Academic Socialization Research Articles

Gender difference in academic socialization of children in tea communities of Assam

Gender difference in academic socialization of children in tea communities of Assam

International students’ intercultural sensitivity in their academic socialisation to a non-English-speaking higher education: a Korean case study

ABSTRACT As global competition has intensified in Higher Education (HE) over the past decade, HE institutions of many non-English-speaking societies have strategically concentrated on internationalisation and increased the international population of their campuses. This case study investigated non-native English-speaking international students’ academic socialisation in a Korean engineering university devoted to internationalisation. A mixed method was adopted to analyse the questionnaire responses of 141 international students, along with qualitative interviews with ten of the respondents. The factors significant in their academic socialisation included their affective reactions to local cultures (intercultural sensitivity), in-class English-mediated interaction, and the need for the local language and social interaction. While their negative view of classroom interaction in the context of English-medium instruction was frequently associated with the use of the local language in class, their sensitivity to the local culture was found to exert a greater influence on their academic socialisation than the factor of the local language used by their local peers in a classroom. Notably, the negative correlation between attentiveness to the local culture and the need for social interaction illuminated the participants’ limited understanding of the local norms of interaction, such as politeness. The findings highlight a balanced approach towards locality and internationality which promotes intercultural interactions in both class and systemised language and culture education programs.

Academic staff as 'transition managers' in interdisciplinary, international MA education

The article builds on an empirical study of knowledge practices in international, interdisciplinary MA education, foregrounding the role of academic staff in identifying and explicating academic norms to students recruited from different subject areas and institutions. A central theme is transition, which refers to the state of liminality that postgraduates can experience when new to a discipline, institution and sociocultural context. I argue for lecturers as ‘transition managers’ who may ease students’ transfer into an unfamiliar academic culture. This argument is explored in an analysis of interview data collected from four MA courses, which suggests that lecturers’ transition management involves an awareness of classroom diversity, an acceptance of responsibility for academic socialisation and the development of new pedagogic practices.

Teaching master thesis writing to engineers: Insights from corpus and genre analysis of introductions

A large proportion of all graduates study engineering disciplines, and the number of master theses completed far outstrips that of doctoral-level works. However, engineering disciplines in general and their master theses in particular have received comparatively little attention from applied linguistics, leaving writing instructors with sparse guidance when preparing courses for MSc students in engineering. Here, we present the results of a corpus analysis of introduction sections in 57 master theses in mechanical engineering and a genre analysis of 16 of their introductions. A concordance analysis of the most frequent keywords revealed the typical discourse functions employed by students when writing about their research in this section. The genre analysis confirmed the presence of most of the elements of Swales's CARS schema in MSc theses. These findings contribute to knowledge of this understudied field in applied linguistics and can be used to design materials and courses for MSc engineering students focussing on vocabulary, rhetorical structures, and academic socialisation.

Facilitating the Academic Success of International PhD Students.

This article discusses the challenges of international PhD nursing students and recommends strategies to support them. Approximately 10 percent of the students enrolled in research-focused nursing doctoral programs in the United States are non-US residents, challenging schools of nursing to examine ways to support these students. We searched five electronic databases using international student* AND doctoral OR graduate as search terms; we integrated the authors' experiences. Faculty and peer support can promote a smooth transition into the United States. Participating on research teams or school committees promotes academic socialization. Dissertation work has multiple unique challenges, including international relevance of topics, translation, funding, and location of the research. Faculty advisers and universities can facilitate student adjustment. Once international students become familiar with the academic requirements and culture, they have the capacity to contribute rich, diverse perspectives that greatly enhance the quality of PhD education.

Re-disciplining Academic Careers? Interdisciplinary Practice and Career Development in a Swedish Environmental Sciences Research Center

Interdisciplinarity is often framed as crucial for addressing the complex problems of contemporary society and for achieving new levels of innovation. But while science policy and institutions have provided a variety of incentives for stimulating interdisciplinary work throughout Europe, there is also growing evidence that some aspects of the academic system do not necessarily reward interdisciplinary work. In this study, we explore how mid-career researchers in an environmental science research center in Sweden relate to and handle the distinct forms of uncertainty that arise from conflicting institutional and policy impulses. Our material suggests that interdisciplinary academics are often confronted with and at times themselves operate with a surprisingly dichotomous, value-laden view of their research practice. Disciplinarity is primarily associated with the ideals of scientific rigor, while interdisciplinarity becomes conflated with application-oriented work and a lack of ‘theory.’ We also draw attention to the underlying practical dynamics that reproduce this tension and entangle it with the very process of academic socialization. Specifically, we analyze the ambivalent consequences of the various work-arounds that researchers rely on to carve out opportunities for ongoing interdisciplinary research within heterogeneous funding landscapes. These tactics turn out to be undermined by the overriding normative power of formal career incentives at universities, which continue to emphasize the ideals of the individual high-performing academic who publishes in disciplinary journals and attracts the most selective grants. Under such circumstances, the work-arounds themselves become an insidious mechanism that allows researchers to stay in academia but systematically marginalizes their voices and epistemic ambitions in the process.

