Self-authorship development in Chinese college students: a grounded theory approach

Chinese higher education institutions would be more effective in assisting college graduates to meet the requirements of an increasingly complex society if they had a better understanding of Chinese college student development. Self-authorship theory, which was initially developed for use in the USA, is relevant to contemporary Chinese society's college graduate expectations. However, due to possible limitations on the application of this theory to different cultures, it is necessary to examine Chinese college students' self-authorship development rather than presuming there is a similarity to US students. In this study, we used a grounded theory approach to explore the self-authorship development in Chinese college students. Using purposeful and theoretical sampling, we asked 13 junior and senior college students to share their significant college experiences, after which we conducted a constant comparative analysis. We found that while Chinese college students developed self-authorship during their undergraduate college years, they did not achieve full self-authorship by graduation. While the overall patterns of development in the epistemological, interpersonal, and intrapersonal domains were similar to those found in US students, there were distinctive aspects in each domain that were specific to Chinese higher education. We used the students' narratives on their college experiences to illustrate their journeys toward self-authorship.