An inquiry into the study of visual communication by international asian students within the context of an Australian university

Extant bodies of research identify the dilemmas encountered by, and adaptive strategies ofinternational Asian students (IAS) undertaking second language undergraduate study. Howeverno substantive research has explored the existence of subject specific dilemmas that suchstudents encounter in the study of design within a western setting. Doctoral work exploringdesign education is rare. This study addresses the gap in the research record by investigatingthe specifics of the study of visual communication by IAS attending an Australian university.Through the voices of the IAS and academics, the specific nature of the manifestation,understanding and misunderstanding of such dilemmas is explored. Together with theinvestigation of visual communication, the author discloses the nature of perception andmisconception between a group of design academics and a cohort of IAS.The study uses complementary methodologies, synthesising quantitative and qualitativedata. The study's statistical data was generated from 460 first and second year student surveys.This was undertaken over a three-year period, with resultant data sub-categorised to enable arepresentation of the IAS to emerge through identification of their particular motivations,expectations and actualisation of dilemmas within the context of the wider undergraduatecohort.The author develops and utilises an explanatory framework after Pierre Bourdieu, to analysedata emanating from interviews with multiple participants of an established population ofacademics and IAS. She explores the perceptions of their realities and the construction of theirrepresentations, as located through both their convergence and divergence.The study's paradigm is constructed by the field of design, as an objective world and site ofthe inquiry. Viewing the study's data through this conceptual framework, the author constructs arepresentation of the field and educational site using socio-cultural structures and thepopulations' multiple realities. The study reports on the layers and contradictions ofcommunication, miscommunication, myth and fiction, constructed through the educational field.This is further interrogated to reveal the arbitrary structure of the field, its pedagogy and creationof its internal logic by which the field is perpetuated and student performances reproduced.The outcomes of the investigation include a detailed identification of lA design students'disclosures of the dilemmas of expectation versus experience, and the systematicmisperception of paradoxes within the pedagogy of visual communication, presented asconvergent and divergent expectations of the IAS and academics