Threats to the emotional wellbeing of mainland Chinese students studying in Australia: an interpretivist study

ABSTRACT

Purpose

In 2017, international students contributed almost $32 billion to Australia’s economy, more than half of which was attributable to students from China. Despite its historical popularity as a study destination, research suggests that these students confront numerous obstacles in pursuing their studies within Australia. In this study, the perspectives of these students were explored. The dominant issues raised by these students related to mental health and emotional wellbeing.

Methods

Nineteen students in one Australian university participated in one-on-one in-depth semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using grounded theory approaches. Three broad themes were generated in the study: psychological stress (which was linked to language barriers, shifts in pedagogy, and changes in lifestyle); perceived safety (which was linked to lack of security, safety and perceived racial discrimination); and social isolation (linked to reduced sense of belonging; lacking close personal connections; and feelings of loneliness and homesickness).

Conclusions

Results suggested that a tripartite model of interactive risk factors may be appropriate for exploring how international students fare emotionally with their new environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Mainland Chinese postgraduate students
• international students
• Australian higher education
• mental health
• wellbeing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Jian Zhao

Jian Zhao is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Impact UWA (CSI UWA). She has conducted research in developing and validating mental health instruments and her interests span mental health and tertiary education, especially for international students at the tertiary level. She is motivated to conduct qualitative and quantitative research leading to policy outcomes. Before joining CSI UWA, she was working at GSE as a casual teaching staff and research officer, involved in different research projects including a cognitive priming project and a suicide-related project.

Elaine Chapman

Associate Professor Elaine Chapman has an undergraduate degree and a PhD in psychology. She has taught in the areas of child and educational psychology, assessment, quantitative research design, and statistics. She is passionate about child and educational psychology, and in particular, about enhancing the lives of children and youth in the affective domain. She has supervised many Doctoral and Master’s students who have joined her group to pursue research in this area.

Tom O’Donoghue

Professor Tom O’Donoghue is Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education, the University of Western Australia. He is also an elected fellow of both the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and of the Royal Historical Society (UK). He specialises in the history of education in the English-speaking world, with particular reference to the history of teachers and the process of education in faith-based schools. Another strand in his work is concerned with examining the historical antecedents of various contemporary educational issues. His work is distinguished methodologically by the way in which it is informed by theoretical perspectives from the social sciences, especially those clustered under the label of interpretivist sociology. He is a former President of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Australian Catholic University. For detailed profile see: http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/tom.odonoghue