Research On China’s Foreign Aid Trainees’ Intercultural Adaptation And Management Policy

In the age of accelerating development of globalization and the formation of the Community of a Shared Future for Mankind,China’s foreign aid training has achieved unprecedented development in the past five years.However,with the scale of training expanding rapidly,it is not of rare occurrence that some foreign trainees can’t adapt to the Chinese culture and environment during their training in China each year,which gradually has become an important impediment to enhancing the effectiveness of China’s foreign aid training.Unfortunately,according to the author’s in-depth investigation in her daily work into the management of China’s foreign aid training,no scientific and systematic research on the trainees’ intercultural adaptability(or intercultural competence)is implemented neither at the theoretical research level nor at the operational level in China’s current foreign aid training practice.Not only is there no training module specially designed to improve trainees’ intercultural adaptability;but also no corresponding intercultural management mechanism and measures focusing on the intercultural characteristics of foreign aid training.Therefore,both the design of intercultural adaptability training module and the establishment of intercultural management mechanisms have become two major issues that urgently need to be addressed in foreign aid training.Due to the political nature of foreign aid training,academiccommunities have little involvement in this field.This study has reviewed a large amount of domestic and foreign literature and found that little research on foreign aid training has been conducted in the field of intercultural adaptation research and that there is no large-scale empirical study on intercultural adaptability of the foreign aid trainees in the research of China’s foreign aid training.In view of this,this study intends to make an exploratory attempt in this field,hoping to enrich the existing intercultural adaptation research and provide feasible suggestions for the innovation and development of China’s foreign aid training practice.On the basis of reviewing the existing relevant research literature,to resolve the two major issues in foreign aid training,this paper attempts to achieve two research goals: First,to design the intercultural training module for the foreign aid trainees,enhancing their intercultural adaptability;Second,to establish a scientific and systematic intercultural management system,highlighting the intercultural characteristics of China’s foreign aid training,thus providing institutional guarantees for the improvement of intercultural adaptability of the trainees.In order to achieve these research goals,this paper has carried out the following four innovative studies and achieved two major research findings.Study 1: Based on the literature review,the study constructed a series of possible internal and external influence factors of the trainee’s intercultural adaptation,proposed the concept of “Cultural adaptationfield”,and constructed the theoretical model of this research –Intercultural Adaptation Field Development(Dual-engine)Model,using the "dual-engine" metaphor for two major solutions to internal and external influential factors of the trainee’s intercultural adaptation;this model has provided a theoretical framework and research context for the follow-up empirical studies.Study 2: After reviewing the relevant international and domestic questionnaires(scales),on the basis of the Social and Cultural Adaptation Scale(SCAS)and the Cultural Intelligence Scale(CQS)and the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire(MPQ),the Questionnaire on the Factors Affecting the Intercultural Adaptability of China’s Foreign Aid Trainees was developed with consideration of the research summary,and the problems,dimension were analyzed.The scales concerning influential factors in intercultural adaptability was attempted to apply into the foreign aid training,being a domestic venture and breakthrough in the research of this type of scales.After the preliminary test,the revised version of the Questionnaire with 50 items in total was formed,using which,a large-scale retest of the trainees was conducted during the period of Oct.2015 to May.2018,with a total of 869 questionnaires distributed and 843 valid questionnaires collected.The reliability and validity of the questionnaire were verified by SPSS22.0 statistical software,with satisfactory results.Four majorfactors were extracted by exploratory factor analysis through SPSS22.0Principal Component Analysis and the Varimax.Four influencing factors were extracted: Factor 1,psychological personality;Factor 2,intercultural interaction;Factor 3,intercultural communication competence;Factor 4,social support.The results of Validity test and Internal consistency reliability test of the four factors were satisfactory with the KMO value of each dimension being greater than 0.8 and Cronbach’s Alpha being0.779--0.874.Study 3: Correlation Hypothesis between the influential factors both extracted from the exploratory factor analysis and collected from the field survey and the overall adaptability was put forward,then SPSS22.0 was used for the correlation test to get the Pearson correlation coefficiency.The higher the Pearson correlation coefficiency,the greater the weight of the influencing factors,the greater the impact they would have on the overall adaptation of the trainees.The analysis and discussion would provide the empirical evidences for the design of intercultural training and the establishment of the intercultural management system and mechanism.Study 4: Using the method of qualitative research such as field investigation,this research conducted an exploratory study on the intercultural adaptability of China’s foreign aid trainees by observation,in-depth interviews and related management information collection.Theresearch summarized the types of the maladjustment of trainees and the problems of China’s foreign aid training management and mechanism,and,with reference to the results from practise,analyzed the specific factors affecting trainees’ intercultural adaptability in the perspective of trainees’ needs,thus providing empirical evidence for this research.After the above theoretical analysis,model construction,scale design,quantitative and qualitative empirical research,the research finally yielded two major results:Result 1: Based on the above-mentioned empirical results,and taking into consideration the foreign aid training model in other countries,the author put forward the China’s foreign aid intercultural adaptation training framework(FAICAT)and the FAICAT-Chinesization model which could greatly help trainees to improve their intercultural adaptation.This study has elucidated the "right engine" of the theoretical framework of this paper,the Intercultural Adaptation Field Development(Dual Engine)Model for internal factors.Result 2: Based on the above-mentioned empirical results,according to the intercultural characteristics of China’s foreign aid training,the author abandoned the traditional domestic training model and proposed to establish a long-term “China’s foreign aid training intercultural management mechanism” which could guarantee the improvement of the trainees’ intercultural adaptability so as to effectively improve theeffectiveness of China’s foreign aid training and achieve the ultimate goal of this study.This study has elucidated the "left engine" part of the core framework of this paper,the Intercultural Adaptation Field Development(Dual Engine)Model for external environmental factors.This paper is divided into seven chapters.In the introduction,the research background,its significance and innovation will be introduced,and a historical review of China’s foreign aid training is going to be made.The second chapter,the literature review,focuses on intercultural adaptation and China’s foreign aid training,and also involves other related fields like intercultural communication,intercultural competence and intercultural training etc.which lays the basis for the construction of the theoretical model in the third chapter.Based on the literature review,in the third chapter,the author summarizes all possible internal and external influential factors of intercultural adaptation,proposes the research framework---the Intercultural Adaptation Field Development(Dual Engine)Model,sets two research goals of this paper and proposes two research routes for the follow-up empirical research;in Chapter Four,the research on the unadaptability of the trainees is carried out,and the Questionnaire on the Factors Affecting the Intercultural Adaptability of China’s Foreign Aid Trainees(scales)is developed.The reliability and validity of the questionnaire are verified by SPSS22.0 statistical software,and four major factors are extracted by exploratory factor analysis.InChapter Five,the Correlation tests between all the internal influential factors and the overall adaptability are analyzed.With the analyzing results combining with qualitative investigation results,China’s foreign aid intercultural adaptation training framework(FAICAT)and the FAICAT-Chinesization model are designed,which will be the “internal engine” of the theoretical framework.In Chapter Six,the Correlation tests between all the external influential factors and the overall adaptability are analyzed.The analyzing results then are combined with qualitative investigation results,to seek the problems in China’s foreign aid training management.After a comparative analysis of the management model of foreign aid training at home and abroad,the long-term policy framework for macro-institutional and micro-management of China’s foreign aid training intercultural management mechanism is proposed,which is the“external engine" of the model.The Conclusion includes the summary of main research findings,deficiencies and the future research prospects.