Content uploaded by Catherine Gomes
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Catherine Gomes on Aug 01, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Higher Degree Students (HDR) during COVID-19: Disrupted routines, uncertain futures, and active strategies of resilience and belonging
Abstract
The wellbeing of higher degree research (HDR) students, or postgraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic has been of concern. In Australia, international students have queued for food parcels, while headlines report stark drops in international enrolments and the financial bottom line of universities. We undertook a pilot study using ethnographic interview methods to understand the lived experiences of current international and domestic HDR students at an Australian university in Melbourne, from June to August 2020 (n=26). In this paper, we discuss domestic and international students’ experiences during the pandemic. International HDR students faced similar challenges to domestic students, but experienced further stressors as temporary migrants. We discuss their experiences in relation to resilience, understood as a relational and collective quality. We suggest that institutions develop policies and programmes to address resilience and build students’ sense of belonging and connection, informed by how students cope with challenges such as COVID-19.
... Resilience is conceptualized as the ability of an individual-whether ecological, organizational, or material-to successfully recover or regain from shocks (Gomes et al., 2021). The study of resilience, drawing on the intersection of education, psychology, and child and youth studies, emphasizes emotional, mental, and social strategies people adopt to overcome traumatizing social practices (Ploner, 2017). ...
... The study of resilience, drawing on the intersection of education, psychology, and child and youth studies, emphasizes emotional, mental, and social strategies people adopt to overcome traumatizing social practices (Ploner, 2017). In international education, resilience is vital for individuals, demanding positive emotional and psychological characteristics to deal with varied challenges (Gomes et al., 2021). Building students' capacity for resilience is interconnected with the other three capabilities, answerability, accountability, and the ability to create affordances, as they influence and act to contribute to relational capacity at (inter)personal levels. ...
... While their peer connections had to be reconstructed through creating affordances of WeChat groups, the pandemic offered the students an opportunity to reconnect with parents and friends. Recent literature has stressed the vital position of families and friends for international students, particularly those from China (Gomes et al., 2021;Sinanan & Gomes, 2020;Tran & Vu, 2018), but this was a new configuration based on close copresence. In the event, it proved to be a mixed blessing. ...
This paper proposes a distance-based doctoral supervisory model to support students in the process of navigating self, agency, and emotions over their doctoral journey. The model emerged through our examination of the lived experiences of three Chinese female doctoral students who, though enrolled as internal students in our New Zealand university, were prevented by the pandemic from returning from their Spring Festival sojourn to China, and continued their study by distance. We employed narrative analysis to deeply engage with their stories shared in diaries and one-on-one interviews, alongside social media interactions. These revealed a strong commitment to study emanating from answerability toward their research projects, already underway, and agentive actions to maintain peer-to-peer academic and emotional support, enabling resilience and reflexivity about personal values and needs. Learning from this experience, we emphasize in our model the need to nurture important bonds between students, their peers and their supervisors in online environments.
... Many of the earliest published studies with a focus on COVID-19 have investigated the impact of the pandemic on students' mental health and well-being. The measures imposed, especially the ban on public and private events, and the closing of shops, restaurants, bars, and entertainment and leisure facilities, could prove to be stressors for students in general, including SA students, potentially resulting in elevated levels of feelings of loneliness, social isolation, anxiety, stress, and depressive symptoms (Elmer et al., 2020;Gomes et al., 2021). ...
... Similarly, the longitudinal study of 162 Belgian high school exchange students by Geeraert et al. (2014) indicated that, over time, students who failed to make friendships with host students experienced higher levels of stress. The studies by Moglen (2017) and Gomes et al. (2021) indicate that this psycho-social support is not dependent on a sizeable network of local friends but can also be provided by a network based on shared experiences with international and co-national friends. Gomes et al. (2021) also suggested that social networks helped to cope with the stress and challenges induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
... The studies by Moglen (2017) and Gomes et al. (2021) indicate that this psycho-social support is not dependent on a sizeable network of local friends but can also be provided by a network based on shared experiences with international and co-national friends. Gomes et al. (2021) also suggested that social networks helped to cope with the stress and challenges induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a similar vein, Humphrey and Forbes-Mewett (2021) emphasized the importance for international students to maintain close social connections in order to optimize their mental health. ...
