1 / 26

Tony Young & Alina Schartner Newcastle University, Uk For BAALICSIG Seminar,

Sojourner Adjustment, Adaptation and Performance and the Study of Inter/Cross-Cultural Communication. Tony Young & Alina Schartner Newcastle University, Uk For BAALICSIG Seminar, Edinburgh University, May 2014 Contact: tony.young@ncl.ac.uk alina.schartner@ncl.ac.uk.

melvina-hartnett
Download Presentation

Tony Young & Alina Schartner Newcastle University, Uk For BAALICSIG Seminar,

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Sojourner Adjustment, Adaptation and Performance and the Study of Inter/Cross-Cultural Communication. Tony Young & Alina Schartner Newcastle University, Uk For BAALICSIG Seminar, Edinburgh University, May 2014 Contact: tony.young@ncl.ac.uk alina.schartner@ncl.ac.uk

  2. Background: General • Increase in provision of intercultural (IC) /cross-cultural (CC) education/training for sojourners • Lack of research into its effects on participants (Littrell et al., 2006) • Evaluation largely confined to business sojourners (Berry et al., 2002) • Limited scope and weak design of evaluation work: • Pre-sojourn participant reaction measures do not assess effect on adjustment to new setting • Surveys do not indicate ‘bottom-line’ outcomes in improved performance or more successful adaptation(Morris and Robie, 2001)

  3. Background: Specific Sociocultural, psychological and academic adjustment and adaptation of ‘International’ students – towards an integrated theoretical model New temporal perspectives – pre-, in- and post-sojourn – work related to the trans-European CALPIU project http://calpiu.dk/ruc/Home.html Focus on the effects of cross/intercultural communication and effectiveness on adaptation and the lived experiences of adjustment

  4. Rationale for the study • Most training of short duration, limited scope, and delivered pre-sojourn(Littrell, et al., 2006) • Little research on impact of CC education on international Higher Education (HE) students’ adjustment and adaptation • BUT: student sojourners very worthy of focus - tested performance outcomes (i.e. assessment grades) distinguish them from other sojourner groups (Ward et al., 2001) • Academic adaptation as an important outcome (Spencer-Oatey and Xiong, 2006)

  5. Student sojourners Individuals undertaking a full programme of study outside of the country where they have received their prior education (UNESCO, 2010) Rapidly growing sub-segment of cross-cultural sojourners - around 4 million worldwide (OECD, 2012) Lot of interest in the nature of the international student experience - ‘Living abroad’ seen as transformative (Brown, 2009) BUT: little research on inter-relationship between CC education and sojourn outcomes (Young et al., 2013)

  6. Students of CCC/ICC • Unique sub-group of student sojourners, exposed to: • The experience of ‘living abroad’ • Long-term CC education as part of their sojourn • Study of CCC in HE is growing, especially in North America and Europe (Young and Sercombe, 2010) • Intercultural competence as an aim for staff and students (Sanderson, 2008) • Degree or part of a degree • However, whether/how the study of CCC makes a difference to adjustment and adaptation remains undetermined

  7. Adjustment & adaptation Adjustment Adaptation Dynamic processes involved in functioning in the new academic environment (Anderson, 1994) Outcomes of adjustive processes (Pitts, 2005) Academic Academic Adjustment to the demands of academic life including styles of teaching and learning at the host university (Ballard, 1987) Academic achievement on the degree

  8. Research Questions Does the study of CCC (/ICC...) make a difference to academic adaptation? What are the adjustment processes over time as experienced by students of CCC?

