural identity of the interviewer, in particular, the insider or outsider positioning relative to the participants, can impinge upon the quantity and quality of the collected interview data and research outcomes. In this paper, we go beyond this conception of interviewer as either a cultural insider or outsider to examine how multiple identities and positionings are enacted by interviewer and interviewees in order to achieve intersubjectivity, or common ground, in cross-cultural research interviews. The paper contributes to understanding the complexity of cross-cultural interviews, in particular, the impact of positioning processes on the establishment of intersubjectivity and data construction.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the impact of differences in educational traditions on conventions of teaching and learning, and on the measurement of learning outcomes. These are critical issues within the context of business schools that are steeped in one dominant tradition but have a large population of international students previously educated in other traditions. The paper argues that international students face the challenge of satisfactorily demonstrating learning according to foreign conventions that are different from what they would have been accustomed to within the framework of their home educational tradition. Design/methodology/approach: This study draws on a bilingual literature review to capture differences in educational traditions between Australia and China. It then uses logistic regression to analyze the performance of 800 domestic and international Chinese students across a range of different assessment formats at a large Australian business school. Findings: The study finds statistically significant differences in the performance of these two student groups on different assessment types. It concludes that the conventions on approaches to the assessment of learning shaped by a specific educational tradition can hamper the effective demonstration of learning among students from other educational traditions. Originality/value: The paper focuses on issues related to the assessment of learning in multicultural higher education contexts, which has received less attention in the literature compared to issues on teaching approaches in multicultural contexts. The paper also highlights important implications on the validity of the measurement of learning outcomes and on the subsequent impact on graduate recruitment.

Flipped classroom approaches have increasingly been adopted in the Australian higher education sector. However, current research on this approach is predominantly quantitative and focused on domestic students. Little is known about the flipped classroom learning experiences of undergraduate international students in Australia. This paper sets out to investigate undergraduate international students' challenges in a flipped classroom environment, based on thirty-two semi-structured interviews with undergraduate international students at an Australian university. We identified several challenges, including language issues, barriers to autonomous learning, as well as technical and technological challenges. International students in our study also provide constructive recommendations to improve the design of the flipped classroom. This paper contributes new insights into the nuances of undergraduate international students' challenges in a flipped classroom environment.

International higher education is the third largest export industry in Australia. Student attrition is an area of concern in higher education institutions. Most research undertaken so far has focused on domestic student attrition in Australia and globally. This study focuses on an Australian university to examine the causes of international students' attrition after their first year of study. It reveals that since 2018, growing numbers of international students have withdrawn from the subject university at the metropolitan campus to enrol in private colleges attracted by lower tuition fees for similar degree qualifications. The paper raises questions about the role of education agents in such student mobility and risks related to academic standards and quality in private colleges. The paper also raises questions about risks to quality and competitiveness in universities that have not sufficiently considered the academic and personal needs of international students.

For institutions intent on improving their research student outcomes, it is important to identify the variables most strongly associated with timely or tardy completions, which the university has the potential to influence or amend. For this to occur the analyses of doctoral completion times need to be conducted at an institution or discipline level. However, conducting meaningful analyses of doctoral completion data is a complex undertaking fraught with potential problems. This paper uses an intra-institution case study to reflect on and illustrate how different meanings can emerge from data analysis, depending on the statistical approach used to analyse the data. The paper outlines the lessons learned during data analysis, and the implications for doctoral education. The findings also point to potential marketing opportunities for research institutions.

