The Perceived Effect of Intercultural Awareness on Peer Interaction: A Study of a British University
Author(s):
Ming Cheng (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
22. Research in Higher Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

22 SES 02 A,

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-22
15:15-16:45
Room:
K5.04
Chair:
Colin McCaig

Contribution

The development of intercultural awareness is a major factor that motivates many international students to study abroad (Altbach and Knight 2007), but the level of intercultural awareness on many international campuses appears as generally low (Hayward 2000). This paper therefore investigates the impact of intercultural awareness on postgraduate taught students’ experience of peer interaction. Chinese students and their non-Chinese peers at a British university are selected for the study to explore and compare whether their peer interaction is affected by their understandings of different cultures and different approaches to learning.

The paper considers that there are increasing calls for intercultural awareness in higher education (Trius and Shyryaeva 2013), with a general agreement on the need to include an intercultural dimension in university strategies and practices of internationalisation (Crichton and Scarino 2011). However, efforts to assess the development of student intercultural awareness have been anecdotal (Black and Duhon 2006). The implementation of effective strategies to achieve intercultural awareness has not been met sufficiently in many English speaking universities (Tian and Lowe 2009).

Using the model of intercultural awareness proposed by Baker (2011) as a framework, this paper explores how Chinese postgraduate taught students interact with their non-Chinese peers in the classroom and whether peer interaction has been affected by students’ understandings of different cultures and approaches to learning. Intercultural awareness here refers to the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to communicate in diverse cultural contexts. Baker’s (2011) model incorporates three levels of development, moving from basic cultural awareness to advanced cultural awareness and finally intercultural awareness.

Chinese postgraduate taught students and their peers in a British university are selected for study because they have only one year to acclimatise to a new culture and educational objectives and because there is an increasing number of Chinese students studying in the UK and their experience of acculturation remains issues to be solved (Wu & Hammond 2011).

 

Method

This research involves semi-structured interviews with 33 Chinese postgraduate taught students and 16 peers from non-Chinese backgrounds at a British university. The student interviewees are from engineering and business studies, because these are popular subject areas among Chinese students (HEFCE 2014). A theoretical sampling approach (Punch 2013) is used to select these interviewees. Gender, age, and cultural background are considered. Research ethics approval was carefully sought and granted before the data collection. NVivo software and thematic analysis (Boyatzis 1998) were used to analyze the interview data, in order to ensure that the data was analysed in a rigorous and transparent manner (Cresswell 2013). Two research questions are explored in this project: • How do postgraduate taught students experience peer interaction at British universities? • How have postgraduate taught students’ experiences of peer interaction been affected by their intercultural awareness?

Expected Outcomes

Chinese students were commonly described as quiet in the classroom. Many interviewees referred to cultural influences as they sought to explain this quieter behaviour. This demonstrates the basic cultural awareness described by Baker (2011, 203). Many interviewees, especially those from Asia, point out that Chinese students engage in active learning through other means, such as through discussing work with academic staff or friends in private or via email. They identify that active learning might be realised in different ways, going beyond classroom interaction. This suggests an advanced cultural awareness that cultural understandings can be fluid, and open to change. Group work was an area in which interviewees observed differences in cultural understandings and practices, which sometimes led to tensions within the group. A key concern held by Chinese interviewees was that although they could start a conversation with local students, it was challenging to develop strong connections. This suggests that students from different cultural background try explicitly to ‘negotiate and mediate’ between different cultural practices (Baker, 2011). This attempt at mediation is not successful, but heir attempts to explain and negotiate these boundaries suggest a ‘work-in-progress’ form of intercultural awareness. To summarize, most interviewees' accounts of their own experience and culture-related behaviours, together with their awareness of other cultures, is a strong indication of basic and advanced cultural awareness. However, student interviewees encounter considerable barriers when attempting 'to mediate and negotiate between cultural frames of reference and communication modes' (Baker, 2011, 205) in practice. This suggests that the university needs to achieve greater clarity in their agenda to increase intercultural awareness on campus in order to provide students with truly international learning experiences. Universities need to move beyond recruiting international students and bringing students together in a classroom, towards encouraging practices that foster a genuine international learning environment.

References

Altbach, P. G., and Knight, J. (2007). "The internationalization of higher education: Motivations and realities." Journal of studies in international education, 11(3-4), 290-305. Baker, W. (2011). "Intercultural awareness: modelling an understanding of cultures in intercultural communication through English as a lingua franca." Language and Intercultural Communication, 11(3), 197-214. Black, H. T., and Duhon, D. L. (2006). "Assessing the impact of business study abroad programs on cultural awareness and personal development." Journal of Education for Business, 81(3), 140-144. Boyatzis, R. E. (1998). Transforming qualitative information: Thematic analysis and code development, Thousand Oaks, London, & New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Cresswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches (3rd ed). London: Sage. Crichton, J., and Scarino, A. (2011). "How are we to understand the ‘intercultural dimension’? An examination of the intercultural dimension of internationalisation in the context of higher education in Australia." Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 30(1), 04.1 – 04.21. Hayward, F. M. (2000). "Internationalization of US Higher Education. Preliminary Status Report, 2000." Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education. Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (2014) Decline in global demand for English higher education. http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news86922.html. Accessed on 10 October 2015 Punch, K. F. (2013). (3rd Eds). Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. London: Sage. Tian, M., and Lowe, J. (2009). "Existentialist internationalisation and the Chinese student experience in English universities." Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 39(5), 659-676. Trius, L., and Shyryaeva, T. (2013). "A Call for Cultural Awareness and Tolerance in Higher Education. The Case of Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University, North Caucasus, Russia." Revista de Cercetare şi Intervenţie Socială(43), 255-265. Wu, W. & Hammond, M. (2011). Challenges of university adjustment in the UK: A study of East Asian Master’s degree students. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 35(3), 423-438.

Author Information

Ming Cheng (presenting / submitting)
University of East Anglia
School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Norwich

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