Cross-cultural social contexts: a comparison of Chinese and US students’ experiences in active learning classrooms

Active learning classrooms (ALCs) have been demonstrated to have significant and positive impacts on student learning experiences, student learning outcomes, and instructor and student behavior compared to traditional classrooms. The social context of a classroom – levels of student–student and student–instructor interaction – has been demonstrated to partially explain the effects ALCs have on students and instructors. This research is the first attempt to extend social context research beyond the US higher education classroom by comparing levels of social context of Chinese and US students taking courses in ALCs. We find that formal student–instructor relations in the US and China are not the same, that general student–student relations, informal student–instructor relations, and students as instructors are quite similar for Chinese and US students, but that these relationships express themselves at different levels. We believe that some of the variation observed can be attributed to cultural differences but are hopeful that the similarities observed lend themselves to expanding learning space research on social context to other countries and advancing cross-cultural research on learning spaces.