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A research report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Psychology by Coursework and Research Report in the field of Organisational Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg March 2017 / The aim of the study was to assess the challenges faced by international students in South Africa. The study was conducted at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. There were 14 international students who participated in the study. Of these, 6 were male and 8 were female. The study was qualitative in nature. An interview schedule was used to interview participants. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse data. The results showed that international students in South Africa faced adjustment challenges relating to: reasons for choosing to study in South Africa, first settling in experiences, financial constraints, registration process, language problems, visa application and immigration laws, cultural differences, diversity, discrimination, academic challenge, homesickness, social support, institutional assistance and how they handled the challenges to cope with the prevailing situation in South Africa. Future studies should thus focus on finding effective ways to improve the adjustment process for international students in South Africa. / GR2019

International expatriate schools require educational leaders to guide culturally diverse stakeholders as they prepare students to address world problems. In the United States, effective educational leadership has been demonstrated as necessary to implement research-based practices. However, researchers have not yet established the leadership needed from expatriate kindergarten through Grade 12 school leaders seeking to develop global citizens. This gap leads to the question of how international expatriate educational leaders demonstrate empathetic, emotionally self-managed, or interculturally sensitive skills when meeting a school's global-minded strategic plan. The purpose of this case study was to describe expatriate school leaders' perceptions of how they and their peers demonstrate these skills. The conceptual framework included distributed leadership, emotional intelligence, and intercultural sensitivity in the context of global citizenship. Data from an expatriate middle school in China included interviews with school leaders, documents, and researcher notes. The results indicated that expatriate leaders demonstrated empathy through social responsibility, emotional self-management through personal and professional competence, and intercultural sensitivity through active civic engagement. International expatriate schools may benefit if educational leaders demonstrate support and concern and provide examples of the global-mindedness expected of students. These results can guide faculty members' professional competencies toward implementing instructional programs that target the development of global citizens. Social change could result from international expatriate schools applying described models of distributed leadership toward a unified and socially just purpose.

Chinese international students’ difficulties in adjusting to the U.S. classrooms has long been overlooked. They have been stereotyped as not experiencing any problems as a result of their excellence at all levels of education, which also implies that they have been succeeding at handling cross-cultural issues. Research which focuses on Chinese international students are usually generated in the area of second language learning or pedagogical methods, Chinese international students’ cross-cultural experience has not been fully explored. The present study was hence conducted to fill the literature gap. Its results could lead to an improvement of Chinese international EFL students’ studying abroad experience, as well as provide directions for possible future studies. The study investigated the research question: how does a group of eight Chinese international EFL students studying STEM disciplines in doctoral programs at a large public research university make meaning of their cross-cultural classrooms/lab setting experiences? The study is a qualitative case study. Participants were recruited via purposeful snowball sampling. An interpersonal, semi-structured interview was used for data collection, and guidelines provided by Smith et al. (2009) were adopted for data analysis. The results show that all eight participants have been experiencing culture-shock since they arrived in the U.S., and they held many erroneous assumptions about studying in the U.S.. Their major difficulties were generated by adjusting to the U.S. classroom culture and using/understanding cultural English. Causes of their cross-cultural experience could be traced to differences between the Chinese and the U.S. curricula and pedagogical methods; and the teacher centered, textbook oriented teaching methods adopted in their Chinese schools for English teaching. Besides, since most of the participants were top students when they were in China, considering the demand for academic excellence in the Chinese culture, participants’ eagerness to maintain/obtain academic accomplishments severed the negative part of their cross-cultural experience. On the basis of my findings, I recommend re-examining (and corresponding change) of the curricula, avoiding the expert blind spot while teaching, and a change in schools in China regarding its English teaching method. However, because this is a qualitative case study, when facing a different group of students (other than my participants), these suggestions should be applied selectively.

