Interview with stakeholders — Jonathan Carson | Associate Dean, Student Experience & Enhancement
As my project is mainly about new Chinese sojourners, Chinese students are a big group in this community. Therefore, in the interview with Jonathan, we mainly talked about the adaption of Chinese students( Also for International students from other country) to the school in London universities. I asked a few question about the main obstruct of Chinese students in schools and we talked about my project and gained some feedback.
Question 1: From your perspective, what is the main obstruct for Chinese students to achieve cross-cultural adaption?
Bullet points:
We shouldn’t make the assumption about people from different country have obstructs in dealing with new environments. But some of Chinese students may have a little bit apprehension about languageand a significant differences in how student educated or schooled beyond that compulsory schooling. Students need to negotiate education in a different way. Also, the relationship between teachers and students, relationship between peers are different.
Question 2: How do you think of the phenomenon where a large portion of Chinese students tend to socialize more with students from their country? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of this in school community
Bullet points:
No tension in that students want to communicate with students from same nation. If there is anyone who have bias or judgements to students from other countries, it should not be the case. Universities is working on the process that how to make people have the acknowledge of all the students should play a role in this kind of education process. Sometimes it isn’t about the race. When it comes to the group work or communication among multi culture, amazing interaction, tension, bias and stereotypes could all exist. But these are all the process of learning which could be adapted to whole life work. It is a part of studentship.
Question 3: Chinese students tend to be ‘the silent majority’, most of them are not used to asking questions or talking about their request when they come to school at the beginning due to the cultural differences. How to encourage them to speak more or express themselves?
Bullet points:
It is like a spectrum that on the one side some of the students have a good use of the language support, but on the other side they don’t. For some people, they don’t aware of the support that college support.