Qualitative data analysis has been criticised for a lack of credibility over recent years when vagueness has been afforded to the reporting of how findings are attained. In response, there has been a growing body of literature emphasising a need to detail methods of qualitative data analysis. This paper adds to this body of knowledge by presenting…

The paper offers a theoretically grounded analysis of international postgraduate students' perspectives on the importance and development of global citizenship knowledge and competences while they are studying, and how these are valued and enacted afterwards. It draws on a series of interviews with non-Western international postgraduates during…

In an interview with a postgraduate student about her intercultural experience of recently arriving for study abroad, it was found that the two researchers and the student were engaged in a mutual exploration of cultural identity. The interview events became conversational and took the form of small culture formation on the go in which each…

In the context marked by increasing competition between nation-states and universities, expanding individualization, growing influence of nonstate actors, and the new reality of Brexit, this study uses narrative and numeric data to explore the rationales of U.K. higher education (HE) internationalization, specifically motives of attracting…

Sociocultural theory emphasises the mediational role of tools in learning. International students usually find themselves in a vicious cycle, experiencing difficulties when engaging with local people and culture which might provide the mediation necessary to develop their intercultural communicative competence. Yang (2016) further points out that…

This scoping paper explores the experiences of overseas students from Nigeria studying in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom. It considers the context for these students and some of the particular pressures and challenges they experience in making the transition from education in Nigeria to achieving academic success and…

The global population of students pursuing studies abroad continues to grow, and consequently their intercultural experiences are receiving greater research attention. However, research into long-term student sojourners' academic development and personal growth is still in its infancy. A parallel mixed method study was designed to investigate the…

More U.S. college students study abroad in the U.K. than any other destination in the world (Institute for International Education, 2015). Unfortunately, there is a significant gap in empirical knowledge about their experiences. This is likely due to a common assumption that students within culturally similar contexts should enjoy easier…

This paper considers how, in the process of positioning that is implicit in every interaction, all of us employ multiple and often competing narratives when we talk about cultural identity and our relationships with new cultural environments. In interviews with newly arrived postgraduate students about their experience of travelling to study…

This article reports on findings from a qualitative research study on overseas teachers' continuing professional development (CPD). It seeks to explore the perceptions of a cohort of Egyptian teachers about their overseas training experience upon completion of a nine-month training programme in the UK. Data were mainly gathered through four…

There is a considerable amount of research investigating students' transition from college to university but it is important this focus is directed specifically towards the transition of international students, as the difficulties they face are profound. The literature surrounding international students seems to lack an in-depth understanding of…

Study abroad is one aspect of global movement that connects individuals of diverse backgrounds. Individuals studying abroad are proffered to negotiate self-identity when they confront novelty and new contexts. This study chose to use the qualitative method of phenomenological interviews to examine how individuals experience themselves and others…

In this article, I describe the ways in which two British university students negotiated their identity as second language learners during a year abroad in Italy and the extent to which their struggles helped them to "fit in" into the new social and cultural contexts. Building upon the lived experiences of the two participants, I follow…

Using academic capitalism as a theoretical foundation, this phenomenological study examined the new study abroad experiences of Chinese college students in six popular English-speaking study destination countries--the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Qualitative data collected from 20 interviews indicate some…

We explored the use of mobile social software, in the form of a mobile group blog, to assist cultural learning. The potential of using this technology for cultural adaptation among overseas students was examined as those students adapted to the everyday life of studying abroad. Two pilot studies and a successful field study of a mobile group blog…