Three essays on assimilation and acculturation of international instructors at U.S. research universities

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three chapters that answer an overarching question: "How do foreign-born instructors assimilate and acculturate into U.S. academia as an immigrant-receiving environment?" Across the three chapters, quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed to study the situations of international instructors and understand their changes in behavioral patterns over time using different immigration theories. In the first chapter, using grading as a marker of assimilation, I examine the gap in grading behaviors between international and domestic instructors and how the gap changes over time. The second chapter studies the cultural determinants of the grading gap between international and domestic instructors, anchoring on home country characteristics as pre-migration factors. The third chapter broadens the theoretical basis of acculturation theory to explore the stories behind the behaviors of international graduate instructors as they start their teaching, as well as the acculturation of their instructor identity, in a U.S. public university.