| College student engagement is an important indicator of undergraduate education quality,and it is also one of the important areas of higher education research in the world.With the popularizing of higher education and the implementation of the first-class undergraduate education plan,how to improve undergraduate education quality has become the focus of colleges in China.On June 21 in 2018,150 colleges jointly issued the "Declaration on First-Class Undergraduate Education" in Chengdu,Sichuan province,making the goals of cultivating excellent talents and building first-class undergraduate education.In this context,promoting college student engagement has become an important mission for domestic undergraduate colleges.Promoting college student engagement requires a deep understanding of the characteristics of college students' learning behaviors.Many studies have found that,compared with Western college students,Chinese college students have a higher level of earnest and self-disciplined engagement,which is considered to be the imprint of Chinese culture,and have a lower level of the interactive engagement and deep engagement,which are considered to be the imprint of the Western culture.Although researchers realize that traditional culture affects Chinese college student engagement,the specific mechanism is still unclear.Moreover,previous studies tend to explain the influence of traditional culture on learning behaviors from static and nomothetic perspective rather than dynamic and idiographic perspective,so it is difficult for us to understand how traditional culture affects college students' learning behaviors in modern society.Thus,this study hopes to explore the influence mechanism of culture on student engagement,so as to deepen the cognition of college students' learning behavior and provide beneficial suggestions for improving the quality of college student engagement in China.There are many definitions of the term "culture".This study adopts the broadest meanings of culture that can reflect the unique behavior and value of a national or ethnic.So the word "Chinese culture" refers to something that can reflect Chinese behaviors and values,which are different from that of Westerners.In this sense,"culture" and "traditional culture" can be used interchangeably.Since culture is a multi-dimensional concept with complex connotations,the related quantitative empirical studies tend to choose variables that can reflect cultural connotation and are easy to operate,such as collectivism,power distance,and face.The so-called face refers to the self-perception formed by the positive or negative evaluation of others,which has been considered by many researchers to have an important influence on Chinese students' learning behaviors.This concept has been widely discussed in sociology,psychology,linguistics and other fields,and developed to the quantitative stage.Although face is not a direct expression of culture,it is a behavior symbol reflecting people's cultural orientation.Previous studies usually divide face into three dimensions: own face,other face and group face.Relevant studies have shown that,in the collectivist Chinese society,worrying about "own face" reflects the cultural orientation of valuing the evaluation from others,and maintaining "others face" reflects the cultural orientation of paying attention to interpersonal harmony,striving for "group face" reflects the cultural orientation of focusing on collective interests.These studies lay a solid foundation for empirical research on face in other fields of social science.In the field of education,although many researchers point out that face has a profound impact on Chinese students' learning behaviors,there is still a lack of empirical research on the relationship between face and student engagement.Therefore,this study will explore the influence of culture on college students' learning behaviors by exploring the relationship between face orientation and student engagement.In this study,face orientation refers to the psychological and behavioral tendency of an individual trying to establish public image because of others' evaluation.The research method of this paper is a combination of questionnaire survey and interview.The research steps are as follows.The first step is to develop the "College Student Learning Experience Questionnaire" as a research tool based on previous studies and in-depth interviews.The "face orientation scale" in questionnaire contains five dimensions: ability face concern,moral face concern,achievement face concern,other face protection and group face striving."Ability face concern" refers to the orientation of college students to lose face because they appear to be lack of personal ability in front of others;"moral face concern" refers to the orientation of lose face in front of others because of bad learning morality such as not learning seriously or violating learning rules;"achievement face concern" refers to the orientation of lose face in front of others because of bad achievement;"other face protection" refers to the orientation of protecting of teachers' or classmates' face in the communication with them;"group face striving" refers to the orientation of striving to maintain the group image and make the group praised by others.The first three dimensions are "own face",and the latter two are "other face" and "group face",respectively.The second step is to test and revise face orientation scale by investigating college students.The third step is to investigate college students formally and collect quantitative research data.The last step is to analyze the date and interview students who participated in the questionnaire survey in order to interpret the quantitative results further.The final research sample comes from 1 research university and 2 local undergraduate colleges in Jiangsu province,with a total of 1,040 valid questionnaires and 42 qualitative research data.A variety of data analysis methods have been used in this study,including descriptive statistics,regression analysis,content analysis,etc.The main findings of this study are as follows.(1)The study found that college students pay more attention to group face and other face,and they are less concerned about their own face.With the maximum of 5points,the average of group face striving is about 4.0,the average of other face protection is about 3.9,and the average of ability face concern,moral face concern and achievement face concern is between 3.0 and 3.5 points.The effect of face orientation on student engagement is small(standardized regression coefficient is between-0.131 and 0.187),which does not exceed the effect of learning motivation(standardized regression coefficient is between 0.140 and 0.293).