New international academic staffs in Higher Education usually make extra efforts in order to master the challenges encountered in their academic roles in the host countries. Even new home academic staffs usually require at last three years for themselves to establish their professional identities in HE in order to cope with two-way challenges in terms of developing pedagogies in their subject areas and developing an active research profile independently, taking teaching in the UK universities for example (Murray & Male, 2005). This suggests that new international academics may experience additional challenges as a process of acculturation teaching in foreign universities due to different expectations on educational practices derived from different cultural and educational traditions. Considerably, there is a growing international academics recruitment rate and interest, for example, full-time non-UK international academic staff worked in the UK constituted 27% of the whole academic appointments (Universities UK, 2012). It is important to recognize and understand what may be required in supporting and developing new international academic in their early years of academic experiences in host universities.

The current auto-ethnographical study provides an authentic perspective in illustrating my first-year teaching experiences and transition process as an international academic staff from a South-East Asian country, Taiwan, teaching in a small and new UK university. This research amplifies the awareness of the importance and need to research the knowledge of teaching experiences of international academic staff in an intercultural teaching environment, taking myself as an example. The purposes of the current study are 1) illustrating the experiences and challenges encountered during my first-year teaching practices as an ethnic Chinese international academic teaching in a UK university; 2) capturing this transition process in my experiences of teaching practices; and 3) reflecting on how challenges and teaching practices can be improved.  

Some educational conventions perceived as a norm in an Eastern educational context may not be seen as a norm in the Western context. Educational and philosophical traditions between the East and the West culture are substantially different from the perspectives of contracting the notions regarding Confucianism versus Socrates’, Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy (Kingston & Forland, 2008), and collectivism versus individualism. With the differences of the philosophical foundations varying in individuals’ beliefs and values between the Eastern and Western cultures and societies, expectations of being a good teacher (Cortazzi, et al., 2009), a good student and having a good learning environment (Turner & Acker, 2002) may also conflict for non-UK international academics, including ethnic Chinese academics who work in a UK university. It may then require additional efforts to resolve the conflicts for ethnic Chinese academic staff during their early stages of teaching experiences before they have accustomed themselves to the UK system.     

To bridge the gap of different expectations, non-UK international academics who teach in UK universities may need to make academic adjustments or academic acculturation in terms of adjusting their teaching styles and expectations to meet the expectations within the UK contexts (Hsieh, 2011). The journey of accommodating their traditional educational traditions to UK norms may involve a series of transitions and transformations in their academic identity and professional identity. The most significant challenges relating to teaching encountered by new international academics are probably the need for immediate academic adjustments into a different academic culture, different educational pedagogies and contentions in the educational institutions, let alone sociocultural adaptions, language competence, professional identity shift and other practical daily challenges, such as legal status relating to visa and residency (Hsieh, 2011). 

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