College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item A Social Cognitive Approach to Coping with Acculturative Stress in International Students(2015) Ezeofor, Ijeoma; Lent, Robert W; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study employed a cross-sectional design to test a model of coping with acculturative stress in an international student sample. Drawing from Lent’s (2004) social cognitive model of restorative well-being, several direct and mediated paths were hypothesized to predict (negatively) acculturative stress and (positively) life satisfaction. Behavioral acculturation and behavioral enculturation (Kim & Omizo, 2006) were also examined as predictors of coping with acculturative stress among international students. Using a self-report survey, participants’ ratings of acculturative stress, life satisfaction, social support, behavioral acculturation, behavioral enculturation, and coping self-efficacy were assessed. The results revealed that the variables of the model explained 16% of the variance in acculturative stress and 27% of the variance in life satisfaction. A final model, including the use of modification indices, provided good fit to the data. Findings also suggested that coping self-efficacy was a direct predictor of acculturative stress, and that behavioral acculturation and coping self-efficacy were direct predictors of students’ life satisfaction. Limitations, future research, and practical implications are discussed.Item Grounded Identities, Transient Lives: The Emergence of Student Voices in an Era of Globalization(2008-11-20) Gargano, Terra; Finkelstein, Barbara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study offers a rare glimpse into the histories, images, and meanings that inform the experiences of six international degree-seeking undergraduate students at the University of Maryland College Park in the spring of 2007. Specifically, the design and content of this study centers around the recovery of student voices as a way to understand the limitations and possibilities of international education policies and practices. The experiences of these six students in many ways challenge the understanding and categorization of a traditional international student. Focusing almost exclusively on nationality as an organizing agent and bereft of significant and robust concepts that bring into view the content of international student sense-making, international education discourses neglect to explore the complexity and range of meanings students ascribe to educational sojourns, thereby resulting in a series of undocumented generalizations made about students. This study reveals that these twenty-first century students are experienced border crossers with very complex identities. These students engage in diverse constructions of meaning as they negotiate the boundaries of geography and mind that are inherent aspects of crossing borders. The perspectives of these contemporary students suggest the need for a foundational rethinking of the assumptions that ground the international education literature and a reconceptualization of the entire apparatus of thinking about educational sojourns. Through an analysis of how student participation in transnational spaces influenced pathways to the university, how students negotiated identities as international students, and how students envisioned futures, it becomes evident that a new kind of international student is emerging.