Cultivating Chinese international students’ social and emotional competence in a reflexive, multilingual and multicultural international community

With huge numbers of Chinese international students, attention needs to be paid to their social and emotional competence (SEC), which relates to students’ learning, social life, well-being and responsible action. This study utilised semi-structured interviews to examine the development of SEC among 16 Chinese international students in the US, Canada, Germany, and Denmark. The participants reported making progress with the support of a multilingual and multicultural international community, along with their reflexivity about stereotypical views or biases and their developing identities and responsibilities. The challenges were attributed to dominant global neoliberal and situated host assimilative ideologies, and language and (inter)cultural factors. The study offers implications for university policies and educational practices oriented towards constructing a welcoming and respectful social environment, using critical cosmopolitan pedagogy to enhance international students’ individual reflexivity and cultivate critical social awareness and self-awareness to confront challenges related to power and injustice, and responsibly negotiate transformative changes.