Exploring non-local students’ experiences of intercultural experiential learning: The case of Hong Kong

This study investigates how non-local students at a Hong Kong higher education institution adapt to living and studying in Hong Kong. Intercultural competence refers to the knowledge and skills for effective communication with culturally diverse individuals. Informed by the experiential learning theory and research in intercultural competence, the study will adopt a theoretical framework of intercultural experiential learning, which describes the process of individuals’ development of intercultural competence as a recurring cycle: (a) gaining concrete experience of interacting with culturally different others, (b) observing the behaviours and communication style of culturally different people, (c) reflecting on the observation to generate knowledge and rules for interacting and behaving in intercultural situations, (d) actively experimenting on the new knowledge and rules for intercultural interaction.
Although researchers have proposed theoretical conceptualization of how the constructs of learning styles, cultural intelligence, and acculturation outcomes are interrelated in the context of cross-cultural contact, very few attempts have been made to establish the relationships between these variables. The current study will fill research gap by examining how non-local students’ learning styles and cultural intelligence are interrelated to affect the students’ acculturation outcomes while adapting to living and studying in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2017 2nd Intl. Conference on Future Education.