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The United States’ policy to win the Cold War in Africa was to ensure that African states adopted the norms of Western liberalism in the long-term. American officials defined Western liberalism as democracy and free market liberalism. U.S. policy considered capitalism the foundation of Western liberalism. For this reason, U.S. administrations allied with, supported, and cooperated with African governments that participated in global capitalism. U.S. international education programs were vital to U.S. efforts to win the Cold War in Africa in the long-term. The fundamental purpose of the programs was to exert American influence over future African civilian, military, economic, and social leaders. U.S. education programs focused on students from Ethiopia and South Africa to solicit their support for American political and social models as the only legitimate form of governance. Officials hoped the success of Ethiopia and South Africa to evolve under U.S. tutelage would make these countries positive models of Western liberalism to Africa. American international education programs for these countries, however, fueled the rise of Pan-Africanist mobilizations among participating students. These students adapted and utilized the political and social models they learned from international education to successfully organize against U.S. policy and the Ethiopian and South African governments. Student-led insurrections forced the regimes into negotiations at the end of the Cold War. However, successor regimes to the authoritarian governments in Ethiopia and South Africa committed to the norms of Western liberalism. / History

This quantitative investigation focused on women high school principals at Jewish secular schools throughout Israel. Despite challenges, Israeli women have succeeded in obtaining over half of the principal positions at Jewish secular high schools, but the degree to which there is equal gender access to leadership roles in the school system remains unclear. This study examined whether there was clustering of women in high school principal positions in certain geographical areas, the process by which these women obtained principal positions, what obstacles the women overcame, and an analysis if respondents differed by district in terms of their career paths, career breaks, and military experiences. This study showed that although women are in principal positions in equal or greater numbers as men depending on the region, women had a different path than men to obtain this role. The key findings in this research were that 89.5% of women principals were able to return at the same level prior to taking a career break and that 31.8% of female principals had male mentors.

This study explores potential bias in the editorial peer-review system within the context of the field of comparative and international education. Assuming the role as “Guardian of Science” and “social status judge” (Zuckerman & Merton, 1971), peer-review, the quality control system of science, directly affects the growth of science, scientists' academic career and their institutions. The very basic tenet of the peer review system is its assumed objectivity. Bias in editorial peer review process, however, is inevitable. The constitution of the blind peer review mechanism is itself a simply undeniable acknowledgement of that fact. Therefore, this study investigated potential peer-review bias by examining the core peer-reviewed academic journal publications of the field between 1994 and 2003, through the methods of social network analysis. In addition to some descriptive analysis on the overall state of the field, based on the criterion of centrality, focus was specifically given to two networks (co-authorship network and institutional network) and the network structure for patterns that might indicate bias in terms of author, gender, author-affiliated institution, country, number of articles published and number of journals in which the author published. Findings of this research revealed no discernable patterns nor network-wide centralization in either the co-authorship network or the institution network. Thus, no reason exists to suspect the objectivity of the peer-review process of the five core academic journals of comparative and international education 1994 – 2003 on the base of centrality. Further descriptive analyses, however, did reveal patterns that may represent norms of the field and, thus, may suggest potential sources of bias. Findings indicated that 1) scholars of the field tend to research independently and publish in relative isolation, and single-authored journal articles are the norm of the field; 2) the field is dominated by the scholars and institutions of Western countries, especially the U.K and the U.S; and 3) journals of the field tend to publish more authors from the hosting countries of the journal. The implications of these findings were also discussed.

Today's global environment poses more and more challenges for higher education institutions to provide learning opportunities that enable students to become globally competent and prepared to face the challenges of an increasingly global society. For many universities, internationalizing their campuses can help students acquire knowledge, skills, and experiences to be able to compete in the global economy and become productive members of a diverse world society. The purpose of the study was to explore the extent to which internationalization had been realized in Florida's public universities by determining (1) whether there was a relationship between articulated commitment and the level of internationalization; (2) whether there was a relationship between curriculum and the level of internationalization; (3) whether there was a relationship between organizational infrastructure and the level of internationalization; (4) whether there was a relationship between funding and the level of internationalization; (5) whether there was a relationship between institutional investment in faculty and the level of internationalization; and (6) whether there was a relationship between international students/student programs and the level of internationalization. Data derived from the internationalization survey were used to analyze the six research questions by employing descriptive statistics, Pearson coefficient of correlation, and Chi-Square tests. There were strong positive correlations between the six categories noted above and the level of internationalization efforts in Florida public universities. Implications for practice include the development of various strategies to help internationalize their campuses and the student learning experience.