Representing the Experiences of University Student Engagement and Wellbeing in Australia: A Culturally Meaningful Model

The wellbeing of university students is paramount in their flourishing. In Australia, the shift to encompass blended learning post-pandemic has attracted students from various cultural backgrounds, due to increased accessibility and flexible learning modes. Current models of tertiary student wellbeing cater towards the majority, where culturally underrepresented students and their needs remain absent from standard university practices. Consequently, student perspectives are required to guide how university practices can best support student engagement and wellbeing in a culturally meaningful way. A mixed-methods approach included a quantitative study (Chapter 5; Study 1) that developed a general model of student wellbeing. Following, a separate qualitative study (Chapter 6; Study 2) sought the perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Asian international students from various institutes and year levels, regarding their perceptions of wellbeing and engagement. Study 1 encompassed 384 university students across Australia from multiple degrees, universities and year levels, who responded to an online anonymous survey including Likert scales and open-ended questions. Scales were representative of transformational teaching, sense of belonging, motivation, wellbeing, distress and engagement, defined in Chapter 1, 2 and 3. Open ended questions were included to provide students the opportunity to define wellbeing and engagement from their own perspectives, analysed by latent content analysis. Combined structural equation modelling and latent content analysis findings from Study 1 proposed that transformational teaching, a student-centered approach designed to promote mastery of course content and meaningful changes in students’ attitudes, beliefs, and learning skills (Slavich & Zimbardo, 2012), could foster students' sense of belonging in feeling they were an accepted and valued member of a group or environment (Allen et al., 2021), which in turn, affected their emotional, behavioural and cognitive engagement, their internal drive to engage in academic learning for its own sake out of genuine interest or enjoyment (intrinsic motivation) rather than for external rewards or pressures (Ryan & Deci, 2000). These factors were proposed to influence their wellbeing, where to flourish in the context of student wellbeing, included functioning optimally in terms of psychological, emotional, and social health, experiencing positive relationships, engagement, meaning, and accomplishment (Kern et al., 2015). Further, in combination with the latent content analysis and the statistical model, amotivation, the absence of motivation to act, marked by a lack of intention and perceived control over outcomes (Deci & Ryan, 2000), was predictive of student distress; the experience of significant psychological discomfort, such as anxiety or depression, during university studies (Sharp & Theiler, 2018). Latent content analysis of open-ended questions revealed a significant contribution to existing literature (Kahu & Nelson, 2018) that students defined engagement as both studying, and a novel conception of social engagement. Social engagement comprised the ability to establish social connections with others during class and academic activities. The implications of Study 1 proposed a conceptual model encompassing content analysis, which suggested that transformational teaching in blended learning may foster a sense of belonging in student communities by increasing social engagement, which can increase a student’s intrinsic motivation and improve their wellbeing. Findings from Study 1 indicate the importance of sociocultural factors that contribute to general university student engagement and wellbeing. However, a key limitation included collecting data at one timepoint, where future research would benefit from exploring various timepoints across the semester, to capture variations in wellbeing and engagement. Furthermore, a majority of the sample included those who identified as Western, indicating the need for more culturally nuanced perspectives. For example, existing measures of wellbeing and engagement such as those used in Study 1, Chapter 4, may need to be re-examined and updated with direct student input, as relying solely on Western-based tools or outdated policies could overlook key aspects of student experiences (Falkenberg, 2014; Burke et al., 2022). Currently, higher education in Australia still requires culturally representative perspectives, as dominant Western values shape universities and marginalise the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students; their experiences need to be included alongside those of local Western students in conceptual models of student wellbeing and engagement (Trudgett & Franklin, 2011; Dudgeon, 2011; Roddy et al., 2017). Consequently, in Study 2, Chapter 5, it was important to determine how students from underrepresented cultural backgrounds defined their own experiences to develop a culturally meaningful conceptual model, whereby culturally meaningful refers to something that holds significance, relevance, or value within the context of a particular culture’s beliefs, traditions, and social norms (Trudgett & Franklin, 2011). Using interviews, a separate, independent qualitative study (Study 2) sought to understand how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and separately, international students, experienced wellbeing at university. Modified, constructivist grounded-theory established key themes independently for each group, finding a shared common theme between the two groups, that of sense of place. Therefore, findings indicated that overall, a sense of place was most important for the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Asian international students, in varying ways. Sense of place is the emotional and symbolic attachment people develop toward a specific location, shaped by personal experiences, cultural meanings, and social interactions within that environment (Scannell & Gifford, 2010). It was concluded that teachers could ‘create’ a sense of place through a teaching approach which encompassed mentoring, productive connectiveness and pedagogical care, discussed in Chapter 5. Barriers to placemaking included the contextual, broader systemic institutional racism that may perpetuate colonial norms and unintentionally displace students by othering, and propagating cultural load. Institutional action from a top-down and bottom-up approach was suggested to support placemaking, especially from the perspective of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, where pedagogical care was recognised as a valid aspect of teaching duties, to ensure staff have the resources to curate inclusive, transformational places of student belonging. Future research should incorporate international students with varied backgrounds, such as European or African, to address the limitation of the international sample background being those whose backgrounds may reflect cultural nuances from a specific region; Asia. In Chapter 6, the combined findings of both studies were integrated to represent of sense of place, identified by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Asian international students in Study 2, with the conceptual model built by latent content analysis and some structural equation modelling in Study 1. The integrated findings of both Study 1 and Study 2 presented in Chapter 6 suggest that transformational teaching could support students' sense of belonging, and therefore place, by creating a community classroom environment where students feel socially engaged and mentored. Implications include the necessity of student-staff connections and student collaborations within transformative, blended classrooms to establish a sense of place. Despite significant practical limitations, it is possible that with structural support, place-making initiatives could help address the needs of various university students in a more culturally meaningful way. If a sense of place is where students and transformational teachers have means to socially engage and feel they belong, then the wellbeing and engagement of higher education students in Australia can flourish.<p></p>