How postgraduate university students construct their identity as learners in a multicultural classroom

Abstract

This article considers the ways in which a group of postgraduate students position themselves in a multicultural classroom at one university in the UK. Research indicates that postgraduate students actively negotiate and renegotiate their learner identities and belonging in the context of higher education environments and develop new subject positions. The study examines students’ constructions of their own identities as learners and considers their changing identities from the perspective of agency. Our data collected from focus groups and one-to-one interviews with students prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, comprise a large proportion of non-UK/EU students, amongst whom Chinese students are the single largest constituency. Findings show that students’ experience of learning is constitutive of the identification work they do during lectures and group-work to position themselves as participants of HE, and in the process, practice othering of students belonging to non-traditional participants in UK higher education.