  9. Mixed methods design (1) Stage 1: quantitative analysis of academic performance of ‘international’ MA students (N = 680) over a five year period (2007-8 to 2011-12, inclusive) Academic adaptation of CCC students (N = 352) relative to a closely comparable group undertaking another degree (ALT, N = 328) Both degrees closely matched, apart from CC education focus Mean GPA for taught & research element, and degree Independent-samples t-tests

  10. Mixed methods design (2) Stage 2: qualitative data to obtain a fine-grained view of ‘lived’ experience of academic adjustment of a group of CCC students • Tracked a group longitudinally throughout their programme of study • Semi-structured individual interviews with a sample of 18 volunteers at three time stages: • Two weeks after arrival in the UK (T1, October) • Five months into the sojourn (T2, February) • Nine months into the sojourn (T3, June)

  11. Data analysis Thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) Comments sorted into four broad analytical categories

  12. Quantitative findings • CCC students performed significantly better than ALT students on: • The taught element of the programmes t(8) = 3.16, p = .013 • Their overall GPA for the programmes, t(8) = 2.04, p = .076 * significant at the 95% level; ^ significant at the 90% level

  13. Qualitative findings – T1 (1) • Comments largely anticipatory • Comparisons between home and host country • Comments positive, neutral or problematizing in orientation fairly evenly spread • ‘International’ make-up of course a focus for the positive • ‘I love being involved with international students.’ (German, female, 26) • ‘[…] I really like that it’s an international environment but also I would like that more British people would be in the programme. (Romanian, female, 22)

  14. Qualitative findings – T1 (2) • Problematizing comments about English language ability and ‘new’ academic practices • ‘[...] I have to listen to them and then have to translate it in my brain to my language and kind of just twice as hard as studying in my country.’ (Indonesian, female, 28) • ‘[...] almost like I have to make class for myself in the library or in my room with reading.’ (USA, male, 23)

  15. Qualitative findings – T2 (1) • More detailed comment • Overwhelming amount of comments positive • Feeling more familiar with host university and greater satisfaction with academic adjustment • ‘This semester I know how to deal with it, I’m familiar with it now.’ (Chinese, male, 23) • Comments on assessed work • ‘The assignments were not bad. It took much time but it was ok.’ (Lithuanian, male, 23)

  16. Qualitative findings – T2 (2) • Multicultural group work – positive to highly negative • ‘[…] it was nice working with other people as opposed to just yourself going to the library, so I enjoyed it.’ (USA, female, 26) • ‘That was such an amazing opportunity to work with the Chinese students.’ (USA, male, 23) • ‘[…] communication was a big problem because they didn’t speak […] maybe this is a system in China.’ (Turkish, female, 22)

  17. Qualitative findings – T3 (1) • Comments on academic performance overwhelmingly positive • Improvement from the beginning of semester one to the end of semester two • Feeling “confident” and “settled” • ‘I’d say I felt a lot more confident because I kind of already knew how the things work here […] ’ (Latvian, female, 23) • ‘The first semester I was still like in shock […] it was too much going on for me for the first semester but this time it’s better […]’ (Indonesian, female, 28)

  18. Qualitative findings – T3 (2) • Outcomes of studying CCC abroad • Transformative nature of the sojourn & programme: • ‘I think I’m more interculturally sensitive […]’ (USA, female, 26) • ‘After all this I try not to put people in a box.’ (Slovakian, female, 24) • ‘I have learned how similar people are […]’ (Romanian, female, 24) • ‘[…] learning different theories and different models, I think you can really take them and apply them.’ (USA, male, 23) • ‘[…] people here are from all over the world, so even when we don’t literally study [..] you still practice your skills.’ (Latvian, female, 23)

  19. Discussion (1) • Focus on CCC education seems related to more successful academic adaptation • CCC students performed significantly better in terms of academic achievement than a comparable peer group • CCC students were exposed to a critical perspective on concepts such as culture, communication and identity (Holliday et al., 2004) • Exposure to such approaches may be associated with successful academic adaptation

  20. Discussion (2) Positive interaction between experiential learning and a critically-focussed academic model (Stavenga de Jong et al.,2006)? But much CCC education still dependents on a-priori cultural categorisation tending to equate nationality and culture (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2001) – so positive effects not necessarily derived from all CCC education?