(2)Different types of face orientation have different effects on student engagement.Firstly,college students' concern about their own face promotes their earnest and self-disciplined engagement rather than interactive or deep engagement.Regression analysis showed that ability face concern has a significant negative effect on teacher-student interaction,peer interaction and active inquiry behavior,with the coefficient of-0.096,-0.131 and-0.072 respectively;moral face concern has a significant positive effect on teacher-student interaction,peer interaction,and earnest self-disciplined behavior,with the coefficient of 0.077,0.110 and 0.187,respectively;achievement face concern has no significant effect on student engagement.Secondly,college students' concern about other face hardly affects their engagement.From the regression results,other face maintenance has a significant effect on teacher-student interaction merely,and the standardized regression coefficient is only-0.084.There is no significant effect of other face on peer interaction,active inquiry and conscientious self-discipline behavior.Based on the interview,it can be found that college students have considerable flexibility and maturity in dealing with the relationship between maintaining the harmony of interpersonal relationship and pursuing the truth.They can discuss academic issues harmoniously through various strategies such as communicating in private occasions or expressing views euphemistically.Thirdly,college students' concern about group face can promote their all engagement behaviors,but the effect is also small.Regression data showed that group face has a significant positive effect on teacher-student interaction,peer interaction,active inquiry,and earnest self-disciplined behavior,with the coefficient of 0.079,0.132,0.150 and 0.067,respectively.Further analysis shows that,the group face of students with high academic achievement in research universities has a significant effect on earnest and self-disciplined engagement(the standardized regression coefficient is 0.279),but has no significant effect on interactive or deep engagement.(3)The relationship between face orientation and student engagement can be moderated by internal motivation and environmental perception.Internal motivation refers to learning motivation of college students due to their interest and curiosity in the learning content,which is different from the utilitarian external motivation;environmental perception refers to students' perception of learning environment.Specifically,the higher the level of internal motivation of college students or the more conducive the learning environment is to individual autonomy,the weaker the effects of their own face and other face on student engagement,while the stronger the effect of group face on student engagement.It can be interpreted through the "truth-seeking learning context" based on the interview results.When college students enter the learning context of pursuing knowledge and truth,they will focus on the discussion of academic issues and knowledge rather than one's face.Since high level of internal motivation and external environment that is conducive to individual autonomy can help college students enter the learning situation of truth-seeking,so that on the one hand,they will not give up expressing personal opinions because of one's face,on the other hand,they will actively study in order to achieve group goals.The interview results also show that the learning situation of truth-seeking needs to be built by all participants in learning activities,and the guiding role of teachers is important.The above results show that the impact of face on college students' learning behavior is not as strong as that described by previous researches,which may reflect that today's college students are more independent.Combined with a large number of studies on the values of the "post-00s",the above results imply that collectivistic culture has both inheritance and transition in modern society.Specifically,today's college students not only take the collective interests and harmonious interpersonal relationships seriously,but also value the elements of individualistic culture,such as uniqueness and autonomy.This transition of traditional culture can promote its integration with modern education concepts like autonomous learning and cooperative learning,which is conducive to the improvement of Chinese college students' interactive and deep engagement.In addition,it should be pointed out that,the influence of face on college students' learning behaviors is small does not mean that the influence of culture is small or disappeared,but that some traditional values have been reinterpreted by the new generation of youth.The important enlightenment is that future research should understand the influence of traditional culture on the learning behaviors of today's college students from a dynamic perspective,rather than merely explain whether cultural elements have an impact on learning behaviors.In summary,this study draws the following three research conclusions.First,the influence of face on today's college students' learning behavior is declining.Second,although Chinese students' learning behaviors are more easily affected by social factors(such as face,favor and interpersonal relationship)compared with Western students,the effects can be weaken by developing internal motivation of pursuing truth and building the environment that conducive to students' autonomy.Third,cooperative learning has a unique cultural meaning for the improvement of college student engagement in China.It can promote student engagement with the help of their orientation of collectivism.There are two suggestions for improving the quality of Chinese college student engagement based on the above results.First,in order to enhance the student engagement,colleges need to take the stimulating students' internal motivation and creating learning situations of truth-seeking as the core goals,and attach importance to the guiding role of teachers.Especially in the process of interaction between teachers and students,teachers should show the love of seeking truth,and be willing to accept rather than avoid the challenge of new ideas from students,so as to weaken college students' attention to face.Second,colleges can encourage students' cooperative learning in order to take advantage of the collective orientation of Chinese students to advance their engagements,but the content of cooperative learning should be different for students with different academic achievements.Especially for the students with high academic achievements in research universities,we should encourage them to engage more challenging learning activities,rather than participating in the same learning activities as other students.Finally,there are some limitations in this study.In order to respond to previous researches,this study chose college level of context rather than course-specific level of context to explore face.But the effect of face on learning behaviors may be different because of face's contextual characteristics.In addition,this study did not fully reveal the differences in face orientation among college students from different backgrounds.However,this paper argues that,because the effect of face on Chinese college students learning behaviors is declining,future research should pay more attention to other concepts that can represent the characteristics of Chinese excellent culture to explore its relationship with student engagement,such as altruism,self-modesty,heart and mind for wanting to learn(hao-xue-xin),etc.Although there is still some value in exploring the influence of face on learning behavior in different learning contexts or for college students from different backgrounds,it may not be an important research direction in the future. |
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