Academic Acculturation Research Articles

Propuesta de aculturación académica en la cátedra de Epistemología de la Licenciatura en Español y Literatura

Introducción: este artículo tiene como objetivo describir el fenómeno de la aculturación académica en estudiantes de primer nivel de la Licenciatura en español y literatura de la Universidad Industrial de Santander (uis). A su vez, propone una secuencia didáctica adaptada a las necesidades delimitadas en este proceso de aculturación desde la cátedra de Epistemología y el acompañamiento en el desarrollo de las competencias de lectura, escritura y oralidad. Esto con el fin de disminuir la deserción y la retención en la educación superior. Metodología: esta investigación es mixta con una metodología procesual participativa. Se emplea la investigación-acción y un enfoque socio-antropológico. Las teorías utilizadas se basan en los modelos epistemológicos de las ciencias sociales, las teorías de la argumentación, de la lectura, escritura y oralidad. Resultados: se constató que el acompañamiento del docente desde las herramientas empleadas y la interdisciplinariedad en la carrera ayudan a potenciar la adquisición de competencias de lectura, escritura y oralidad en estudiantes que, por lo general, llegan con vacíos conceptuales y procedimentales. Esto, en suma, contribuye a la aculturación académica. Conclusiones: en este proceso se identificó un choque inicial con la cultura a la que se llega, la puesta en marcha de estrategias individuales y la asimilación. Estas etapas varían de individuo a individuo y son el ritual de iniciación para comprender su paso por la universidad.

Academic Acculturation Among International Graduate Students at Mahidol University

Academic Acculturation Among International Graduate Students at Mahidol University

Academic acculturation in language learning through Facebook

Due to students’ growing networking needs, educational institutions are increasingly looking for tools to bolster peer communication and information exchange. These tools, furthermore, need to facilitate students’ adaptation to the new academic culture and support their academic acculturation. This study proposes to integrate the social networking site Facebook into the learning programme, providing students with a low-threshold online environment where they can share ideas , experiences and information while creating social bonds. Data from two case studies show that students experience various challenges associated with academic acculturation and try to overcome them by consulting their peers via Facebook. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that through social networking, careful assignment design and tutor support, students are encouraged to acculturate and become active, responsible learners.

Hidden treasure: successful international doctoral students who found and harnessed the hidden curriculum

This paper draws from an institutionally-funded phenomenological study of international PhD students’ academic acculturation, which focuses on the distinctive strengths, challenges, and hidden opportunities facing this cohort within the context of their transition from one academic culture to another. The first section introduces the theoretical base employed in the study and is then followed by exploring the conceptualisations of the hidden curriculum and its associated concepts: ‘the third space’ and ‘darkness in higher education’. Drawing upon our study findings, the second section illustrates practical exemplars of finding and harnessing the hidden curriculum. Without discounting the wide range of formal and informal institutional support provisions designed to facilitate international PhD students’ acculturation to a new academic setting, our study findings strongly endorse that students themselves have a crucial role to play in their complex transitional journey. Our study also offers a unique insight, i.e. if found, the hidden curriculum is an effective tool not only for international PhD students’ coping and survival but even more importantly, in thriving in new societal and academic contexts.

Capturing visual metaphors and tales: innovative or elusive?

ABSTRACTDespite the exponential growth of visual research in the social sciences in the last three decades, continuing empirical enquiries are arguably more relevant than ever. Earlier research employed visual methods primarily to investigate distinct cultural practices, often seeking the views of marginalized, challenging or hard-to-reach participants. In this study, non-British postdoctoral academics took photographs that visually or symbolically represented the highlights of their academic acculturation experience as international PhD students in the UK. The semi-structured interviews of academic and non-academic related experiences that made a significant impression revolved around participants’ visual metaphors. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, a widely employed inductive qualitative technique, was utilized, with visual data complementing the narrative evidence. This innovative method both aesthetically and insightfully enhanced the representation of participants’ lived experiences and was instrumental in validating participants’ narratives. Additionally, this article examines the pragmatic utility of employing metaphors in a photo elicitation technique (also critically reflected upon by the participants who are academic researchers themselves). The paper therefore offers a collective reflection not only on the features and advantages of this approach, but also on the key challenges and some recommendations to inform contemporary visual methods practice.

