Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The internationalization of teaching staff is the main strategy in connecting teaching ideologies, methods and content to the world’s best universities. Colleges and universities in China promote the internationalization of teaching staff through a variety of ways, the most convenient of which is to recruit foreign teachers as a way of introduce high-quality foreign resources and to promote the internationalization of higher education. According to the current statistics, the research of foreign teachers in universities pay more attention to summarizing their management experiences, and at the level of research methods, qualitative research plays a more dominant role. However, the differences in the perceived value of foreign teachers and the complexity of management methods determined the diversity of content and methodology in this research.

This study selected 15 Colleges and universities’ foreign teachers with different levels of authority and different levels of teaching in Liaoning Province as research subjects. A total of 200 questionnaires were issued, 145 questionnaires were returned, and of those, 122 were valid. The survey efficiency was 84.1%, and the survey rate was 30%. Through the questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews, this study attempted to thoroughly elucidate the status of foreign teachers in universities, to verify previous studies that discovered problems in the management of foreign teachers in colleges and universities in China, and to explore the causes of some major problems in the management process. Lastly, this paper brings forth policy recommendations with university faculty supervisors in mind, and with the objective to improve the management of foreign teachers.

The results show that the management of foreign teachers in colleges and universities in China relies on a non-systematic method with a basis in rationality and empiricism. There is a lack of scientific and effective theoretical support, and measures for solving cross cultural conflict. Some foreign teachers are often led to confusion and disappointment in their experiences. One of the key issues to resolve therefore involves assessing the applicability of the management method from one theory to another in order to avoid psychological imbalances caused by a different management culture.