Search results

This qualitative descriptive study seeks to understand how the reading motivation of three Chinese students from different reading achievement groups evolved as they moved from the fourth to the sixth grade. This study is informed both by Tierney's framework of global meaning making and Chinese relational epistemology. We recruited these students from a representative K-9 public school located in a metropolitan city in China and conducted two semistructured interviews, the first in fourth grade with a follow-up in sixth grade, during which we asked the same three students to share their stories about their reading experiences and what motivated them to read. Using the constant comparison method and thematic analysis, we analyzed the data and identified critical themes related to the factors that shaped the students' attitudes and motivation toward reading and literacy. This study uncovers several unique patterns of motivation development among Chinese early adolescent students in different achievement groups. Our findings also resulted in a new relational model of reading motivation development within the Chinese sociocultural context.

Engaging students in an active, self-directed approach to learning about leadership is best accomplished through personalized self-awareness, reflection, and connection to real-time, practical applications/examples through experiential learning. This is especially challenging for students whose cultural backgrounds, language, and/or educational preparation/training predispose them to more passively “receive knowledge” in an unquestioning, unexamined manner, without critical thinking. At the University of Greenwich Business School, a final year course has been re-imagined as personalized leadership development integrated with learning technology. Our teaching team is taking advantage of an interactive virtual simulation (vLeader) to engage Chinese students who otherwise might not participate fully in the expected manner of a Westernized learning environment. This chapter outlines our integrated approach to support and engage these students in learning outcomes for continuing success in their lives, careers, and leadership opportunities.

Attitudes and beliefs towards marriage and family held by Chinese and American college students were compared in this study. The primary dimensions included whether to marry, age to marry, number of desired children, age to have children, perceptions of divorce, willingness to cohabit, openness to blended marriages, and gender roles within marriage. If a global convergence of cultures is occurring, then similarities should be found throughout the views of all respondents towards the institution of marriage. Dissimilarities in views could be interpreted as evidence of the entrenchment and uniqueness of culture, an outcome advanced by those who question cultural homogenisation. Hundreds of college students in several large universities in China and one regional university in the United States were surveyed at convenience. The Chinese students were found to prefer marrying and to plan having children a year later in age compared to the Americans. They also desired having nearly one fewer total number of children on average compared to the Americans. Surprisingly, the Chinese were more agreeable with divorce. The Americans were more likely to support gender equality within marriage and to accept blended types of marriage. Both groups equally approved of the overall idea of couples cohabiting if they plan on marrying. However, the Americans were far more willing to say that they themselves would cohabit. Visions of the benefits of married life were similar across countries. Overall, far more significant differences were found than no differences. The results suggest that elements of marriage norms in the world’s largest economies are somewhat constrained by social forces in their ability to completely converge.

International education is one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors in the world. Degree-seeking students have become a large and growing export opportunity. Asian countries, especially China, are amongst the top countries sending students out, as a result, most countries aim to attract their students. Nevertheless, moving from Asian countries to the western ones is not an easy move. Chinese students face different types of challenges that need to be analysed to smooth their adaptation. This chapter analyses their performance, satisfaction and the challenges – pedagogical, language, cultural – they face to deploy the appropriate strategies to reduce failure and drop-out. Results show that the first 2 years are key for they adaptation. Language is the main barrier, it seems that the time devoted prior to their universities studies and their integration with national students is still a pending task.

The study examines how the tourism concept developed amongst Chinese students in the United States from 1905 to current juncture. Through the contrasting views presented in two landmark mega-reviews of Chinese students in the United States and France, the authors concluded that tourism enhances understanding of the host countries resulting in more comprehensive and overall success of Study Abroad Program. After the reopening, China encouraged touring the host country but with extreme financial constraints in the beginning. Tourism of Chinese students became popular and fashionable only in late 1990s with China’s economic prosperity and policy changes to open tourism to foreign countries. As tension with China grew during the COVID pandemic, Chinese students in the United States were used by the Trump Administration as a lever in trade and diplomatic negotiation, and touring became wishful.

As the development of internationalisation in higher education, the mobility of international students around the world has been more active than ever. Chinese international student community is growing larger and larger in the popular destination countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Cultures vary from east to west; Chinese students might find it difficult to adjust in a new cultural environment. When international Chinese students are struggling with cultural adjustment issues, they might have difficulties finding the support that they need, as schools might not have culturally relevant international students support service. Using an exploratory case study approach, the researcher intends to investigate some uncommon issues that Chinese undergraduate students were facing in their cultural experience in the United Kingdom. This research is aimed to raise the awareness for institutions to supply more through international students support service to reach a higher level of students’ satisfaction.

China has witnessed the emergence and rapid development of private higher education in the past three decades. As private higher education gradually takes on a more significant role in the Chinese educational system, due to the inability of the government to accommodate the growing demand for higher education, educational reform, influenced by the success of private higher education, will inevitably affect the quality and quantity of education overall.

This chapter focuses on several aspects of this development: the growth of private higher education in China, issues of finance and access, its relationship to the national system and to government policy, issues of ownership and the autonomy of private higher education, as well as the advantages and challenges of Chinese private higher education and the larger significance of its emergence in China. This study concludes that with proper management private colleges and universities will benefit from and contribute to Chinese society through multiple roles and responsibilities at their mature stage.

This chapter builds on the authors’ research into the internationalization of China’s higher education (HE) as soft power with “Chinese characteristics” (Lo & Pan, 2020). It rethinks the “Chinese characteristics” in contemporary China’s internationalization of HE as soft power, by contextualizing them in the historico-cultural rootedness that legitimizes the sense of Chinese exceptionalism in the Party-state’s global re-emergence. It also sheds light on the tension and paradox therein through analyzing the conflicts generated by the Party-state’s attempts at re-globalizing the Chinese world order alongside the Westphalian system. In addition to integrating the soft-power concepts coined by Joseph Nye (1990) with the dimensional perspectives on the internationalization of HE framed by Jane Knight (1997), this study also puts in China’s perspectives that stand in contrast to, and yet in confluence with, some of the current norms and values being espoused by the West. In so doing, it demonstrates the potentiality of employing comparative lenses that cut across times, spaces and cultures in the research into internationalization of HE as soft power with national characteristics.