Making it work: a grounded theory study of undergraduate international students' educational journey in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
With the increasing enrolment of undergraduate international students in Canadian universities, it has become essential to gain insights into their educational journey and the success strategies they employ to succeed. This study was designed to explore the ways in which undergraduate international students effectively manage their educational journey in Canada. The primary objectives were twofold: first, to identify the main concerns and strategies employed by international undergraduate students as they navigate their educational journey in Canada; and second, construct a substantive theory that explains how these students manage their educational journey. A constructivist grounded theory approach was used to examine the experiences of undergraduate international students studying at a university in New Brunswick, Canada. Data collection occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding a unique context to some of their experiences. It was carried out through in-depth, semi-structured interviews involving 11 participants from diverse nationalities, spanning various stages of their educational journey, from first-year students to those in their final year. Constant comparative analysis facilitated the identification of emerging categories in the construction of a grounded theory. The central concern voiced by participants was the persistent drive to “make it work”. This entailed a proactive and resourceful approach to negotiating their journey, which involved navigating new educational environments, making connections, feeling supported, figuring it out and contributing to the success of their peers in making it work. International students demonstrate resilience, agency, and the ability to find solutions to obstacles. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of international undergraduate students’ experiences in Canada and their active roles in shaping their educational journey. By recognizing the proactive strategies they employ, stakeholders, including student support staff and the institutions, can develop targeted support services that facilitate those strategies and enhance the educational experiences of international students.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.030 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".