Academic Adjustment of Chinese Students at German Universities

Academic Adjustment of Chinese Students at German Universities Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Dr. phil. im Fach Erziehungswissenschaften eingereicht am 16. August 2012 an der Philosophischen Fakultät IV der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin von Jiani Zhu Master of Education Prof. Dr. Jan-Hendrik Olbertz Präsident der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Jürgen van Buer Dekan der Philosophischen Fakultät IV Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Henze 2. Prof. Dr. Andrä Wolter Tag der Verteidigung: 21.11.2012 ii Acknowledgements I still remembered clearly how excited I was when I first visited the Humboldt- Universität, the “mother of all modern universities” in 2007. In the last four years, I spent the most productive, meaningful, and important time at the Humboldt-Universität. I owe a lot to many people, without whom this dissertation would not have been possible. First and foremost I am profoundly grateful to my supervisor, Professor Jürgen Henze, who appeared to me as the true embodiment of a mentor. Without his skilful guidance and expertise in the field of intercultural communication, this dissertation would not have been possible. In German language, doctoral advisors are called Doktorvater (literally “doctor-father”). Professor Henze acts exactly as my “academic father”, who leads me to explore the academic world. I appreciate his contributions of time and ideas to make my research experience productive and stimulating. I am thankful for the excellent example he has provided as a diligent and meticulous scholar. For this dissertation, I would like to thank the review committee members. I am grateful to Professor Andrä Wolter for being my reviewer. I recieved much inspiration by attending his colloquium and lecture. I would like to thank Professor Detlef Müller- Böling sincerely for his insightful questions and meaningful advice. I am beyond grateful to the Chinese students who participated in the research. This dissertation could have never been developed without their support and trust. It is only through their cooperation that I was able to make the original research idea a reality. I appreciate the time they spent on the interviews or questionnaires. My time at the Humboldt-Universität was also enriched by Professor Henze’s research team. I would like to thank Weihua Du, Niels Klabunde, Professor Steve Kulich, Zheng Chen, and Nik Oberlik. The member of the faculty, Dr. Ralf-Dietmar Hegel, Jennifer Felde, Angela Kalisz, Ms. Eveline Neumann, and Nina Herz have contributed immensely to my personal and professional time. My time at the Humboldt-Universität was made meaningful in large part due to the visiting scholars, Professor Binyan Xu and Professor Zhicheng Huang from East China Normal University. They provided inspiring advice to me. Many thanks also go to Mr. Uwe Brandenburg at the CHE Consult, who suggested me to knock the door of the Humboldt-Universität when I was applying for a doctoral programme. I would like to thank my friends, Silke Maria Petersen, Kefei Qian, Simone Schröder, who shared both the happy and the tough moments of this dissertation. I am thankful for many others who helped me along the way: Marion Landwehr-Konrad, Anita Schmitz, Isabel Roessler, Tanja Sydorenko, Lin Qin, Ami Kobayashi, Volker Wackwitz, Julia i Prieler, Grischa Weberstädt, Wolfgang Unger, Diane Boulay, Farida Eckardt, and Julian Bogenfeld. In writing this dissertation, I spent most of my time at the university library, Jacob-und- Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum, ever since its establishment in Fall 2009. I thank our university library for access to the many books and articles that influences how I form the research idea. It is at the Grimm-Zentrum where I luckily got to know Julia Neumann, Ute Dormann, Robert Gutmann, Jan Wentzel, and Andreas Gens. This group of “library-friends” has been one of the most important sources of friendship. Thank you all for friendly correcting my German pronunciation and grammar. I gratefully acknowledge the funding sources that made my Ph.D. work possible. I was funded by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) for my first 3.5 years and later, with the help of Professor Henze, I received a 6-month Research Assistantship from the Humboldt-Universität, within the framework of STIBET (Supervision measures for international doctoral or post-doctoral students) funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Many thanks go to my host families (Family Petersen in Lüneburg, Family Schröder and Family Brinker in Berlin). Because of their hospitality and kindness, I never felt lonely in Germany. I appreciate every Christmas, Easter, and various celebrations that I have spent with them. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my parents for all their love and encouragement. I know the last four years was not easy for them, as their only child was so far away from Shanghai. In spite of that, they have been supporting me in all my pursuits. I appreciate their understanding and love. Jiani Zhu Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin August, 2012 ii Abstract Student mobility stimulates the research on exploring international students’ learning experience abroad. Different from other sojourners (expatriates, diplomats, volunteers, aid workers, etc.), student sojourners’ identities draw researcher’s attention to their learning experience at the host country. Although Chinese students are the largest international student group in Germany, still a small number of studies have sought to understand the academic adjustment of Chinese students in German higher education institutions. Against this background, this research employs a mixed research method (interview and questionnaire), aiming at probing Chinese student’s academic adjustment at German universities. Inspired by Anderson’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral model, this research explores Chinese students’ academic adjustment in four phases: pre-departure, initial, developing, and final phase. This research is composed of three studies. Study 1 is a cross-sectional study which interviews 18 Chinese students from different subjects, pursuing different academic degrees, and spending different lengths of time in Germany. Study 2 is a case study conducted in a social science faculty and both German lecturers’ observation on Chinese students’ academic adjustment and Chinese students’ opinions are investigated; and Study 3 is a longitudinal research study, which follows Chinese students’ language development and learning experiences at German universities. This research finds that a good preparation in the pre-departure phase facilities Chinese students’ academic adjustment in the initial period. The results reveal that the majority of Chinese students, except for learning the German language (attending training and tests) and general “survival” or daily life-oriented information (weather, food, traffic, etc.), have relative little knowledge about Germany (German culture, history, and customs) and the academic-oriented information (types of courses, academic tasks, assessment methods, etc.), as they only leave a short period of time to prepare to study in Germany. Such an underprepared state directly leads to the “hard landing” in the initial phase, as Chinese students encounter much difficulty arriving in Germany. The first semester was perceived by many interviewees as a “catastrophe” or “chaos”, as they are not familiar with the academic-oriented information in Germany at all. Facing such difficulty, they feel “at a loss”; at the same time, Chinese students feel misunderstood, when they find that their lecturers don’t show understanding to their identity as foreign students. Furthermore, as newcomers, Chinese students are not familiar with the academic support system; they can only rely on themselves or co-national Chinese friends to deal with the problems. iii In the developing phase, Chinese students reported progress in German language and knowledge about German universities (types of the courses, academic tasks, assessment methods, etc.). Both these two factors facilitated their further development. One of the challenges in the developing phase is negotiating the differences between their Chinese educational tradition and the current academic expectations at German universities. It is frustrating for Chinese students to find what they once regard correctly in the Chinese learning environment turning out to be wrong or unexpected in the German one. Since they are more familiar with the academic support system at German universities, they try to ask lecturers, tutors, fellow students to solve their problems. In the final phase, Chinese students show understanding and appreciation of the expectations at German universities. For instance, in the initial phase, Chinese students often complain “nobody takes care of me” and report great difficulty in participating in seminars (either participating in the discussion or giving a presentation). However, in the final phase, they regard such “nobody takes care of me” as “academic freedom”, and show appreciation to the seminar and regard it as an active type of course at German universities. The whole process of academic adjustment expects Chinese students to identify the difference, understand the difference, and later appreciate the difference. This research further finds that throughout the above process learning at German universities, background (German language competence in academic knowledge), situational (academic support, student identity, and intercultural

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