Searching for ‘a third space’: a creative pathway towards international PhD students’ academic acculturation

ABSTRACTUndertaking a PhD is a challenging endeavour. Pursuing a doctoral education in a ‘foreign’ context tends to increase the demands of this intellectual venture. The nature of research-based PhD programmes, often characterised by a lack of formal curricula where academic supervision lasts several years, may add another layer of complexity. Drawing upon an extended version of Urie Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological theory of human development, this paper attempts to offer a greater understanding of both academic and non-academic concerns confronting international PhD students with a view to highlighting their implications for institutional policy and practice. Underpinned by a visual metaphor approach, our research findings advocate embedding the use of ‘a third space’ as a creative pathway and strategy for maximising students’ chances of achieving a successful PhD academic acculturation journey.

Beyond the amusement, puzzlement and challenges: an enquiry into international students’ academic acculturation

This paper investigates the phenomenological experiences of academic acculturation of selected non-British post-doctoral academics with a retrospective focus on their experiences as PhD students. The participants came from different disciplines and countries of origin to pursue several years of postgraduate research in different British higher education institutions. The typical, yet distinct, experiences of an exceptional group of early career academics offer invaluable insight into the joys, excitement, puzzlement and challenges that international students often encounter as they embark on studying and living in a foreign country such as the UK. Using Urie Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological theory of human development, our paper presents a theoretical perspective that can help elucidate and offer a greater understanding of what appear to be complex incidences in international students’ experiences. These incidences can, arguably, be crucial to the success or failure of students’ sojourns.

Towards a responsible agenda for academic literacy development: considerations that will benefit students and society

The transition from secondary to higher education (HE) requires a change of cultural mindset (cf. Darlaston-Jones et al., 2003; Leki, 2006). It is widely accepted that the academic performance and motivation of first year students to stay in HE depend, among others, on how well they integrate into the university environment (Brinkworth et al., 2009). Academic integration or acculturation takes different forms. The premise of this article is that students have to learn to engage with academic discourse, i.e., they must acquire the community's communicative currency, defined as different kinds of language used to reflect the community's current norms, practices, values and expectations (cf., among others, Duff, 2010; Gee, 1998, 2000; Hyland, 2009). As reflective and responsible practitioners we therefore need to outline a critical agenda for academic acculturation by reviewing the debate on the nature of literacy and, particularly, by discussing similarities and differences in epistemology and approaches to literacy. Such an agenda will have to recognise insights gained from, in particular, the New Literacy Studies (Street, 1998, 2004) and the Academic Literacies movement (Lea & Street, 1998; Lillis & Scott, 2007), but it will also become enriched by a linguistic perspective (Biber, 2006; Blanton, 1994; Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Halliday, 1978, 1985, 1993, 1996, 2002; Hyland, 2009). In developing a template for the agenda we accordingly acknowledge the theoretical defensibility and the feasibility of different approaches to academic acculturation.

Reading ability and academic acculturation: The case of South African students entering higher education

First-year students experience a range of challenges when transferring from secondary to higher education (HE) (cf. Darlaston-Jones et al. 2003, Leki 2006, Brinkworth et al. 2009). This is no different in South Africa, where deviating levels of preparedness for the demands of HE is a recurring theme (Slonimsky and Shalem 2005, Van Schalkwyk 2008, Scott 2009, Yeld 2009, Van Dyk 2010, Van Dyk and Coetzee-Van Rooy 2012). Weideman (2003:56) rightfully points out that the inability to understand and utilise appropriate academic discourse has a detrimental effect on academic success. Young students need to acculturate to the academic environment while adopting the academic community’s currency (Van de Poel and Gasiorek 2012a:294). With this article, we wish to contribute to the discussion by reporting on the academic language ability of one group of first-year students at a South African university, with specific reference to these students’ reading ability, on the basis of the following data: (i) individual differences in terms of learner characteristics (race, first language, gender, Grade 12 results, academic performance); (ii) self-reported reading preparedness, and (iii) reading profiles resulting from a valid and reliable academic literacy test, the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) and its Afrikaans counterpart, the Toets van Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke (TAG). The findings suggest that academic reading ability, as reflected in the test results, is indeed one of the salient contributors to academic success (as confirmed in the literature), regardless of social and individual differences, and that it needs to be supported in order for students to perceive their reading ability in accordance with their reading performance and be able to progress in their academic acculturation. A follow-up study will report on students’ awareness-raising about their own academic reading through the use of the validated scale for Perceived Academic Reading Preparedness (PARP) as a pedagogical tool.

