This article critically reflects on research with international students in higher education and its preoccupation with documenting “experiences.” A substantial knowledge base already exists regarding broad and undefined student “experiences,” often resulting in repetitive findings. A move toward evaluating and evidencing structural practices, rather than individual experiences, is suggested as a possible remedy, urging scholars to (re)consider how our work can contribute toward deconstructing and addressing known challenges rather than continuing to document them.

Intensive research with international students has been around for three decades. This flourishing research area led us to publish the book Research with International Students: Critical Conceptual and Methodological Considerations, evaluating and critiquing existing research practices on this topic. Within this book, the subfield’s critical introspection was identified as an “ongoing conversation,” and this article reflects on where this conversation might go next.

There have now been thousands of articles published on this topic, and one challenge is what researchers can add to the significant foundational knowledge that already exists. One growing critique is that the subfield frequently produces repetitive findings, particularly through its widespread preoccupation with documenting “international students’ experiences.”

On the one hand, prioritizing “international students’ experiences” represents the subfield’s recent person-centered approach. Early research was often positivistic, frequently focusing on evaluating stress and coping mechanisms through psychological lenses. The growth in research which centers students’ voices has been a conscious shift away from extractive research which views international students as subjects to research on.

On the other hand, a collective preoccupation with documenting experiences is the subfield’s significant weakness. “Experiences” are often undefined and underconceptualized (as well-argued in Andrew Deuchar’s work), frequently too macro and vague in nature. The result has been predictable findings with key challenges exceptionally well-documented and largely unchanged for decades. There are, for example, hundreds of articles about international students experiencing challenges with language, encountering new academic practices, racism and xenophobia, developing supportive peer networks, and so on. For more than 30 years, research has often identified recurring phenomena, albeit situated within different contexts and subpopulations.

Cycles of Repetitive Research

Research with international students is too often an ongoing cycle of similar arguments repeatedly rediscovered and repackaged as new and innovative. This persistent focus on “experiences” is frequently framed as a research gap—“no one has ever documented the experiences of subpopulation X in context Y”—despite later presenting findings which mostly align with existing knowledge: struggles and challenges with the same repetitive issues, limited spaces for enacting agency, and a need for more support.

A major question then is not how can we ensure that more experiences are documented, but rather how can we dismantle the inequalities and injustices our work repeatedly uncovers? Documenting experiences has been a valuable starting point, particularly as many critical issues have been historically ignored in practice, but we are unlikely to dismantle inequalities by naming them alone. The subfield needs something more—or else we will find ourselves in 10 more years making the same arguments about how existing structures are unjust.

Therefore, a shift in research agendas is required: away from stagnant documentation toward evaluating evidence-based approaches to transform existing practices and structures. This means a renewed focus on specific and named practices to move from mere documentation toward lasting and transformative change. A challenge I raise to the subfield: if we have decades of research recognizing that problems exist, what are we going to do about them?

Key Research Directions for the Future

A starting point is embedding greater diversity in what we choose to research, supplementing work embedding students’ voices to also center the people and processes which perpetuate their unequal experiences. This means renewed evaluation of specific structures: the policies, pedagogies, curricula, extracurricular spaces, support structures, and other spaces where unfairness subsists. For example, it is not enough to state that international students experience challenges with language; we need to shift toward interrogating the specific structures which render their existing linguistic resources invisible and fail to support their transition into a new language environment. A stronger research subfield is one which evaluates named structural inequities, rather than labelling individual deficiencies.

A shift toward practice also enables researchers to build evidence for actions which enact change by creating demonstrable impact on students’ outcomes and experiences. At present, existing research on evidence-based practices is limited in scope, often evaluated within a single context, and frequently centered on researchers’ own classrooms. This piecemeal approach to evidence creation means that there are severe limitations for creating an overarching understanding of what works across contexts, disciplines, and settings. A more relational approach to research is needed, through ambitious cross-contextual, interdisciplinary, and international collaborations that interrogate structures and practices.

Altogether, the subfield is presently at a crossroads, and decades of existing research should leave us questioning: What comes next? How can we move from a field preoccupied with repetitive findings about broad “experiences” toward one that enables specific transformative practices around the problems we already know exist?

Jenna Mittelmeier is senior lecturer in international education at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected].