Living and Learning between Canada and Korea: The Academic Experiences and Cultural Challenges of Undergraduate International Exchange Students
Author: Kang, Jeong-Ja
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Undergraduate Students,Foreign Students,Study Abroad,Student Experience,Institutional Cooperation,Cultural Differences,Student Attitudes,Expectation,Teacher Student Relationship,Teacher Role,Cultural Relevance,Student Adjustment,Interaction,Student Participation,International Educational Exchange

Many higher education institutions are expanding their academic cross-border mobility programs with the twin imperatives of nurturing students' global awareness and equipping them for future careers. To serve both university and student interests, &quot;study abroad&quot; student exchange programs, which are an official reciprocal academic mobility arrangement initiated and managed by two higher education institutions, have become &quot;a normal option.&quot; This study focuses on the experiences of short-term, &quot;study abroad&quot; exchange students enrolled in programs offered through reciprocal partnerships between Canadian and Korean universities, as part of a larger investigation of international student exchange policies and in response to rising student mobility between the two countries. Narrative inquiry was used in conducting this research, and nine students were interviewed. To analyze the data, authors mainly drew on Riessman's (2008) scalar stages of thematic analysis, focusing on &quot;'what' is said&quot; (53) and trying to interpret it within the broad socio-cultural contexts (Grbich 2013; Gubrium and Holstein 2009). In contrast to their idealized or imagined exchange program, and in spite of their previous participation in international travel, the nine exchange students in the study viewed their foreign exchange as distressingly unfamiliar. This paper describes two inter-related aspects of their experiences: academic expectations and interactions with professors. When there are wide gaps in terms of cultural habits, personalities, and pedagogical values among professors, international students, and local students, collisions occur more frequently and it takes quite some time to find compromises between different views and to narrow the discrepancies. This implies that faculty should try harder to create a more inclusive milieu to understand and embrace different mindsets, cultures, and ideologies of exchange students. This study suggests that professors should be more sensitive to each student's cultural background and create culturally &quot;fair&quot; climate trying to understand exchange students' demanding conditions. In addition, given exchange students' difficulties relating to local students, professors should pay particular attention to providing opportunities for these students to interact with local students and incorporate strategies to facilitate exchange students' participation in class. To enhance student cultural awareness during their academic exchange, institutional actors should be active in informing exchange students about different cultural perceptions, ethics, and academic traditions. This type of awareness could be fostered from the offices that arrange academic exchange agreements between partnering institutions.