Escrita no ensino superior: uma análise de objetos e abordagens de ensino previstos em cursos de graduação

Neste trabalho, que integra uma pesquisa mais ampla sobre o ensino de escrita em contextos acadêmicos, objetiva-se (1) identificar objetos de ensino previstos em ementas e conteúdos de planos de curso de disciplinas voltadas para o ensino de escrita, ofertadas em diferentes cursos de graduação, de uma universidade federal brasileira, e (2) identificar que abordagem(ns) de ensino de escrita está(ão) subjacente(s) à indicação desses objetos de ensino. Metodologicamente, fundamenta-se nas proposições do paradigma interpretativo, enquadrando-se como uma pesquisa qualitativa, de base documental, cujo corpus constitui-se de 41 planos de curso de disciplinas de graduação, ministradas em cursos variados, da instituição referida. Os resultados, explorados com base na metodologia da análise de conteúdo, apontam uma diversidade de objetos de ensino contemplados nos planos analisados. Prevê-se que a escrita acadêmica seja focalizada a partir de diferentes dimensões que contemplem desde a parte mais microestrutural (norma culta e normatização) até a parte mais macroestrutural (textualidade e gêneros discursivos). As abordagens socialização acadêmica e habilidades de estudo (LEA; STREET, 1998) parecem fundamentar as indicações desses objetos de ensino. Entretanto, a primeira abordagem predomina nos dados analisados, sugerindo interesse dos docentes em focalizarem, nas aulas de escrita, gêneros discursivos acadêmicos e/ou profissionais. O trabalho com esses gêneros pode resultar na familiarização dos discentes com os discursos e práticas que circulam na e para a academia. Conclui-se que é fundamental ensinar explicitamente, no ensino superior, a escrita acadêmica e a profissional, visto serem práticas sociais, situadas e de aprendizado contínuo.

Researcher vulnerability: implications for educational research and practice

This paper explores the concept of researcher vulnerability through a review of the extant research literature and each author’s feelings of vulnerability connected to their research with vulnerable populations while exploring both sensitive and seemingly innocuous, yet important, topics in education using qualitative methodology. Specifically, a reflection of our respective study of the academic and social transitions of student combat veterans, and the academic and gender socialization of adolescent African American males is presented as means of illustrating the phenomena of researcher vulnerability. Implications of vulnerability for research, practice, and theory are discussed.

Meta-Analysis of Parental Involvement and Achievement in East Asian Countries

Countless meta-analytic studies document the relation between parental involvement and achievement, but they mostly include studies conducted in the United States where parental involvement is framed as a policy issue. This is the first meta-analytic study focusing on East Asian countries characterized by high achievement levels, a comparatively standardized education system, and no policy encouraging family–school relations. A meta-analysis of 15 studies retrieved from an exhaustive search of the literature reveals a positive association between parental involvement and achievement. The strength of the relation was highest for academic socialization, followed by home involvement and school involvement, similar to previous meta-analyses.

Older Siblings as Academic Socialization Agents for Younger Siblings: Developmental Pathways across Adolescence.

The role of older siblings in younger siblings' academic socialization becomes increasingly salient during adolescence. This longitudinal study examines the developmental mechanisms through which older siblings shape younger siblings' academic outcomes and whether older siblings' peer affiliations predict younger siblings' educational aspirations and attainment. Data consisted of responses from 395 target adolescents (Mage = 12.22 years, 48.9% female; 51.6% African American, 38.5% European American) and their older siblings (Mage = 14.65 years, 50.1% female) across nine years. The findings showed that older siblings' affiliation with academically disengaged peers at 7th grade predicted younger siblings' decreased affiliation with academically engaged peers and increased affiliation with disengaged peers at 9th grade. In addition, younger siblings' affiliation with academically engaged peers predicted greater educational aspirations at 11th grade, which in turn were related to higher postsecondary educational attainment. The identification of developmental processes through which older siblings were associated with younger siblings' academic success may aid in creating supportive social environments in which adolescents can thrive.

