Short-term social integration at the initial stage is particularly important for first-year college students and often plays a key factor in determining newcomers' subsequent socialization outcomes. Recent years have witnessed the growing popularization and impacts of online social integration (OnSI) among college students. Drawing on dominant…

The first year of university is a challenging period of academic and personal development for students. Through phenomenographic analysis of 27 interviews with students who had just completed their first year at university, this study provides valuable insight into students' perceptions of adapting to learning in a university environment. Four…

International doctoral students are an influential group in knowledge creation and cross-national engagement. Existing studies have mainly focused on this cohort's learning and research experiences in developed countries. However, relatively few studies have explored these students' experiences in non-traditional learning destinations. Drawing…

Embarking on an educational journey overseas can be a rewarding, yet stressful experience for many international students. The transition to their new university life, which is not always well understood and supported by host institutions, is often accompanied by unique difficulties and challenges resulting from unfamiliarity with a new academic…

This article employs a new approach to understanding student transition. This area of theory and practice has developed a huge global significance. However, transition as a concept is under-theorised, and a discourse that reiterates stereotypic narratives of students' normative and linear trajectories can be seen to permeate the field. Drawing on…

International work placements are an increasingly important way for universities to enhance their internationalisation strategies and develop student learning. However, the increase in student mobility internationally has not been paralleled in the level of support received from the university when undertaking international placements. Using an…

This study examined the mechanisms of resourcefulness and perceived control of stress in the relationships between academic stress and students' resilience, university adaptation, and physical health, respectively. A sample of 586 undergraduate students completed questionnaires assessing the aforementioned variables. Analyses involved serial and…

For many adult learners transitioning into higher education is an intense experience that challenges their sense of themselves. This article reports on a study that examined the discourse of thirty-four undergraduate adult learners at the start and end of their first year in two Irish higher education institutions. The study focused on…

This article offers a rethinking of a fundamental area of higher education research and practice: the concept of belonging. Extending the considerable international research attending to belonging, we suggest that normative narratives often contain a number of omissions. Such omissions include a consideration of the experiences of those students…

The paper examines the ways transitions to Higher Education are experienced and narrated by students with Vocational qualifications. Drawing upon the mixed-method project that documented transitions to HE, we utilise interview data to illustrate the centrality of the epistemic and pedagogical struggles that students with vocational background…

This paper focuses on the challenges of transition experienced by local high school graduates of the Arabic school system in the Kingdom of Bahrain, in the Middle East, as they are shaped into the person of a professional nurse through a Western model of nursing education. It investigates the elements that comprise a Bahraini student's first-year…

During the transition to university, early summative assessments may serve as powerful indicators of academic performance and perceived competence by students. How students learn in preparation for these assessments may be determinants of task-related experience and outcomes. The current study investigated the influences of learning strategies on…

The influence of emotionality and conscientiousness, the personality traits, on academic performance were examined on students of higher education using the perspectives of conservation of resources theory and social cognitive theory. Skinner's coping model was utilized to understand coping mechanisms in the context of engineering education.…

'Studying in this England is Wahala' critically analyses social/academic experiences of 12 West African overseas undergraduate/postgraduate students in a London University. It discusses structural and individual factors impacting on decisions to study here, including perceptions of differences between quality of university education in the UK and…

Existing research on the psychological and academic experiences of China-born students studying outside of China has mainly been conducted in Western English-speaking countries. Using a coping resources framework, we investigated the predictors of psychological and academic adaptation of 2,201 mainland Chinese students (74% female) studying in…