Life around and beyond study: Chinese students’ voices on their experience in New Zealand

Student satisfaction plays a crucial role in the education and experience of international students and in ensuring a thriving export education industry. While research in this area has been growing over the last thirty years in general, few studies have specifically explored Chinese students’ experience in New Zealand, and fewer have included their life beyond academic study. This presentation reports part of a wider study investigating international students’ satisfiers and dissatisfiers regarding New Zealand vocational education and focuses on voices of the Chinese group only. The study explored the experiences of international students in tertiary vocational training in NZ. It adopted an interpretative paradigm and collected data through a narrative frame and a semi-structured interview. Data reported in this presentation derived from 55 participants who clearly stated their Chinese identity in the narrative frames and eighteen of these who agreed to the subsequent interviews, areas of their study ranging from language courses at various levels to mainstream programmes. The data reveals a diversity of contributors towards students’ satisfying/dissatisfying experiences, involving professionalism and personal attributes of the teaching staff within and outside the classroom, availability and quality of facilities and supporting services across the institution, and various personal interactions in the wider social-cultural New Zealand community. The presentation will conclude with practical implications for international students’ teaching and supporting staff and administrators of international education providers and public services, aiming for positive changes in the mutual interests of Chinese students and New Zealand international education market