Individuating emotional clarity in multicultural classrooms of higher education: A transnational study on nonverbal dynamics of enculturation and acculturation

Abstract

Based on the class observations and survey answers from the multicultural class members in higher education who were teaching or studying in China, Russia, South Korea and USA—this study explores the nonverbal factors that facilitate or impede the reciprocal process of enculturation and acculturation. The respondents were 40 instructors from 13 countries and 111 international students from 34 countries. Meanwhile, the author visited 5 instructors’ classes of altogether 101 participants with records and class meeting minutes. After carefully analysing the collected data with the help of recent scholarship, this study finds that some multicultural higher education experiences were still the results of cultural domination and resistance and calls for attention to emotional clarity and individuation in nonverbal communications, especially the emotional dynamics that can reciprocate both processes of enculturation and acculturation instead of racialising or nationalising cultural differences. The aim of this research was to partially review and refresh the humanistic attention to universal, but individuated, ideals of nonverbal emotional equality, equal emotional physicality and sociality in multicultural classrooms.

Keywords:

• emotional clarity
• nonverbal emotion
• enculturation
• acculturation
• individuation
• care
• emotion

Public interest statement

This paper explores possible better ways to make international students and instructors feel better in the multicultural and transnational classrooms. When international scholars come to college, they are supposed to have emotionally grown up for more rational competencies. However, as studies have shown, their emotional vulnerability is high. Besides the stress of competition, they face the problems of adapting new cultures and strengthening their own cultures. Cultural differences and the attention to them, which are sometimes purposely displayed for certain racial or national benefits, have turned to be bottlenecks for many multicultural college classrooms. This current study calls for the attention shift to real constant care about diverse scholars’ daily life and emotional needs behind the scenes because usually they do not have the dependable resources to live normally in a foreign country, especially those societies where nationalism is strong.

1. Introduction

Because of the complicated political, cultural and physical factors, international students would be emotionally more vulnerable than native students, and would have to experience more stress (Sakurai, Parpala, Pyhältö, & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2014, p. 27). The situation can be worse when they arrive in competitive societies where they would encounter emotionally abusive practices. International students and instructors, especially those from minority societies, need special care and caring services. But usually after one or two orientations in the host university where snacks and drinks are distributed, the school life becomes normal—“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. As Evans (2002) points out, the dominant cultural groups usually do not realise that “minority students [and instructors, too] have always had to deal with shame, anger, and fear in their everyday lives” (as quoted in Wang, 2008, p. 11). Some multicultural class members may “fail to recognize their conscious or unconscious racist or nationalist feelings towards others” (Matias & Zembylas, 2014, p. 333).

This current study explores how racialised or nationalised dynamics surface nonverbally in the multicultural classrooms of higher education, how to put specific “care” in the centre of multicultural higher education and how to divert the attention of the multicultural classes from discriminating or defending national or cultural differences towards individuating each scholar’s emotional self-efficacy.

The research focus is “higher” education because: (1) in college, emotional issues are considered not as important as rational competencies; (2) at college level, most multicultural learners or instructors would have to independently rely on their own emotional choices to make cultural adjustments, especially in nonverbal matters. When these two opinions are considered in the context of multiculturalism and transnational identity, studies on the nonverbal mechanisms of the class members would be instrumental for educators to facilitate certain policies, such as appointing a special counsellor who understands cultural boundaries to arrange seats or design discussion patterns for each multicultural or transnational class. Many host universities do have many thoughtful pamphlets of diversity policies and many people who know about them, but they usually do not really welcome every unique culture and provide appropriate conveniencies, and really concern about each diverse member’s physical and mental health. Comparative studies of nonverbal classroom dynamics may help them to divert their attention from paperwork to real scenarios.

This article analyses the collected information and discusses the related emotional issues with the help of scholarly sources. After the sections of “Introduction”, “Literature review” and “Methodology”, the difference and confusion about emotion is addressed in the section of “emotional metro”. In the section of “Findings” (with surveys and class observations), the focus is the individualised nonverbal dynamics of cultural differences and emotional clarity in multicultural academe. The main attention of “Discussion” is the power structure built by the physical and emotional energy—the nonverbal dynamics in the process of cultural adjustments. It is followed by a short conclusion.

