Becoming a second language teacher: developing graduate attributes in an international landscape of academic and professional practices

Knox, Lindsay (2023) Becoming a second language teacher: developing graduate attributes in an international landscape of academic and professional practices. Ed.D thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Higher Education Institutes in the twenty-first century find themselves subject to global economic forces which have reoriented the purpose of a tertiary education towards employment, with an objective of producing graduates to meet the demands of the workplace. Central to this, graduate attribute frameworks set out each institution’s version of the skill set which the employable graduate should possess. However, these idealised visions may often fail to adequately account for the diversity of the student body and their applicability to their future employment contexts is questionable. Where international students are enrolled on vocationally oriented postgraduate programmes, it is unclear what such frameworks may mean for them.

Drawing on phenomenographic interviews with twenty international students from a Second Language Teacher Education programme at a Scottish university, this study shows that there is limited alignment between the student and institutional conceptualisation of graduate attributes. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the students’ development of any such attributes is both constrained and enabled by the navigation and membership of a complex landscape of both academic and professional communities of practice.

• Item Type: Thesis (Ed.D)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Graduate attributes, higher education, internationalisation, international students, language teacher education, language teaching.
• Subjects: L Education > LC Special aspects of education
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Supervisor's Name: Slade, Professor Bonnie and Hedge, Professor Nicki
• Date of Award: 2023
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2023-83508
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 28 Mar 2023 10:31
• Last Modified: 28 Mar 2023 10:58
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.83508
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/83508