Cross-Cultural Instructors' Intergroup Anxiety, Attribution on Students' Unfamiliar Behaviors, and Other-Cultural Competence

• In Event: Poster Session 5
  In Poster Session: Social and Cultural Processes in Motivation Research

Abstract

This paper investigated university instructors’ anxiety of interacting with cross-cultural students and its relation to their attributions of students’ unfamiliar/unexpected learning behaviors. We identified three lenses through which the instructors ascribe unfamiliarity—cultural difference (difference), language barrier (deficiency), and cross-cultural adaptation (adaptation). We found that the deficiency lens is exclusive: Those who link students’ unfamiliar behaviors to students’ language defects were less likely to interpret unfamiliarity as signs of cultural difference or adaptive strategies students developed to better cope with learning in cross-cultural environment. Instructor’s intergroup anxiety may be lowered by improving their cross-cultural literacy; however, the effect may be mediated by instructors’ attribution tendency; the largest effect was found in those whose attributions would include cultural difference.

Authors

• Wen-Ting Chung, University of Pittsburgh

• Jenefer E. Husman, University of Oregon