Sino-foreign Cooperative Education Project Of University Students' Intercultural Adaptation

After thirty years of exploration and development, the Chinese-foreign higher education cooperation programs has marched on the legalized and standardized way by the encouragement and support of national policies. These programs are playing a significant role of cultivating high-quality, internationalized and versatile talents for China’s socialist modernization construction. However, the attention has not been paid enough by academic researchers and practitioners so far to the cross-cultural adaptation issue and the cultivation of intercultural competence of students under the cooperation programs which is essential for achieving and guaranteeing the sustainable development of the whole Chinese-foreign higher education cooperation programs. Therefore this dissertation mainly aims at making a meaningful contribution in this regard.This dissertation is an exploratory empirical study on the cross-cultural adaptation issues of Chinese international students participated in the Chinese-foreign higher education cooperation programs (hereafter C-F CP students) through questionnaire, interview and observation methods. It also provides practical strategies and suggestions on how to better improve C-F CP students’intercultural competence.The key findings include that the existing cross-cultural adaptation theoretical framework and models made by John Berry, Colleen Ward and their colleagues which are mainly based on research work on immigrants and refugees population have certain limitations on explaining the cross-cultural adaptation issues and its impacting factors of the international students’population. This paper, based on the empirical research and in-depth analysis, proposes a theoretical framework for C-F CP students’ cross-cultural adaptation. This framework identifies motivations and goals of studying abroad, preparation before leaving home countries, acquired social support, cross-cultural adaptation attitudes and strategies as well as a variety of demographic factors as critical influencing factors for C-F CP students’cross-cultural adaptation process, and divided the adaptation results into three dimensions including psychological adaptation, academic adaptation and other social cultural adaptation. Compared to the existing theoretical framework made by Berry and other cross-cultural psychologists mentioned above, this framework further amplifies the possible differences between cross-cultural adaptation attitudes and actual strategies and its causes.The framework also suggests that the cross-cultural adaptation process of C-F CP students is a dynamic process of cultural and social cognition and assessment for both home countries and host countries, as well as a dynamic process for self-construal and cultural identity’s reconstruction. Therefore, we could say that this framework is not only the first cross-cultural adaptation theoretical frameworks specially designed for the C-F CP students, but also a kind of effective supplement and further development for the current cross-cultural adaptation theoretical frameworks and models. It also provides valuable resources for studying other types of international students’ cross-cultural adaptation issues.The theoretical and practical contribution of this study mainly includes the following aspects:1. This study empirically examines the applicability of the existing cross-cultural adaptation frameworks and models in C-F CP students’population and proposes a cross-cultural adaptation framworks for C-F CP students, which can also be considered as an exploratory empirical study for constructing the comprehensive theoretical framework for international students’population.2. This study provides a practical exploration for the development of cross-cultural communication training model for C-F CP students based on the research findings which can serve as a meaningful supplement and extention of the cross-cultural training theory and practices aiming at the international students’population.3. This study contributes to the theoretical research of acculturation research methods and measurements improvement by suggesting that not only the acculturation attitudes but also the acculturation behavior and cultural identity dimensions should be included in the acculturation measurement scale design.4. From the methodological sense, various data collection methods based on network communication tools are utilized to conduct field investigation, which are proved to be quite effective and should be utilized more in the future research in this field.