Teaching Preferences of International Students: A Review of STEM and Non-STEM Student Perspectives

Background

Culture shock may be the first big discomfort faced by international students when they arrive in the new host country. Even so, this will not be the only challenge they face. As soon as they move abroad to study, international students must adapt to new social and academic environments. Beyond living arrangements, socialization, language barriers, changes in eating practices, and in communication, international students also must face issues regarding their academic life. They will not only deal with new methods of teaching used by their instructors, in a foreign language, but they will also have to alter their learning strategies and preferences to a new learning environment (Rao, 2017; Smith, Zhou, Potter, & Wang, 2019; Wong, 2004).

Smith, Zhou, Potter, and Wang (2019) identified some of the teaching practices that have high levels of student satisfaction and perceptions of learning. They found that instructors who use these teaching practices will create a more accessible learning environment for international students. In a subsequent research report (Smith, Zhou, Potter, Wang, Pecoraro, & Paulino, 2019), they found that by examining individual student characteristics (e.g., country of origin, the field of study, level of study), the preferred teaching practices, rated by the respondents, varied significantly. In addition, they revealed 22 promising teaching practices where there was a significant difference between the responses of STEM and non-STEM students regarding student satisfaction and perceptions of learning.

Although there are studies that confirm variability in student satisfaction and perceptions of learning by the students’ field of study, the literature is deficient regarding investigating the experiences of international students. The purpose of this article is to examine the different teaching and learning preferences of international students, with specific attention to the differences between STEM and non-STEM students’ preferences, to identify the most promising teaching practices for teaching linguistically and culturally diverse international students.

The following two research questions guided this study:

• 1.

  What are the promising teaching practices for teaching linguistically and culturally diverse international students that have high international STEM student satisfaction and students’ perceptions of student learning?

• 2.

  What are the promising teaching practices for teaching linguistically and culturally diverse international students that have high international non-STEM student satisfaction and students’ perceptions of student learning?