Learning About Internationalization While Learning: Portraying the Discourses of “International Students” Through a Decolonial Lens
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study critically analyzes the transition from aspiring to study abroad to becoming an “international student,” uncovering the colonial structures shaping what is understood as international education. Using a decolonial framework, it shifts the focus from problematizing students to examining the structures and practices of internationalization. Rejecting deficit approaches that emphasize assimilation, it instead interrogates how colonial legacies in international education influence students’ motivations, experiences, and, ultimately, discourses while highlighting their agency in navigating the complexities of studying in Canada. By employing qualitative methods, specifically critical discourse analysis, this study draws on semi-structured interviews with international engineering master’s students to explore their aspirations, preparations, and the challenges and surprises encountered upon arrival in their host country. The findings reveal the discrepancies between imagined expectations of Canada and lived experiences of international higher education in Quebec, shedding light on the dynamics of “othering” and the colonial structures embedded in international education. Furthermore, the results illuminate patterns of coloniality and emerging practices of decoloniality, providing a deeper understanding of international students’ agency, motivations, and experiences while offering valuable insights to inform future research with 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 | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.037 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| 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".