Hybridization of Sociocultural Factors’ Theory: Conditions for Learning in an Academic Community of Practice

This paper set out to explore the conditions required for learning in an Academic Community of Practice (ACOP) with French-speaking students as stakeholders. English language acquisition was pivotal, among the other sociocultural factors they had to negotiate for academic learning to evolve. Utilising a single case study approach, semistructured interviews, focus group interviews, observation and narrative inquiry, it was found that three major sociocultural factors were determinants of academic learning in an academic community of practice comprising French-speaking students and other stakeholders. The language of learning and teaching (LoLT), academic acculturation and academic identity were instrumental to academic learning with constant redress among the sociocultural factors as French-speaking students progressed to full participation. The private tertiary education institution falls directly under the categorization of an academic community of practice, drawing on Otten (2009). Depending on redress among the three sociocultural factors, hybrids emerged as indices of learning trajectories of French-speaking students. When these three factors are in a state of redress, there is an emergent learning, depending on the extent of hybridization between the sociocultural factors. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n1p205

Academic acculturation: The case of writing in an EFL teaching and learning environment

The transition from secondary to tertiary education is not just a change of physical environment, but it is also a change of culture. It has been shown that first year students’ academic performance and their motivation to stay in school partly depend on how well they integrate into the university environment. In other words, students have to interact with their community through the reigning academic discourse, i.e., they must learn this community’s communicative currency: the norms, standards, procedures and linguistic forms that constitute academic discourse.This article eclectically summarizes five studies which try to contribute to a better understanding of academic acculturation by first year students of English language and literature studying English as a foreign language. We hope to contribute to the discussion of well-being and well-feeling of freshmen in their process of acculturation on the basis of their own introspections.Keywords: academic acculturation, self-efficacy, academic identity, academic literacy, student self-report

Alfabetização: o olhar das crianças sobre o aprendizado da linguagem escrita

O artigo apresenta resultados de uma pesquisa realizada com crianças do primeiro ano do ensino fundamental, em escola pública federal, no Rio de Janeiro, durante o ano de 2011, cujo objetivo geral é conhecer as concepções que crianças elaboram sobre o processo de alfabetização, antes e depois de serem alfabetizadas. Realizaram-se entrevistas com as crianças, os pais e a professora da turma. A análise dos discursos dos sujeitos participantes se baseou na Teoria da Enunciação de Bakhtin. Recorreu-se ainda ao pensamento de Vigotski para compreender os modos de pensar próprios da infância. Os resultados nos levam a afirmar que o aprendizado da leitura e da escrita altera os modos de pensar e dizer das crianças; os conhecimentos específicos sobre o sistema de escrita permitiram-lhes realizar novas operações metalinguísticas e metacognitivas. Esse processo evidenciou-se como parte dos processos gerais de aculturação escolar, com ênfase no aprendizado de condutas típicas dessa esfera social.

La formación inicial en la historia profesional de los psicopedagogos noveles de Institutos de Educación Secundaria (IES)

Over the last five years, the school as a social institution has been reorganising and adapting in order to cope with the demands of an increasingly intercultural, global society ever more tightly bound to information and communication technologies. Accordingly, education authorities have chosen to bring new professionals onto the staff of primary and secondary schools to help in the development of a high-quality, holistic, understanding education. This paper is a qualitative study of the new staff members. It focuses on novice educational psychologists in secondary school guidance departments. The paper analyses the influence of initial training on the construction of their professional thought, understanding «initial training» as not only university education but also the beliefs educational psychologists have built for themselves over their lifetime, particularly during the competitive examination process they must successfully complete in order to earn a post in a public school. The article is organised into three sections. The first is entitled «University Education: An Academic Acculturation». It analyses how the most common types of university degrees for getting into the guidance profession influence novice counsellors� conception of their profession. The second, «The Competitive Examination Process: Induction by Legislation», reflects upon the importance of the competitive examination stage in acculturation in the educational psychology practices determined by legislation. Lastly, the third section, «Professional Beliefs: A (H)istory-based Construction», looks deeply into the influence that the institutionalisation and history of guidance counselling have on novice counsellors� beliefs about their profession.

Becoming and being an academic: the perspectives of Chinese staff in two research‐intensive UK universities

This article reports on an interview study investigating the experiences of academic acculturation (a process of mutual influence and enrichment with regard to academic practice) of a group of Chinese academic staff in two research‐intensive UK universities. Following a systematic content‐based analysis, three major themes emerged as salient, namely: (1) different perceptions of academic practice in the UK and China, (2) the importance of disciplinary identity, and (3) the role of English and original cultural affiliations in the process of academic acculturation. The study shows that, while these academic staff took active initiatives to orient themselves towards UK academic culture, they did not perceive that culture to have changed much through their acculturation. The study also reveals that the cultural affiliation of the academic staff, perceived norms in the new academic culture, and relative proficiency in English language all have an impact on the process of academic acculturation.

