The challenge of academic writing for Chinese students within ...

CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction
This chapter brings together the three themes discussed in previous chapters and explores the
implications for higher education institutions. I reflect on the research and explore what
institutional conditions are needed to ensure overseas students have the opportunity to
succeed in their learning, in terms of the implications for institutional and departmental
support and for professional practice. The relevance of this research for other groups of
international students is also discussed.
By addressing the research question (What transformations do Chinese undergraduate
students undergo within a new socio-cultural environment and different institutional learning
settings) Figure 9.1 provides a conceptual framework to analyse their learning experiences
within a historico-cultural perspective. Such a perspective is important since the students‘
motivation, values, skills, and knowledge are all historically constructed. This conceptual reframing
evolved from the original analytical framework as presented in Figure 4.1. The reframing
highlights the historical nature of the ‗learning journeys‘ undertaken by the students.
Contexts
of origin
Transformations
Communities of learning
Learning across language boundaries
Becoming an independent learner
Historico-cultural perspectives
Contexts of
destination
Figure 9.1: Conceptual framework of Chinese students‘ learning experiences
In the next section, I summarise the findings of this study and discuss the relevance of the
study to other groups of international students.
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