The adjustment journey of international postgraduate students at an English university

TLDR

This article proposes a model of adjustment for international postgraduate students, informed by the duration of their stay from arrival to departure. The model is derived from an ethnographic study of students at a university in southern England. The study found that acculturative stress peaks at the start of the sojourn due to language and cultural challenges, then gradually declines but fluctuates unpredictably across students, making the adjustment journey dynamic and individualized.

Abstract

Using findings from an ethnographic study of international postgraduate students at a university in the south of England, this article offers a model of adjustment that is informed by the duration of the sojourn, from the initial stage to the month of students' departure from England. This study found that stress was at its height in the initial stage of the academic sojourn; this was caused by the struggle to cope with the challenges of foreign language use and an unfamiliar academic and sociocultural environment at a time when students were beset with homesickness and loneliness. An association was made between the passage of time and a gradual decrease in acculturative stress. However, this was not a generalizable process; there was fluctuation not only in experience across the student body but also in the individual's subjective sense of success across different aspects of life in the new country. This led to the conceptualization of the adjustment journey as an unpredictable and dynamic process, which is experienced differently among sojourners, and fluctuates throughout the sojourn as a result of a host of individual, cultural and external factors.