Discourse Analysis of the New Colombo Plan funded Australian Outbound Student Mobility Programs

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the key aspects of Australian outbound student mobility programs (OSM), such as their benefits and obstacles through three different discourses. The study draws attention to three different emerging discourses of OSM between the academic literature, the policy and the Australian university students. In the context of OSM, the literature is examined as the first emerging discourse. The recent Australian government policy, The New Colombo Plan is examined as the second discourse. The third discourse, which is Australian university students’ perspectives, is offered to the emerging discourses in this study as it seems majorly missing from the Australian higher education mobility literature (Arden, Manathunga, & Bottrell, 2017). The research has employed qualitative data and data analysis has already been conducted for this thesis. In the following, what theories, methods and techniques have been utilized for the thesis are reported. However, this paper only presents one aspect of the research in detail.