Limited scholarly work has been conducted on obtaining equal opportunities to participate in employability-related programmes by international students while studying in Australia. Drawing on a qualitative study, 20 South Asian postgraduates were interviewed to explore their experiences in accessing employability-related programmes. Based on the findings, South Asian graduates have experienced unequal opportunities in accessing employability-related programmes as postgraduate international students in Australia. They are disadvantaged by generic career advice and resume assistance offered by their university career office, and companies invited to university career fairs offer internships, placements or graduate programme opportunities mostly to domestic students. As a result, South Asian graduates were unable to gain employment in their field of studies. South Asian graduates have also offered several useful recommendations to facilitate more equal chances of developing employability and thereby gaining successful employment in Australia. These include partnerships with companies in providing employment opportunities, diversification of university career office roles, and establishing connections with alumni. The paper also discusses implications for Australian higher education institutions and higher education policy and practice in Australia.

As the third-largest export industry, international education occupies an important place in the Australian economy and society. Employing Bacchi's "What is the Problem Represented to be" (WPR) approach, this paper critically analyses four key policies pertaining to international students in Australia since the 1990s. Drawing upon theorising of the globalisation of international education policy, we uncover contestation and problem representation in discourses around the economisation of education and of international students' experiences. The findings reveal multiple discourses of the problematisation of diversity at play, including a "pivot" towards protection of international students' rights as consumers and as potential future citizens, and increased attention to the intrinsic value of international students as people, and not simply as economic agents. The findings have implications for other national contexts, in which international students contribute to the economic viability of education, and in which internationalisation of education in universities has the capacity to foster enhanced cross-cultural understanding.

Using survey data, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of student engagement for different groups of students, many of which may be classified as "nontraditional". The analysis presented in this paper is based on Kahu's framework for student engagement. Both the antecedents as well as consequences of engagement are incorporated in the framework used in this paper. The research highlights the role that active teaching strategies may play in this engagement framework. An important contribution of this research is to show that non-traditional students generally display greater engagement than traditional students. However, while there is a strong connection between active teaching strategies and engagement for traditional students, this link is weak for non-traditional students. The results presented in this paper highlight the need for greater inclusiveness in the design of active teaching strategies.

While the prevalence of group work in higher education in Australia can be construed as a cultural or institutional practice, it has become a site of struggle for many international students who must negotiate the normative practices embedded in group work. This paper aims to investigate how six Japanese international students at Australian universities explore, negotiate and respond to the normative practices of group work through group projects. The findings reveal that students actively sought and negotiated hidden and implied normative practices of group work. Their responses to the norms were underpinned by the norms being inculcated into their dispositions or, namely, "habitus," in the form of beliefs and values, which enabled them to critically examine their group practices. Additionally, when they identified a mismatch between their perceived norms and the responses of their peers, which is realised through Bourdieu's concept of 'hysteresis', they were found to take leadership opportunities. We contend in this paper that when their practices or group practices are at odds with the perceived or identified norms, it induces their "hysteresis" encounters, which represent initiation of alternative actions and capacity to embrace learning opportunities. We also argue that the investigation into this phenomenon is vital in identifying practices that reproduce fallacies and missed opportunities or prevent students from embracing true virtues of group work.

International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To address this issue, accreditation and registration bodies for a number of health professions, such as social work and nursing, have advocated for increasing the test score requirements for university English language entry. However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, decisions concerning ways to address communication challenges need to take into account the unique communication skills required for functioning in specific workplace settings. It is therefore essential to identify the types of communication issues occurring during work-integrated learning opportunities (e.g. placement) and to then assess whether these should be addressed by raising general English proficiency or providing structured learning opportunities for profession-specific communication development within the course content. The present study uses sociolinguistic theory to examine placement educators' perspectives on international students' communication issues using the context of social work placement. It draws on the thematic analysis of interviews with 15 placement educators in Australia. One major finding is that international students' general proficiency or ability to use specific linguistic tools (pragmalinguistic competence) is not a key area of concern for educators. The main challenge seems to involve the students' understanding of sociocultural norms underlying workplace communication (sociopragmatic competence). This finding suggests that, rather than increasing English language entry requirements, universities need to provide international students opportunities to develop their sociopragmatic competence both before and during placement. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at supporting international students who speak English as an additional language to develop their workplace communication during their studies.