This article presents a comparative case study analysis of two mobility students who, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, had to terminate their stay abroad early and return home after seven and eleven weeks, respectively. The study aims to shed light on the impact of the outbreak of the pandemic on students’ social contacts and their re-adaptation back home, drawing on interview and questionnaire data. The interview data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis and suggest that, while the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was a stressful experience for both students, which impacted the social contacts they entertained and their re-adaptation at home, the two students’ experiences also differed in many ways. We argue that these differences may be attributable to the social contacts the students maintained prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, the goals associated with the stay abroad, and the students’ coping strategies.
... These scholars suggest that the lived experiences of international students-including accessibility to goods and services, employment and employability, selfperceived identities, social and cultural cohesion, aspirations and media/communication use-directly correlate with the ways students engage with their courses. Rapidly emerging academic commentary in 2020 on the impact of the global pandemic on international students in Australia and elsewhere has concentrated specifically on economic and financial losses (Hurley, 2020), international student mobilities (ISM) (Yang, 2022, Van de Velde et al., 2021, Bardill et al. 2021, Sustarsic & Zhang, 2021, Sidhu et al., 2021 international student future enrolment and mobility (Qi & Ma, 2021), student rights and wellbeing (Farbenblum & Berg, 2020, Gomes et al. 2021, and speculating on the recovery and future of international education (Hurley, 2020). Meanwhile others use their research to provide strategies to help international students during the pandemic (e.g. ...
... 4 The reason for this paper's investigation of HDR international students is because international education stakeholders (e.g. governments and institutions) as well as higher education commentators have largely 'focused on the loss of income from undergraduate international student enrolments curtailed by cross border bans and restrictions' (Gomes et al. 2021). The voices of HDR students, however, have been marginalised and so have concerns on their wellbeing due to lower numbers of HDR international who make up less than a third of international students in Australia. ...
... While scholars such as Xiang and others are responding to the new (im)mobility experiences of international students, scholarship on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their everyday lives and futures is understandably still at an early stage. Research, however, emerging at the time this paper was being written, has concentrated mainly on potential international students whose mobilities and, hence, aspirations for overseas study and migration being curtailed (Cheng, 2020), the challenges international students face in terms of study (Gomes, 2021) and concern around their wellbeing (Humphrey & Forbes-Mewett, 2021), with little on international student coping strategies in the face of what seems to be lives and futures in limbo. ...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the word experienced periods of local, state and international immobility due to lockdowns, border closers and travel restrictions. For transient migrants such as international students, these kinds of immobility have resulted in disrupted lives with professional and personal futures suspended as careers and relationships become stuck in limbo. Moreover, such sudden and extended periods of immobility have not been sufficiently covered in temporality literature due to the novelty of the pandemic crisis in the international education, migration and mobility studies spaces. By conducting a pilot project investigating current and recently graduated higher degree by research (HDR) international students (PhD, Masters and Honours) from public institutions in the Australian city of Melbourne, this paper, thus, introduces the concept of 'shock temporality' caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Shock temporality takes place when the expected and finite temporary/transitory experience becomes forcefully broken and appears to be ongoing outside of the individual's control. While shock temporality has left HDR international students' professional and personal agendas and aspirations in suspension, students interviewed use the time to plan and prepare for truncated futures. The findings of this paper, thus, become relevant in assisting higher education student support services in creating potential approaches and strategies for a post-pandemic future.
