Yang Xuan

Profile

Background

I completed both my bachelor degree and master degree in Yunnan University in China. My major is Public Administration Management (undergraduate) and Education Economics and Management (postgraduate). I worked in Kunming University of science and technology from 2007 to 2017. My position was an admin officer in the Teaching and Administration Office in the City College of this university. I was in charge of arrangement of all the teaching curriculums and revising of education plans related to business majors. I had also been an admin officer in the Department of Career and Employment Office in our university for 3 years before I worked in City College. My main responsibilities are to build and keep cooperation relationships between employers and our university and to provide undergraduates with career guidance.

What motivated me to undertake PhD study?

Both my passion and career are around teaching and researching in a university. By doing a PhD, I am supposed to get various personal growth:

1) I will study systematic research methodologies which is critical to cultivate more holistic, reasonable and logical thinking ways in researching work.

2) I have a chance to further explore a research topic which is not only meaningful in the academic aspect but also attractive for myself. Through the process of writing my PhD thesis, I will get better understanding to my topic, and will get the integrated practical experience which is from how to identified a research question to how to clear my opinions toward this question; from what should be known relating to the topic to how to organize resources in both knowledge and methods in order to work out the ways to the research question.

3) The most important is the academic atmosphere where not only am I directed and advanced by supervisors but also I communicate with other PhD students frequently. The supervisors, classmates and colleagues who have different backgrounds is a kind of powerful social relationship which considerably enhances my research competence by various tutorials, seminars, meetings, and even informal daily discussions.

What makes me passionate about my subject?

My research interest comes from working experience. I am always curious about the nature of higher education which significantly contributes to students’ personal development. As a lecturer who works in a Chinese university, I have gotten a plenty of chances to get access to undergraduates who hold a strong willing of successful future. Getting an academic degree from a higher educational organization is the most possible social lander for Chinese youngsters coming from unprivileged families. A great portion of these youngsters and their families devote much time and money in education on one hand. On the other hand, Chinese universities are always trying to provide qualified courses to the students with the purpose of facilitating them to be successful in their careers.  I am searching for the relationships between peoples’ experience in higher education and their personal growth. I try to work out what the exact functions of the different portions (curriculums, cultivation plans, major designs, directions from teaching staff, campus cultures, and social relationships) in the higher education system are and how they are applied to realize the youngsters’ development. The further exploring will be around how to enhance the effects of higher education products for the students’ personal development.

What are my plans once I have completed my PhD?

I will continue my researching and teaching in a higher educational organization after I complete PhD. The group of students as a portion of high education system is my focus. I will explore continually the policies and management in higher education which play roles on the provision of education to the students. 

Research interests

Submission Date: October 2021

My research topic is about the changes in the competence of the Chinese students who participate in a co-operation higher education program. This is a process-oriented research rather than outcome-oriented research, which means the research focuses on the integrated abroad experiences of students who study in a university in the UK. The research will explore the threshold experiences in the students’ abroad lives, during which students themselves realize their changes after they struggle with the difficulties in a foreign environment. These threshold moments happen companying with a sense of inner recognition which is that the students interact with new context successfully. The research try to indicate what kinds of new attitudes, skills, and knowledges are gotten to make students themselves achieve personal growth during their study abroad.

The research will answer the following sub-topics in order to explain the main topic:

1) What the expectations are hold by the students, their parents and staff in the co-operate program toward students’ studying abroad.

2) What the students’ experience are in terms of their in-campus and off-campus lives, including the difficulties and the approaches they used to solve the difficulties.

3) What kinds of threshold experiences have been recognized by the students when they overcome the difficulties and stress from the new environment, including their competence changes.