Experiences of belonging: a comparative case study between China-domiciled and UK-domiciled HE students

The session sought to report findings from a recent study that investigated contributors to the persistent 10% awarding gap between UK and China domiciled students graduating from business and management subjects at UK higher education institutions (HEIs). (Crawford & Wang, 2015; Smith, 2020). It challenged the common assumption that Chinadomiciled students are academically disadvantaged by a ‘passive, unparticipative, and uncritical’ approach to learning (Lomer & Mittlemeier, 2021) and investigated the complex contributors to the gap, such as feelings of belonging. A sense of belonging is achieved for students when they feel accepted for who they are by their peers and the structures of the HEI. A secure sense of belonging sits at the heart of student attainment (Guyotte et al., 2019; Pedler et al., 2021). However, research suggests that China-domiciled students often find it more difficult to integrate into university culture than their European counterparts (Yu & Moskal, 2019). Four dimensions of belonging have been identified in the literature (Ahn & Davis, 2020). Some dimensions have a limited impact on each other, eg, social belonging tends not to affect academic belonging, whilst others have a profound impact e.g. physical surroundings (such as proximity to campus) and academic belonging (Bartolic et al., 2022). The various, independent and interconnected dimensions of belonging, combined with its fluctuating nature (Strayhorn, 2018), add to the complexity of the experience being investigated. The Covid-19 pandemic created unprecedented changes to student belonging. Disrupting the daily life of HE practice (Graham, 2020), and students’ physical sense of belonging (Gravett & Ajjawi, 2021), resulting in a focus on online belonging (Chang et al., 2021), surfacing many pre-existing challenges to establishing belonging in a diverse cohort.