Towards a Better Understanding of Academic Acculturation: Second Language Students in Canadian Universities

The aggressive internationalization of Canadian universities and increased immigration to Canada over the past 20 years have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of second language (L2) students in Canadian universities. However, little is known about the factors that influence academic acculturation of L2 students or about the role of English for academic purposes (EAP) instruction in their acculturation process. This study examined L2 university students' perceptions of academic acculturation and the role of EAP instruction by means of interviews conducted with 56 L2 students at three Canadian universities. Findings suggest that the students who characterized their academic engagement as successful had typically developed more strategic learning and social skills as part of their acculturation process. Implications are drawn for the importance of aligning students' agendas for learning (i.e., their perceptions of needs) with EAP programs.

The Middle Way: East Asian Master's Students' Perceptions of Critical Argumentation in U.K. Universities

This article explores the learning experiences of East Asian master's students in dealing with Western academic norms of critical thinking in classroom debate and assignment writing. The research takes a cultural approach and employs grounded theory and case study methodology. The aim is for students to explain their own perceptions of their learning journeys and tell their own stories through in-depth interviews. The data suggest that the majority of students interviewed rejected full academic acculturation into Western norms of argumentation. They instead opted for a “Middle Way” that synergizes the traditional cultural academic values held by many East Asian students with those elements of Western academic norms that are perceived to be aligned with these. This is a relatively new area of research, which represents a challenge for British lecturers and students.

Ethnicity and Gender Influences on Learning Styles in Nursing Students From an Hispanic-Serving Institution

Literature has shown that considerations of learning styles are important in the educational process of health professionals. Among other variables, differences of learning styles may be influenced by language, culture, and heritage. The purpose of this study was to describe the learning styles of nursing students at an Hispanic-serving university. This study discusses the influence of gender and ethnicity on learning styles and the role of academic acculturation in nursing education.

Journal characteristics, rankings and social acculturation in operations management

Over the past 15 yr , there have been several attempts in operations management to rate journals, authors and schools based on their research productivity and quality. While many of these have been very helpful in generating a relative ranking of productivity and prestige, these analyses seem incomplete in many ways. Most notably, they neglected the fact that these rankings are loaded with value judgments acquired in the process of academic acculturation on one hand and that they did not provide basic information about the journals on the other. This paper argues that the rankings reflect the milieu in which they were conceived and calls for “usage-based” measures as more appropriate ways of measuring a publication's impact through influencing and changing the thinking and actions of researchers, students and practitioners. Specifically, this article has three objectives. First, it fills an information gap by giving the characteristics of 28 journals in the broadly-defined field of operations management. Second, the article summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches taken to rank journals. Third, this article shows some factors of social acculturation (acquired either through education or working in different environments) in the journal evaluation process. The empirical part of the paper is based on analyzing referencing practices of these journals, surveying senior editors, analyzing reading lists of doctoral programs at major research universities, and contacting university and corporate libraries, and consulting companies.

Reflections on an Emerging Academic Discipline

Expertise in child development and behavior has been acknowledged as a critical prerequisite for the practice of general pediatrics since the early part of the 20th century. Recently, as the knowledge base has expanded, the concept of developmental and behavioral pediatrics as a specialized academic discipline has generated growing interest. The extent to which this emerging field achieves full recognition as a respected pediatric subspecialty will be determined by its response to three critical challenges: the process of academic acculturation, the imperative of creative collaboration and intellectual cross-fertilization, and the requirements of scientific credibility.

Anticipatory it in Scientific Discourse

Based on a 70,000-word sample of eight journal articles and four textbook chapters, this article examines the communicative value of anticipatory- it clauses in scientific and technical texts. The main discourse function of the 205 clauses appears to be to provide author comment, with the meaning of the verb or the meaning of the adjective determining the particular type of comment. Many of these comments are evidential; that is, they are concerned primarily with the reliability or source of knowledge. Anticipatory- it clauses are also used to mark the introduction of a topic, to forecast, to summarize, and to direct the reader in interpreting a graphic or recognizing the most salient points in an argument. Rather than being a structure to avoid, the anticipatory- it clause is probably one whose effective use indicates academic acculturation.