... Some researchers have attempted to draw fine distinctions of the pandemic impact based on student type, in particular in relation to degree level (Sustarsic and Zhang 2022;Gomes et al. 2021;Dong and Ishige 2022) and nation of origin (Koris, Mato-Díaz, and Hernández-Nanclares 2021). As noted by Koris, Mato-Díaz, and Hernández-Nanclares (2021) in a comparison between international students in Europe, European exchange students, because of their geographic proximity to home, experienced fewer issues with adapting to the pandemic period than their non-European peers. ...
... As a result, a few studies (e.g. Gomes et al. 2021) put forth recommendations for institutions to learn from this insight and create 'policies and programmes to address resilience and build students' sense of belonging and connection, informed by how students cope with challenges such as ). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic increased virtual student mobility as an elective choice and an emergency solution. Whether brought on by the pandemic or encouraged as a solution for more sustainable international education programming, virtual student mobility is a complex method for making internationalisation more inclusive. This qualitative research examines 16 Erasmus students’ experiences with emergency virtual student mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside a reflective assessment of two scholar-practitioners. Findings revealed three themes: teaching and learning challenges, the burden of environmental code-switching, and deficient intercultural socialisation as a result of missed experiences. Overall, results and findings show that some virtual student mobility programs were perceived as a concrete challenge, disappointment, and inadequate learning experience for Erasmus students. The results also challenge the purported inclusiveness of virtual student mobility programs. The paper concludes with the need to reconsider virtual student mobility as inclusive internationalisation, and offers concrete implications for policy, practice, and research.
... In terms of citizenship, international HDR students were about four times more likely to report an inverse Everest profile compared to domestic HDR students. Although international students face similar challenges to domestic students in terms of completing an HDR degree, they experience additional stressors as temporary migrants and are at increased risk of experiencing poor mental health, with isolation from families and culture, language barriers, financial stress, and academic pressures among the key drivers [50]. Further, international students have been found to be less likely to seek help for mental ill-health than domestic students [51]. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected university students globally. Our study investigated mental health indicators among higher degree by research (HDR) students at a regional university in Queensland, Australia. A total of 231 HDR students (female = 137, male = 94) completed the Brunel Mood Scale to assess the constructs of Tension, Depression, Anger, Vigor, Fatigue, and Confusion. A subset of 11 students participated in three focus groups to explore their experiences. Results showed that reported mood among HDR students was generally more negative than population norms, although more positive than moods reported previously during the pandemic. A total of 52 participants (22.5%) reported mood profiles that indicated elevated risk of mental ill-health. Mood profiles varied significantly by gender, age, study mode (full-time/part-time), location (on-campus/online), and citizenship (domestic/international). Quantitative data were supported by focus group findings, which identified mental health and wellbeing as key themes of concern to HDR students. Our findings indicate that support mechanisms to safeguard the mental health and wellbeing of HDR students should be a priority for universities.
This article casts light on informal caregiving, an essential aspect of the international postgraduate researcher (PGR) experience, but which is often invisible in literature and discourses on international education. Drawing from qualitative semi-structured interviews with international PGRs in a British university, it highlights their dual role as care recipients and lesser known caregivers across transnational and local spaces. It gives insights into the forms and dynamics of care that they give to and receive from family, friends and others, uncovering the emotional and affective aspects of undertaking a postgraduate research degree overseas which impact on their mental wellbeing. The findings have implications for the improvement of university support for international PGRs which has relevance for the wider international student community.
This paper analyses Japan’s COVID-19 response drawing on a survey of more than 3200 prospective international students affected by the (colloquially named) #JapanTravelBan. The paper charts the evolution of Japan’s COVID-19 response from the earliest border restrictions in February 2020 to the eventual blanket re-opening to international students in Summer 2022. Subsequently, survey DATA provide evidence of (1) the drastic mental health effects for prospective international students during this time, (2) students’ loss of agency due to the protracted uncertainty of both policy and communication from the Japanese government, and (3) potential damage caused to Japan’s reputation as a study destination. Drawing on these findings the paper offers broader suggestions for appropriate student migration policymaking: greater transparency, attention to students’ security throughout their study sojourn, an emphasis on stability, and resilience to crises.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.