Topic & Objective:

By investigating the intercultural engagement of Chinese students in the UK as well as the ‘reverse cultural shock’ experienced by students who return to China after studying in the UK, this research identifies learning and social activities that effectively help students engage in intercultural communication and navigate the challenges these may cause, as well as their reflections of the culture of origin as former international students.

Research questions: 

1. What intercultural communicative strategies do Chinese students adopt to deal with communicative difficulties in the UK? 

 2. What do returnee Chinese students think of Chinese culture through intercultural communication practices in the UK after moving back to China? 

Theoretical framework:

This study adopts and blends a social constructivism alongside theand interpretivistm paradigm to guide the methodology due to the way I understand the social issues and the main concerns of this study. Social constructivism views cultural knowledge not as an object to be acquired but to be collectively identified, represented and interpreted through individuals’ experience and communication (Guilherme, 2002). From a constructivist perspective, knowledge is constructed by existing structures of foundation, that is human’s beliefs about realities through social interaction (Hollandar & Gordon, 2006), and influenced by the culture in a specific context and by personal reflections of experiences. Besides, In social constructivism, the world is interpreted through language and culture. That is, the world and its elements inside are not seen only as social constructions, but full of meanings made by ‘crucial participants’ (Crotty, 1998). Consequently, I am mainly interested in investigating human’s subjective understanding of the interrelations of cultures, strategies to handle cultural shock and how their knowledge and reactions to their culture of origin have been co-constructed and interpreted among all social elements. 

Conceptual framework:

According to Bourdieu (1986), an individual’s cultural taste is related to acts of social positioning, so their preference for social practice is somehow decided by their social  belonging and personal experience, reconciling with external social structures. That suggests if a human’s identity has been changed due to their social status, their choice of social behaviour will change. Besides, an individual’s prior knowledge has also an impact no matter how a human’s social identity changes. Cobern (1993) states that individual’s prior conceptions and self-positioning contribute significantly to their understanding of social events. When human’s new gaining of social beliefs contradicts with their prior knowledge, the decision has to be made whether to keep one side or abandon the other or objectively criticise both and choose the appropriate ones from both sides. Another thing that has to be noted is that humans’ ongoing learning experiences and social and physical milieu have an impact on their previous knowledge, which may be consistent, or against, or even fill in the gaps of ‘knowing’. This interchange of social impacts contributes to creating a different understanding of culture and interculturality, and also it keeps changing with the ongoing process. 

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is regarded as an ability to communicate and interaction across cultures (Byram, 2012). As competence is a subjective term, since it depends on people’s personality, life experience, attitudes, learning styles, etc., the definition of ICC in academia is contested. Many studies focus on individuals, and regard ICC as an internal capacity of an individual. For example, Byram (ibid.) regards ICC as a set of intercultural skills (to interpret, relate, discover, and interact), knowledge about culture and interaction, attitudes and self-awareness of different cultures and education about critical issues in the host culture.. Among all ICC models, Byram’s (ibid) is the most recognised which divided IC competence into knowledge, skills, attitudes and awareness.

This project will collect ethnographic data from 35 Chinese students over a period of one year through a multiple-method approach: participant-led photography, ‘photo interviews’, researcher’s reflective journal and an online photo ‘exhibition’. The reasons for choosing the above methods are the following: Participant-led photography - This method uses images as data to provide participants’ subjective understanding that record the real situations on-site which reflects the real situation (Norman, 1991) that include the details of how Chinese students react to intercultural encounters; Second, it allows to handle control and freedom of data selection to participants which enhances their engagement (Richards, 2011). This is an essential quality of a method for capturing participants’ inner feelings and self reflections which are not often open to the public. ‘Photo interviews’ -This method can increase interviewees’ engagement through the visual data and offer a closer insight to what is considered important for interviewees, because visual data can facilitate longer and more comprehensive communication due to less fatigue and repetition (Shaw, 2021). Considering the main goal of this project is to gather data from participants’ descriptions of their intercultural understanding and social practices, photo interviews build trust between the interviewer and interviewees, help participants expand their views through follow-up questions and produce more in-depth data for the researcher (Li & Xie, 2020). Researcher’s reflective journal - This method during data collections is significant as it is useful develop my critical thinking, reflective, analytical ability by comparing the views between my own and research subjects, which may influence my interpretation of visual data as a researcher. The main purpose is to deal with the complexities of various data and make connections between disparate sets of information, and contribute to new perspectives being taken on issues (Jasper, 2005). Online photo ‘exhibition’ - The ‘exhibition’ will be only open for participants and organised at the end of the data collection process on an online password protected platform (e.g. Padlet) for a week. Participants are invited to choose two images of what they have taken that best represent their understanding of briefs to be displayed and all participants will be free to make comments on the images and common experiences sharing. This method allows each participant to reflect on images taken by other students and has the potential to lead to a rise of intercultural awareness and greater in-depth Chinese cultural reflections that address research questions of this project.

This presentation demonstrates Chinese students’ reflections on some intercultural activities which they were part of during and after their study in the UK, looking at the development of their knowledge, awareness, skills and critical looking back on their intercultural encounters. Suggested by the cultural adjustment theory, this presentation follows three stages: honeymoon, struggling and positioning through self-reflection. Findings show that students have gone through the excitement to the new environment, and suffering from more intensive cultural shock and ended up with the locating their own position in the complex intercultural world, either being open to adapt to the new culture or staying closer to the culture of origin. There is also a trend for a few returnee students that they have to reduce their intercultural characteristics to adjust to the dominant culture in locality since the local environment does not respond actively to international returnees. Regardless of student actions, students' choices for intercultural experiences demonstrate the unequal social forces of subordinate and dominant cultures in societies where international students drift and wander as cultural sojourners. The significance of this project is twofold: it will aid UK educational institutions to support the intercultural interactions of Chinese students; it will also on enhance returnee students’ awareness of cultural and communicative differences after studying in the UK and help prevent ‘return culture shock’ upon their return to China. Moreover, European higher educational institutions can also benefit from its implication. European higher education institutions need to consider the issue of how to integrate international students into the host culture because they serve as a significant hub for students from all over the world. The integration of international students and consideration of their needs are of great importance for maintaining an environment of institutional diversity in higher education.

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