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Many universities in different parts of the world are seeking to enhance the cultural diversity of their staff and student body and yet repeated studies have shown that good integration can be difficult to achieve. Although several studies have examined the reasons why such integration is difficult, there has been very little research into the actual process of social integration. This paper addresses this gap through a qualitative study of intercultural learning. Students were asked to focus on a behaviour that was personally or professionally important to them but that they were having difficulty adapting to. The paper reports the varying, unfolding experiences of six of these students as they faced the affective, behavioural and cognitive challenges of adjusting to different greeting patterns and the strategies they used for gradually overcoming them. Drawing on the literature and the findings, an intercultural growth model is proposed. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings for enhancing social integration at university.

According to UNESCO statistics, the People's Republic of China (PRC) sends far more students to study overseas than any other country in the world. Similarly, from the receiving countries' point of view, PRC students form by far the highest proportion of international students. In many respects, this is a success story, but it also poses a number of risks to universities. This paper focuses on one of those key risks that of student dissatisfaction (including from PRC students themselves). Using a sequential mixed-method study, it addresses two research questions: (a) Chinese students' level of satisfaction with their social integration into the university community and (b) the barriers that Chinese students' perceive in becoming more socially integrated into the university student community. The research finds that many Chinese students are dissatisfied with their range of friendships and that they find it more challenging to socialise with students of other nationalities than other students do. They point out a number of barriers to integration, with cultural distance playing a major role, but also argue for the impact of individual factors. The paper concludes by considering the implications for universities and suggestions for further research.

International collaborations are frequently mentioned in university strategies as a way of promoting internationalization, often in relation to achieving greater connectivity among staff from different backgrounds. Much less explicit attention is paid to the underlying rationale for facilitating such connectivity, or the challenges academic staff may face in participating in such collaborations. In this article, the author argues that failure to pay adequate attention to such interaction issues can hinder the added value that international projects can offer and that much greater attention needs to be paid to the collaboration process itself in order to maximize benefits. The author analyzes the interaction experiences of staff who participated in a set of Sino-British collaborative e-learning projects and reports and illustrates the key challenges they faced and the ways in which they responded. The article concludes with a number of implications and recommendations for personnel involved in researching, planning, and/or participating in international education collaborations. (Contains 1 figure and 3 notes.)

Explores British and Chinese conceptions of the typical degrees of power and distance/closeness in the tutor/postgraduate student role relationship. Results reveal substantial conceptual differences that were effected by the culture-level, in relation to power distance, value. Results are discussed in terms of differing concepts of leadership and the compatibility/incompatibility of power and distance/closeness. (GR)

Given the small number of existing studies of face in intercultural settings and the increasing attention given to participant perspectives in face research, this paper explores the gains and losses of face as perceived by Chinese government officials during a three-week delegation visit to the United States of America. These perspectives were obtained from the group's spontaneous discussions during regular evening meetings when they reflected on the day's events. Several key features emerged from the discussions. Firstly, face enhancement was a primary goal for the visit – enhancement of their own face as a delegation, of the face of the Ministry they belonged to, as well as the face of their American hosts. Secondly, the delegates attempted to manage these face goals strategically. Thirdly, they spoke of face as a volatile image that could rise and fall sharply and yet endured across incidents, days and weeks. The paper reports on and discusses these participant perspectives in the light of recent theorizing on face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed at investigating possible cultural effects on the perceived importance of interactional concerns in service encounters. Individual values were examined to establish an explanatory framework for any effects that might emerge. Hong Kong Chinese and Filipinos participated in the present study by rating the importance of 12 interactional concerns in five hypothetical scenarios involving service provision. "Rapport promotion" was the only consistent factor of interactional concerns to emerge from the five scenarios in each of the two cultural groups. The dimensions of individual values, labeled `Conservation" and `Self-Transcendence" by Schwartz (1992), significantly predicted a respondent's level of rapport promotion across all scenarios, with self-transcendence partially unpackaging the cultural difference that emerged in one of the service scenarios. We use these results to support a model of communication in service provision that predicts communication concerns as arising from cultural socialization for personal characteristics and situational features of the encounter, leading to the petitioner's being more dependent on the good will of the service provider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]