Centre for Research in Educational Leadership and Management (CRELM)
The Centre for Research in Leadership and Management (CRELM) invites you to attend, and encourages others to attend the first of three research seminars that we are offering this term. Their purposes are to:
- enable our Doctoral students who are at the end of their research studies to share their findings with others;
- disseminate findings from research projects in which CRELM colleagues have been involved;
- provide you with opportunities to hear experts from other universities and research engaged schools reporting their research.
The sessions are relatively short and informal and take place at different times of the day in order to encourage a range of colleagues from inside and outside the University to attend. Below are the details of the first event, the other two seminars in this series are available to view at: www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/research/researchevents
Presented by Dandan Zhu, doctoral student at The University of Nottingham
This seminar presents an ethnographic study which explores the nature and change of student identity in two universities with different educational settings in China. It also focuses on whether and how two different institutional contexts influence university students’ identity change. The universities in the study are Zhejiang University, which is a Chinese university, and The University of Nottingham Ningbo China, a transnational university (British university campus) in China. The theoretical framework of the study draws from sociological and social psychological theories of identities, and in particular Burke and Set’s (2009) identity theory. Burke and Sets’ (2009) model proposed three dimensions when analysing identities: role identity, group identity and personal identity. This study uses this model to investigate students’ identity change in the afore-mentioned universities.
The study identified three transitional phases for university students’ identity change, suggesting that students’ identity change is a process involving dynamic interactions among students’ role, group and personal identity. It found that students’ identity changes derive from interactions between students’ individual contexts, institutional contexts and the wider social context in China. The findings provide empirical evidence in the context of China which is different from the context of existing Western identity theories. The evidence from this study has important implications for both universities, and adds to the discussion on the internationalisation of higher education in China.
Biography
Dandan Zhu is a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham. She holds an MA in Educational Leadership and Management in The University of Nottingham UK and a BA in International Study (History and Politics) in The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China.
Her research interests are in internationalisation of higher education, culture and higher education, and development and identity changes of students.