Page 25 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience

energy he or she devotes to the academic experience (Astin, 1999). The theory is based on five postulates:
1. “Involvement refers to the investment of physical and psychological energy in various objects”. The object may be generalized, such as the student experience, or specific, such as studying for a final exam.
2. “Regardless of its object, involvement occurs along a continuum; that is, different students manifest different degrees of involvement in a given object, and the same student manifests different degrees of involvement in different objects at different times”. In this way, a student’s involvement may change over the course of their time in the program.
3. “Involvement has both quantitative and qualitative features. The extent of a student’s involvement in academic work, for instance, can be measured quantitatively (how many hours the student spends studying) and qualitatively (whether the student reviews and comprehends reading assignments or simply stares at the textbook and daydreams)”.
4. “The amount of student learning and personal development associated with any educational program is directly proportional to the quality and quantity of student involvement in that program. The energy invested into an activity or task will produce proportioned results”.
5. “The effectiveness of any educational policy or practice is directly related to the capacity of that policy or practice to increase student involvement” (Astin, 1984; 1999, as cited in Streeter, 2011, p. 22).
All of these postulates contain assumptions that support the studies in this dissertation, which uses a student-centered lens to explore and understand student satisfaction. Particularly relevant to the research in this dissertation is Postulate 2, which states that student engagement occurs on a continuum that can change over the course
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General Introduction
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