Academic socialization, parental educational expectations, and academic self‐efficacy among Latino adolescents

AbstractThis study examined the direct association between parental educational expectations and adolescents’ academic self‐efficacy, as well as the moderating influence of parental academic socialization messages. Participants were 148 Latino parent–adolescent dyads with the majority of Mexican origin (80.4%). Most of the parent participants were mothers (85.8%). Adolescents were 13 (46%) or 14 (54%) years of age, and 53% identified as female. Adolescents reported their academic self‐efficacy and perceptions of their parents’ educational expectations; parents reported on their academic socialization messages of shame/pressure and effort regarding academics. The results suggest that, after accounting for parents’ level of education and immigrant status, parental educational expectations were positively associated with adolescent academic self‐efficacy. This association was stronger among adolescents whose parents reported transmitting fewer messages of shame/pressure and academic effort. These results point to the importance of nuances in the content and type of academic socialization messages within Latino families.

A Critical Sociocultural Perspective to Academic Literacies in Latin America

In this editorial, the author reflects on the state of research on academic literacies in Latin American higher education. To this end, the author presents a description of the context of higher education in Latin America, and the analysis of literature on academic literacies in the region through the lenses of three models: the study skills model, the academic socialization model, and the critical sociocultural model. From this analysis, the author argues that a critical sociocultural perspective is emerging in Latin America, which considers academic literacies as social practices embedded in systems of power. This turn into a critical sociocultural perspective is important and timely because it challenges deficit views of students, and it includes issues of power, identity, representation, and authority. The author invites Latin American scholars to consider the implications of a critical sociocultural perspective to academic literacies and the possibilities it offers to understand how youth interact with literacy in a region where education most of the times reinforces deep inequalities.

‘Maybe I can do this. Maybe I should be here’: evaluating an academic literacy, resilience and confidence programme

ABSTRACTIt has been well documented in research that students from so-called ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds can experience significant difficulty in accessing higher education, in part due to a lack of cultural capital. This is further reinforced by ‘invisible pedagogic practices’ such as ‘critical analysis’, ‘structure’ and ‘argument’, which uphold the prestige of disciplines without adequately inducting students into such practices. Through the evaluation of an academic literacy intervention (‘ARC’) designed to improve the academic resilience and confidence of students on an undergraduate degree programme, this paper demonstrates that ‘literacy’ is as much a social practice as it is a set of applied skills. Thus, ‘academic literacy’ should constitute both study skills and academic socialisation. This paper further argues that the acquisition of ‘academic literacy’ necessitates the adoption of an ‘academic identity’, which is an emotional as well as an intellectual endeavour. This requires institutions to move away from the deficit model of ‘academic literacy support’ towards models which enable the construction of a shared academic identity and cultivate a sense of belonging to the university environment.

This Bridge Feels Like a Tightrope: For Critical Scholars Who Engage in Policy Research

There is a widespread belief among academic researchers and academic journal editors that policy audiences prefer positivist research, despite evidence that policy makers would prefer to see researchers engage more with case studies, historical analyses, and compelling voices. This belief inevitably shapes the culture of the educational policy research community and bleeds into the academic socialization of novice educational policy researchers. In this article, I use autoethnography to explore the methodological tensions I encountered as an untrained critical researcher participating in a postpositivist multicase research study that privileged large data sets, quantified qualitative findings, and entitled majority viewpoints. Through this exploration, I seek to advocate for deeper reflexivity and transparency among qualitative researchers who encounter moments of conflict and doubt in the research process. A list of recommendations for novice and seasoned educational policy researchers are provided.

Hedonistic Approach in the Musical-Rhythmic Competence of Future Music and Choreography Teachers

