International students and personal responsibility towards learning.

Together with a supportive high quality learning environment and individual motivations, international students' responsibility towards academic learning and capacity to exercise responsibility are crucial to ensure their meaningful engagement in learning and their academic success. This paper aims to address international students' perceived responsibility towards their academic learning. It is based on a four-year research project that focuses on international students' learning and engagement in Australian institutions. Semi-structured interviews and fieldwork were the key instruments for data collection for this research. The paper points to the importance of both external and internal factors in influencing international students' perspectives on their personal responsibility and how such responsibility is critical to their academic performance. The factors shaping international students' views on their personal responsibility range from extrinsic obligations to intrinsic motivations, including externally imposed legal requirements and financial pressures to ensure good returns on investment in overseas study, their self-esteem and identity, perceived work ethic, as well as intrinsic interest for academic development and employment prospects. The paper indicated that it is important to place emphasis on not only nurturing international students' sense of responsibility but also providing them with the condition to enact their responsibility through specific goal- oriented tasks in the classroom as well as in the broader institutional community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]