The Effect Of Academic Engagement On Meaning-making Development Among Internaional Undergraduate Students

Against the backdrop of internationalization in higher education,international students in China have expanded in volume and scope in recent years,while the quality of education for international students has been largely neglected.Student engagement is one of the important indicators to measure the quality of education.However,there are few studies on student engagement of international students in China.The purpose of this study is to investigate student engagement and meaningmaking development among undergraduate international students in China and to explore the relationship between the concepts.Engagement was comprised of two parts: the effort student devoted to educationally purposeful activities and the support service of the institution.There are three dimensions in individual engagement,including behavioral engagement,cognitive engagement and affective engagement.Institution engagement includes teacher-student relationship,student-student relationship and institution support.This study employed the Pyramid Model of College Students Growth as the theoretical framework and used the mixed method design.Quantitative data were collected through a selfreported questionnaire from 202 international undergraduate students at a research university in Shanghai.Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with a number of survey respondents.The findings show that there are differences within the behavior,cognitive,affective engagement.Compared with Chinse language learning and cocurricular activities,international students spent more time in academic study.Among the higher-order cognitive learning strategies,“understanding facts,concepts and ideas” was the most frequently used.In the dimension of affective engagement,international students displayed the highest level of engagement in terms of dedication.Much improvement is needed in faculty-student relationship,student-student interaction and supportive campus environment.The constants under the theme were positively interrelated except for peer relationship.Student engagement has positive effect on overall meaning-making development.Implications for individual students and higher education institutions are discussed.