An Analytical Summary of Strayhorn (2012)
In T.L. Strayhorn’s research, he explored the relationship between graduate student’s socialization and their sense of belonging, and the correlation between sense of belonging and academic success. As the author found, much of current writings mainly focus on undergraduate students instead of graduate students, however, graduate student plays an important role in knowledge production (p.90). Due to know little about graduate students’ academic experiences and motivations and unfamiliar with the function that sense of belonging plays out for graduate students, the author wants to explain and demonstrate the relationship between socialization and sense of belonging of graduate students, to recognize vital implications to further studies that about policy and theory, and to offer specific strategies to facilitate the sense of belongings of graduate students (p.90-93). To contribute to existing knowledge, Strayhorn (2012) concluded that, by introducing “promotional materials, orientation programs and skill-building workshops” to expound the prevailing standards of professional field to graduate students; advising graduate students to know about their requirements of degrees; providing valuable chances for graduate students to contact with equals, staff and faculty members in an informal situation; and praising achievements of graduate students, departments and educators will help graduate students change their status effectively, which is “transforming them from ‘outsiders’ into ‘insiders’” (p.103-104).
Focused Analysis of sense of belonging
Several concepts are studied by Strayhorn (2012) including graduate student socialization, sense of belonging, the relationship between socialization and sense of belonging, and the relationship between sense of belonging and success. In the author’s study, a lot of terms have been used to describe the graduate students’ socialization, and many sources have demonstrated this socialization, which makes the concept much clear to audience. Firstly, through the definition from Boyle& Boice (1998), graduate student socialization is the process that helping graduate students familiar with the requirements such as values, norms and member behaviors of their own fields. Namely, graduate students can benefit from the socialization since it is an important way to help them understanding their majors before they start their courses. Secondly, some key terms further explain this concept simultaneously: the process by which (p. 97). Through these key terms we can found that graduate students’ socialization is a process, a process that students needed for their disciplines. Accordingly, these key terms emphasized the importance of this process and gave more detailed information for graduate students. Thus, ones who want to obtain discipline knowledge and know the requirements of specific fields should be step into this process to contact
Language Pattern
Throughout this whole article, Strayhorn (2012) used a lot of citations from other scholars to illustrate, authorize, borrow or extend viewpoints that the author wants to put forward. After read the whole article, we can found that there has 16 times of paraphrases, however, the number of direct quotes is only 2. To be specific, for graduate students, when quoting, we actually want to choose those few words that will best support our arguments and help our readers make sense of what we are trying to say. . If I am the writer, paraphrasing will help my audience get my point of view accurately. If I am the reader, paraphrasing will help me understand the material more precisely. In other words, when we paraphrasing, it means we are totally understanding the meaning of references that we borrowed and we can add our subjective points of view into that references. In addition, the emphasis of direct quotation and paraphrase is different. The author’s usage of paraphrase and direct quotation suggests that the goal in an essay is to use the quotation only as evidence, but the goal of paraphrase is help us build our research and support our arguments.
As we know, not every cited source is equally important in a text. Sometimes when author uses direct quotation from other scholars, it means this information is authoritative that helps the author’s point of view convincing. When author paraphrase the sentences, it means the author wants to further explain the material that he cited and make his or her arguments more clearly. Browsing the references page, we can see that over seven scholars’ research were used three times or more. These writers’ studies are the main source of present article. For example,
- the two sources that are cited the most in the text: Astin, A. W. (1984) and Kuh, G. d. (1993).
- the two sources that are cited in the most major sections: Maslow (1962) and LaPidus (1997).
Connections to previous readings
The purpose of Strayhorn’s (2012) research is to explore the relationship between graduate student socialization and sense of belonging and the relationship between sense of belonging and success. The concept of graduate student socialization got me thinking about De Araujo’s (2011) study of international students and Philips’s (2014) research of Chozin, an international student that has obstacles with academic writings and his success. Like Strayhorn, De Araujo used the key concept of social support to describe the situation that the international students get help from peers and faculties while Phillips used the same concept to depicted the help that Chozin obtained. This key concept has the same meaning as the graduate student socialization of Strayhorn’s article, which aims to help students get the help that they need during academic lives. But Strayhorn’s article mainly focus on promoting students’ sense of belonging. Also, De Araujo study on the adjustment issues that international students faced, Phillips focus on an Indonesian student in his master’s program to study how he get success and Strayhorn demonstrates graduate student socialization leads to sense of belonging, which, in turn, results in student success. All of them are concentrating on the academic success of international graduate students. However, the strategies of each research for graduate students’ academic success is different.