Abstract:
Educational practises could be more or less regarded as the reflection of their culture(s). Since there are great differences between eastern and western culture, educational practises in these two cultural contexts are considerably different. Most Chinese background students cultivated in eastern educational contexts are sure to experience difficulties when they have transitioned to a western academic environment. This paper reports a recent study which aims to investigate the learning experiences of Chinese background students in an Australian university. A mixed method approach, which involved both quantitative and qualitative method, was utilises to collect and analyse data. Snowball sampling was used for the participant recruitment. A 42-item questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data, and semi-structured interviews were used to gather qualitative data. The quantitative data were analysed by SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) version 16, and the qualitative data were analysed by NVivo version 8. The findings discovered in the data analysis showed that English language ability was highly emphasised by almost all Chinese background students. Also, there are indeed cultural differences influencing western and eastern educational styles. Lastly, most Chinese background students used positive coping strategies, and highly valued the support from universities.