A qualitative study on 25 Mainland Chinese students in a Hong Kong university shows that they experienced cognitive disparities in six areas although the cultural distance between two places were found slim in the previous studies. None of the six areas seemed to be directly related to the three cultural dimensions where moderate cultural differences were found in literature. In terms of informants’ responses to such disparities, of the six cognitive areas, two (social practice and instructional methods) seemed to have induced conceptual changes among the informants. Two of them were rejected (perceptions of peer relationship and of own ethnic group and country). The rest two were found to have driven the informants to reconsider their previous conception in the new context. The informants either allowed the new conceptions to coexist with or had some peripheral changes on their previous conceptions.
The paper:
Zeng, L. M. (2016). Mainland Chinese students’ responses to the cognitive conflicts in their adaptation to a Hong Kong university: a developmental perspective. In R. B. King & A. B. I. Bernardo (Eds.), The psychology of Asian learners: A festschrift in honor of David Watkins (pp. 421-440). Singapore: Springer.
About the photo: Redbud petals on the ground, filmed in University of Hong Kong in 2013.
University Teaching 