  21. Discussion (3) Most academic adjustment difficulties early in the sojourn The more exposure, the more able to acquire and develop skills necessary to meet demands of degree CCC students seemed to acquire and deploy these skills slightly more successfully than a comparitor group

  22. Implications • Build CCC into higher education programmes in general • ‘internationalisation at home – getting Anglophone ‘home’ students to engage with the ‘intercultural’ (if not, sadly, foreign languages) • Have it as a useful graduate attribute that all students in HE can aim to acquire (Stier, 2006) • Future research: • Is CCC education as effective as part of pre-sojourn training, or in a form shorter and more intensively-delivered than a MA programme? • Does CCC students’ performance relate to other pre-dispositional factors? Was it something about the learning, or something about the students, or both?

  23. Some limitations • Only looked at the adjustment experiences of CCC students – no direct comparison with others • Only compared the academic adaptation of the two groups • Difficult to generalise beyond: • PGT? • UK context? • Other aspects of adaptation/adjustment?

  24. References (1) Anderson, L. E. 1994. A New Look at an Old Construct: Cross-Cultural Adaptation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 18 (3): 293-328. Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. P., Segall, M. H., and Dasen, P. 2002. Cross Cultural Psychology: Research and Application. Cambridge: CUP. Boyatzis, R. E. 1998. Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development. 2nd ed. London: Sage. Brown, L. 2009. The Transformative Power of the International Sojourn: An Ethnographic Study of the International Student Experience. Annals of Tourism Research, 36 (3): 502-21. Hofstede, G. 1993. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(1), 132–134. Holliday, A. 2010. Cultural Descriptions as Political Cultural Acts: An Exploration. Language and Intercultural Communication, 10 (3): 259-72 Littrell, L. N., Salas, E., Hess, K. P., Paley, M., and Riedel, S. 2006. Expatriate Preparation: A Critical Analysis of 25 Years of Cross-Cultural Training Research. Human Resource Development Review, 5 (3): 355-88. Morris, M. A., and Robie, C. 2001. A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Cross-Cultural Training on Expatriate Performance and Adjustment.International Journal of Training and Development, 5 (2): 112-24. Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (2012).Education at a glance 2012: OECD indicators. OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2012-en Pitts, M. J. 2005. The Role of Communication in Cross-National Adjustment and Identity Transitions among Student Sojourners.PhD Diss., Pennsylvania State University.

  25. References (2) Sanderson, G. 2008. A Foundation for the Internationalization of the Academic Self in Higher Education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 12 (3): 276-307. Spencer-Oatey, H., and Xiong, Z. 2006. “Chinese students’ psychological and sociocultural adjustments to Britain: an empirical study.” Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19 (1): 37-53. UNESCO-UIS 2010. Global Education Digest 2009: Comparing Education Statistics across the World. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001832/183249e.pdf Stavenga de Jong, J. A., Wierstra, R. F. A., and Hermanussen, J. 2006. An Exploration of the Relationship Between Academic and Experiential Learning Approaches in Vocational Education. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 76: 155-69. Ward, C., Bochner, S., and Furnham, A. 2001. The Psychology of Culture Shock. 2nd ed. Hove: Routledge. Young T.J., & Schartner A. 2014. The effects of cross-cultural communication education on international students' adjustment and adaptation. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. doi: 10.1080/01434632.2014.884099 Young, T. J. and Sercombe, P. G. 2010. Communication, Discourses and Interculturality. Language and Intercultural Communication, 10 (3): 181-88. Young, T. J., Sercombe, P. G., Sachdev, I., Naeb, R., and Schartner A. 2013. Success Factors for International Postgraduate Students’ Adjustment: Exploring the Roles of Intercultural Competence, Language Proficiency, Social Contact and Social Support. European Journal of Higher Education, 3(2), 151-171.

  26. Thank you! … any questions, comments…?

More Related