The article is dedicated to the analysis of hedonistic approach to music and rhythm competence of prospective Music and Choreography teachers. As hedonism became a focus of scholars’ active attention during the recent decade, hedonistic approach is being put forward in the article as the key one in music and rhythm competence of prospective Music and Choreography teachers. Under the current circumstances of the society’s development, the psychological follow-up of prospective Music and Choreography teachers is an important goal to attain for our country. Each personality requires individual approach; help in revealing his/her specific features; in shaping a wholesome, harmonious personality. The goal under consideration presupposes setting complicated issues for teachers and psychologists; these issues require structural, systemic and subsequent solution. The personality’s subjective welfare is not only an indicator of his/her psychic (emotional) stability, the transient (dis)adaptation states and pressure compliance resources, but also has crucial significance for perfecting the processes of a person’s overall and academic socialisation. This phenomenon requires conducting applied research as well as solving other issues. Thus, hedonistic approach to music and rhythm competence of prospective Music and Choreography teachers presupposes studying and explication. Applying a hedonistic approach to music-rhythmic competence, under appropriate pedagogical conditions, is transformed into a kind of educational and musical training, which is based on a person's need for pleasure, enjoyment and relying on a love of music education. In this way, the hedonistic approach in music education gives the process of teaching future music teachers and choreography a special appeal.Hedonistic approach to music and rhythm competence of prospective Music and Choreography teachers under the corresponding academic circumstances is being rearranged into a distinctive teaching and music training based on the prospective Music and Choreography teacher’s demand for enjoyment and delight relying on the love of music education.

语言社会化理论视阈下的二语口头学术语篇研究

语言社会化理论视阈下的二语口头学术语篇研究

Establishing a Health Sciences writing centre in the changing landscape of South African Higher Education

This article describes, analyses, and reflects on the conceptualisation and establishment of a Writing Lab at a South African university’s Faculty of Health Sciences. Drawing on the theoretical framework of New Literacy Studies, the academic literacies approach, and South African writing centre scholarship, the analysis revealed that the conceptualisation of the Writing Lab was primarily informed by the academic socialisation model but has since shifted to encompass a more transformative ideology; opening spaces where students’ own knowledges and literacies practices could contribute to new forms of thinking and representation in the academy. We argue that the shift was facilitated by collaboration with disciplinary lecturers, the faculty’s Primary Health Care ethos, and the Writing Lab’s engagement with a large postgraduate population, leading to the Writing Lab’s participation in new forms of knowledge-building that could contribute to the creation of decolonised spaces and shifts in institutional culture.

Complexity of Academic Socialization of Historically Underrepresented Doctoral Students: De-Privileging Distinctions Between Macro-and-Micro-Theoretical Approaches


 
 
 This article represents a conceptual work that critiques and challenges traditional linear theoretical assumptions of academic socialization and integration that are often applied to research of diverse populations in academia in general and doctoral education specifically. The article further proposes a new conceptual framework of academic socialization as a meaning-making act of historically underrepresented doctoral students. The ultimate goal of the proposed framework is to reconcile the restrictive use of sociological macro- and micro- orientations to foreground possibilities of a conceptual and empirical focus on an individual meaning making act (as a form of individual agency) of historically underrepresented doctoral students within the critical contexts of academia. The proposed framework offers methodological and analytical tools for a more complex qualitative research and institutional/individual practice to account for increasingly diverse populations in higher education.
 
 

Why does parents’ involvement in youth’s learning vary across elementary, middle, and high school?

This research examined why parents’ involvement in youth’s learning varies as youth progress through school. 3074 Chinese youths (M age = 13.89 years) in elementary, middle, and high school and their parents reported on parents’ homework assistance and academic socialization. Youth and parents also reported on potential mechanisms underlying variation in these two types of involvement over the school years. Parents’ homework assistance and academic socialization were both higher in elementary than middle school in which they were higher than high school. Youth’s invitations for involvement, along with parents’ involvement role beliefs, involvement self-efficacy, and perceived involvement norms contributed to the tendency for the two types of involvement to be higher in elementary than middle school. Only youth’s invitations and parents’ perceived norms contributed to the tendency for the two to be higher in middle than high school.

Genealogy Tree: Understanding Academic Lineage of Authors via Algorithmic and Visual Analysis

Ancestry and genealogy tree are proven tools to determine the lineage of any person and establish dependencies among individuals. Genealogy tree can be exploited further to gain information about the researcher and his scholastic lineage which is of paramount importance in today's world of computer technology. this insight into academic genealogy could be a way of helping PHD students achieve academic socialization within the discipline, by making explicit connections that may be influential. Awareness of his scientific heritage gives the user a broader perspective of his own research project. This paper also highlights and investigates how this academic network is exploited by certain researchers using various visualization tools. It was observed during this work that the credibility and influence factor is determined by the various citations obtained by an author and to improve their rankings in various forms, they tend to collaborate in their academic circle and boost their citation count. A recent trend among researchers is to form communities based on their academic relationships and rely on copious citations for their mutual benefit. Tracing the genealogical relationships can be helpful in detecting such communities and also create a more quality aware metric using a lineage independent model for computation of author level metrics.