2. Literature review

Recently, a number of scholars, mostly from “Western” host universities, have conducted significant research on the emotional issues in multicultural classes of higher education (Alhazmi & Berenice, 2013; Arnot, Schneider, & Welply, 2013; Hagenauer & Volet, 2014; Löfström & Nevgi, 2014; Matias & Zembylas, 2014; Mazer, McKenna-Buchanan, Quinlan, & Titsworth, 2014; Sakurai et al., 2014; Värlander, 2008; von Krogh, 1998; Wang, 2008; Zembylas, 2012, etc.). While the attention to cultural identity and differentiation is still embedded in their explorations, their focuses were not just how to promote positive emotions, but what role social context and cultural identity play in emotional dynamics. They also began to notice the negative effects of “masked” positive emotions and the emotionality of nonverbal classroom interactions.

Sara Ahmed’s (2004) “sociality of emotions” model explains how individuals come together and make new group identities through the processes of acculturation and enculturation. In this study, acculturation refers to the new cultural behaviours a college student learns from other cultures, especially in the multicultural classrooms, when he or she is studying in a foreign country or with foreign class members. Enculturation, on the other hand, can be understood as the de facto (“natural”) development of a college student’s home culture. In the setting of multicultural higher education, both experiences could intertwine to form reciprocal potentials. But just as Ahmed mentioned, it is our ideological emotion that will usually separate these two processes as the different cultural “bodies” align with each other in the multicultural classroom and alienate other “unapproachable” bodies. In other words, when we think of international education as an eclectic repertoire for social competition, the multicultural classroom is not a haven where the scholars can exchange ideas without risks or dangers.

In the context of social reality, racialism and nationalism are two active emotional dimensions that have helped to shape the power relations in most multicultural classrooms where domination and resistance are negotiating a new level of acculturation and enculturation (Svašek, 2008). Racialism and nationalism could easily function in transnational classes if cultural differences become the main concern.

First of all, body language and other nonverbal interactions do play important roles in multicultural classrooms. They convey through physical media and portray physical evidences of emotional information. When it comes to the physicality of emotions, confidence and shame are the most intensified elements in creating and sustaining the power structure in the classrooms of different bodies (Ahmed, 2004, p. 82). A multicultural classroom is like an executive suite where different cultural identities are negotiating the best agreements for providing relevant information and ideas. Each member would try to properly dress up because, as Olliff (2001) explained, “the body … unavoidably becomes a cultural signifier” (p. 224). But this cultural signifier should be often individuated through social backgrounds.

Most people tend to consider acculturation and enculturation separately. While educators and learning scholars pay more attention to promoting the “positive” emotions in the multicultural classrooms, the unified development of enculturation and acculturation is interrupted inadvertently. When the embedded emotional dynamics of these two dimensions surface, the power relations would relocate the students to either defend or resist their respective cultural processes—especially at the level of nonverbal interactions. Neglecting the complexity of these nonverbal communications was one of the noticeable factors that made the multicultural classes less productive or effective than what was expected. On one hand, when “negative” emotions occur, people tend to put on the masks of “positive” emotions and neglect the very indispensable information for class rapport and discussion subject (Matias & Zembylas, 2014). On the other hand, many socially unacceptable or harmful behaviours—such as hasty shame, alienation or disgust (Wang, 2008)—are often normalised by the dominant social group in the classroom, and often at the expense of international instructors and students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Fortunately, educators have turned to the study of social context—especially in making the processes of individuation, the socialisation of a student’s cognitive development of self and other—and nonverbal emotional dynamics. By individuation, this study emphasises more on the efforts of the individual self reaching out to the social other and finding a distinct whole being that functions constructively in a social context. This is important because the racist and nationalist rhetoric about global education is to find new allies and serve the interests of their own kind. Many scholars, however, realise that diversity education is meant to implement more significant changes for the “non-dominant” groups than the “dominant” groups (Ngo, Tran, Gibbons, & Oliver, 2000). To accomplish this goal, socio-economic parameters—for instance, income, housing, medical care, etc.—that constitute the “body” are studied along with the emotional dynamics that power the “non-dominant” learners through both dimensions of enculturation and acculturation.

3. Methodology

This study was initiated by the attempt of critical reflection on the author’s emotional experiences as a student or instructor in China, USA, South Korea and Russia. As the terminology of emotion classification accumulated through the interpretation of Paul Ekman, Robert Plutchik, James Russel, etc., the map for a metro of emotion was designed (see Figure 1). The map was sent to multicultural class members and the collected data are discussed in Section 4. This is to detect the status quo of multicultural or transnational class members’ emotional clarity.

Figure 1. A map of the metro of emotion.

Using the protocols of Institutional Review Board, the author prepared the paperwork for permission. Most instructors, especially the five instructors of the visited classes, were considerate and provided all the necessary opportunities for the research. The director of the Programme of International Students at Higher School of Economics (HSE) volunteered to conduct the survey and collected the signatures. Most instructors and students in China, South Korea, Russia and USA were enthusiastic in facilitating the research. The author also collected interesting and helpful information through successful communications in the Researchgate blogs.

