Rationalising the teaching intention of international postgraduate student lecturers

Abstract

Higher education students around the globe have continually searched for opportunities to further their education abroad, looking beyond the provisions of their home country in pursuit of quality education. Most of these students are either tutors, teaching assistants, or in lecturing roles within the university environment. Using a qualitative case-study approach, this paper investigates the teaching intention of international postgraduate student lecturers at a university in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This is in a bid to understand why these students choose to become involved in the teaching and learning process as lecturers. Participants were purposefully selected from a sample population of registered international postgraduate students at the university; and these participants were chosen in an order which ensured representation. Semi-structured interviews and observation methods were used, and data generated were analysed using grounded analysis. Findings reveal that international postgraduate students in this university chose lecturing, owing to the financial preconditions of undertaking postgraduate studies, to improve their interpersonal, communication, and cross-cultural skills, and also owing to legal restrictions. This paper therefore concludes that these reasons are valid and recommend several ways of helping these student lecturers function both effectively and efficiently.