a growing experience - Student Services - University of Melbourne

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HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSAt the same time, there are protective factors as well as risk factors operating in theenvironments of international students. Protective factors include connectedness tofamily, although at a distance, and belief in their pro-social values (Benard, 1996;Catalano & Hawkins, 1996), a feeling of belonging to and experience of support fromthe educational institution and its staff (Benard, 1996; Resnick, Bearman, Blum,Bauman, Harris, Jones, Tabor, Beuhring, Sieving, Shew, Ireland, Bearinger, & Udry,1997), involvement with pro-social peers and belief in their values (Catalano &Hawkins, 1996), emotional support from a wider family group or trusted others(Marcus & Swisher, 1992), a supportive, cohesive, reinforcing external community(Benard, 1996; Catalano & Hawkins, 1996), as well as individual characteristics suchas high self-esteem (Resnick et al., 1997), a strong sense of purpose, motivation, selfefficacy3 , personal agency and control 4 (Benard, 1996). It is thought that internationalstudents who have been selected by their families or government to study in Australia,who are also financed by their families or government during their stay, as a highproportion are (Krause et al., 2005), and who are conscious of expectations of them,are likely for the most part to be capable and motivated students.MEETING INTERNATIONAL STUDENT NEEDSThere have been many responses to the needs of international students at bothgovernment and institutional levels. Because the size and composition of thepopulation of international students in Australia is changing rapidly, the monitoring ofthese changes is important for policy-makers, education providers and researchers.The Australian government makes specific information available about theinternational student population in its annual higher education statistics collection. Italso collects information about levels of course satisfaction and graduate employmentprospects through the Graduate Destination Survey and the Course ExperienceQuestionnaire. The recent example of the national report on the first year experienceof students in Australian universities (Krause et al., 2005) is an example of suchinvestigations. At the state level, the Victorian Auditor General has conducted aperformance audit to assess the impact of international student programs in Victorianuniversities on student access, academic standards, institutional finances and systemsof regulation and monitoring (Auditor General, Victoria, 2002).At the institutional level, monitoring of international students’ needs and theirsatisfaction with their university experience is very important. At the University ofMelbourne, for example, the Evaluation Cycle includes a triennial survey of final yearinternational students on their experience of the university, with a focus on academicissues, but also tapping into broader personal, social and cultural issues (for example,Daroesman et al., 2005). Other student surveys included in the cyclic evaluationprocess, such as the survey of the quality of university’s administrative and support3 “Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses ofaction required to produce given attainments.”(Bandura, 1997:3).4 Whereas perceived self-efficacy refers to belief in one’s capacity to undertake the actions necessary tocomplete a task successfully, control beliefs concern whether the environment is seen to respond tothose actions, so that the task outcome is actually perceived to be caused by or attributed to thoseactions. People who believe that they are active agents in producing outcomes, rather than outcomesbeing the result of chance or fate or something else, are more likely to take action. Thus, for example,a student’s belief that academic success is contingent on his/her own behaviour is likely to lead toappropriate goal-directed action by the student (Rotter, 1996; Weiner, 1986).Rosenthal, Russell & Thomson, 2006 19
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSservices for students (for example, Daroesman, Looi, Smyth & Douglas, 2004) seekresponses from all students, but permit the perceptions of international and domesticstudents to be distinguished.Other institutional research contributes to knowledge about international studentneeds and the ways of best meeting those needs. The focus of such research haslargely concerned students’ academic needs. The Faculty of Education at theUniversity of Melbourne, in association with Asialink, completed an investigation lastyear into issues in learning and teaching students from Asia (Faculty of Education andAsialink, 2004). This provided an overview of critical pedagogical issues anduniversity responses, including individual faculty responses, for this major group ofinternational students. Within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and HealthSciences, domestic and international Asian students are strongly represented. In spiteof excellent year 12 results, many were found to be facing difficulties with the course,both in relation to its problem-based learning approach and in terms of students’communication styles in clinical settings. An account of the Faculty’s research onthis issue since 1997 and the impressive model of support for international studentsthat has been developed is given in Hawthorne et al. (2004).The university has responded to the investigations of student needs at the institutionallevel. Its infrastructure for supporting international students is well-developed. Aglance at the university website, for example, is sufficient to indicate the provision forprospective, current and departing students of information about Australia, Melbourneand the university, advice about cultural and academic adjustment, availability ofadministrative assistance, access to language, academic and support services,orientation and departure programs, and many other matters. Assistance is alsoprovided to help academic and general staff improve their capacity to meet theexpectations of the increasingly culturally diverse local and international studentpopulation.THE PRESENT STUDYWell-being is seen as a broader, more encompassing concept than health, one whichincludes health as a sub-component (Danna & Griffin, 1999). It is, in essence, a selfevaluativeconcept; evidence of it is drawn from the self-perceptions and selfappraisalsof the people being studied. In their study of achievement goals andstudent well-being, Kaplan and Maehr (1999:337) defined well-being as “aphenomenological organization of students’ emotional, cognitive, and behaviouralexperiences”.Well-being is thus subjectively established; it is in fact sometimes termed ‘subjectivewell-being’. In a major review of the area of subjective well-being, Diener and hiscolleagues defined the components of subjective well-being: “Subjective well-being isa broad category of phenomena that includes people’s emotional responses, domainsatisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction” (Diener, Suh, Lucas andSmith, 1999:277). Emotional responses include pleasant affect (such as contentment,happiness, pride) and unpleasant affect (such as anxiety, depression, stress, guilt andshame). Domain satisfactions refer to perceptions of areas of life such as work,family, health, leisure, finances, friends and self. Life satisfaction concerns general,global perceptions of satisfaction with past, current and future life.Rosenthal, Russell & Thomson, 2006 20
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