Teaching in offshore programmes: an assessment of university faculty’s self-efficacy, cultural competence and preparedness

Abstract

This study aims to examine the teacher self-efficacy and cultural competence of university faculty in the context of offshore programmes, and the impact of these two constructs on teaching satisfaction, intention and preparedness. A questionnaire survey collected data from the faculty members of universities in Taiwan, a non-English-speaking country, which launched offshore programmes in Vietnam. It then applies structural equation modelling technique to estimate the path coefficients and test its proposed research model. The analysis reveals that in the context of teaching in offshore programmes, cultural competence is a major factor determining university faculty’s teaching self-efficacy, and has an indirect effect, through the direct effect of teaching self-efficacy, on satisfaction, intention and preparedness. It is surprising though that faculty members are found very confident of their self-efficacy when teaching in English in offshore programmes, even though none of them are native English speakers.

Keywords:

• Transnational education
• teaching self-efficacy
• cultural competence
• teaching preparedness
• offshore programme