First-year international undergraduate students?ǨѢ experiences of learning through inquiry

Abstract

Inquiry-based learning has become an increasingly prominent approach to teaching and learning in UK universities in recent years. However, there is little published research on international students?Ǩ?? experiences of learning through inquiry. This paper reports findings from analysis of interviews with six international first-year undergraduate students at a large research-intensive university in the UK. The students were taking a range of social science and arts programmes. The interviews focused on the students?Ǩ?? experiences and perceptions of learning at the university, with particular emphasis on learning through inquiry. The influence of epistemological beliefs, disciplinary pedagogies, and students?Ǩ?? national and language backgrounds is explored. Most of the international students (like their UK national counterparts in the wider study of which this forms part) had ?Ǩ?nformation-oriented?Ǩ?? conceptions and experiences of inquiry, focused on using inquiry to acquire existing knowledge rather than to create new knowledge. The authors suggest that the development of inclusive inquiry-based pedagogies will benefit from a perspective that recognises similarity as well as difference amongst international and UK-national students, and that there will be value in pedagogies that introduce ?Ǩ?iscovery-oriented?Ǩ?? inquiry pedagogies from the start of all students?Ǩ?? undergraduate careers.