Sustainability of the Belt and Road Initiative: An Integrated, Conceptual Framework for Instructional Communication in China’s Universities

Nadeem Akhtar, Cornelius B. Pratt and Ying Hu
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Nadeem Akhtar: India-Pakistan Research Center, School of International Education, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China
Cornelius B. Pratt: School of Journalism and Communication, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510006, China
Ying Hu: School of Journalism and Communication, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 23, 1-15

Abstract: China is fast becoming a coveted destination and a hub for higher education among international students, particularly since the announcement of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in September 2013. Consequently, China’s higher-education institutions are seeking ways to make international students’ educational experience more consistent with their expectations. Nonetheless, instructional communication—that is, communication for the purpose of engaging students academically while reducing problematic misunderstandings in the classroom—is a bane of the educational experience of international students in China. Therefore, this article extends instructional communication and intercultural sensitivity models to pedagogical, learner-centered contexts in an attempt to develop an integrated conceptual framework on sustaining international student–Chinese faculty interactions in the classroom. That framework has three key constructs: (a) the faculty’s classroom behaviors and international students’ characteristics, (b) international students’ instructional beliefs, and (c) learning outcomes. They will serve as the basis for positioning instructional practices in responding more appropriately to enhancing the experience of international students as global learners and toward deepening and sustaining the internationalization of China’s higher-education institutions, specifically within the context of BRI.

Keywords: Belt and Road Initiative; developmental model of intercultural sensitivity; general model of instructional communication; instructional beliefs model; intercultural communication competence model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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