However, a few cases were difficult. When a gentleman and a pregnant lady—both teaching master students in the same department of psychology in Moscow—were asked for the permissions to visit some of their classes, they were interested in the project, but soon became nervous about the ethics of approval. It took the author several weeks to find the location of the building of the department of psychology—it takes much patience to locate the street number 76B in Moscow. When the paperwork was done, both of them stopped replying to the author’s email messages. For one reason or another, a professor, who was supposed to provide academic help for the author, blocked all the possibilities of research in the Institute of Education of HSE. That is the reason that all successful surveys and class visits were conducted in other departments of HSE or other universities. Also, several instructors did not think very highly of the survey (they showed their “disdain” nonverbally) and never returned their answers even though the author sent both electronic and hard copies to them. When the research was tested by communication skills and the emotional clarity of friendship, without any systematic support, the morality of academic mutual help or international community was the ethical issue that has puzzled the author for quite some time. When a professor kept on sending other colleagues’ manuscripts for proofreading, I often immediately gave thorough corrections, comments and feedback no matter how long the written work was and how busy I was at the very time of pushing this current project forwards.

To explore nonverbal dynamics in the multicultural and transnational classrooms, two surveys were designed. They were conducted for the international instructors and students with slightly different versions to consider the special issues related to the host country for all participants, and in addition, the level of study for each learning scholar. The respondents were 40 instructors from 13 countries and 111 students from 34 countries. Meanwhile, the author visited five instructors’ classes with records and meeting minutes. The class visits—which were finished and mostly made into files much earlier than the finalised survey versions—were helpful in manoeuvring the questions and choices for the surveys.

The surveys were tailored to collect information about international students and instructors’ emotional sensitivity, their true feelings in the multicultural classes and host universities, and their nonverbal emotional mechanisms. Special attention was given to questions that would help to detect the status quo of emotional intelligence, the nonverbal dynamics of racialism, nationalism or cultural differences, and the individualised emotionality of acculturation or enculturation in the multicultural classrooms of higher education.

The survey for international students was developed with slightly different focuses for four groups of participants, that is, there were four sets of data for different analytic purposes. The first one was designed exclusively for a class of eight master students of International Relations at Higher School of Economics, Russia. The map of emotional metro was the major reference. The purpose was to find their true state of emotional clarity, especially attitudes towards other class members, discussion subject and the instructor.

The second version was designed for the master students of Teacher Education at Higher School of Economics, Russia. Sonya (pseudonym) was the only respondent. As a future teacher, she showed great interest in the project and volunteered to address all the related issues. She was asked to recognise the emotions in the map of metro, compare her emotional clarity in the observed class of teacher education with that of her other multicultural classes in general and finish the multiple choices for the 10 questions.

After that, the survey focused on the 15 emotions and 10 questions that may effectively reflect the emotional sensitivity of the international students and the emotional awareness of the multicultural classrooms and host universities. The emotions were omitted when Sofia Sadeikova, the director of International Programme at Higher School of Economics, Russia conducted the survey with 29 international students. Then, for the fourth time, the map of emotion was added to the questionnaire, and the survey was sent to Florida Institute of Technology, Korea Christian University and Beijing Normal University. When it was sent to different countries, some choices were modified to help find emotionality to stereotypes, such as issues of privacy in USA and China, irresponsiveness in South Korea or pushiness in China. The participants were 64 students, mainly undergraduate, who were studying in the multicultural classrooms of the above universities.

The questionnaire for the instructors of multicultural classrooms also has the same metro of emotion, but the multiple choices and the 10 questions are different so that it will provide information from the perspective of instructors. Altogether, 40 instructors who were teaching in the United States, South Korea and China responded to the questions.

The class visits with attention to nonverbal dynamics of emotional clarity were made from March to December 2014. The author visited five classes in Far Eastern State Transport University (FESTU, Khabarovsk, Russia) and Higher School of Economics (HSE, Moscow, Russia). At least one meeting of each class was videotaped, tape-recorded or noted with the detailed class meeting minutes. Table 1 shows the home countries of the students and instructors (pseudonyms here, but real names in “Acknowledgement”).

Table 1. Visited classes and home countries

	Date of visit	Host university	Level of study	Area of study	Instructor/Country
1	10 June 2014	FESTU	BA	Russian Language	Nina, Russia
2	28 October 2014	HSE	MA	International Relations	Dennis, USA
3	23 October 2014	HSE	MA	Teacher Education	Emma, Russia
4	12 December 2014	HSE	MA	Public Policy	Denis, Cameroon
5	19 December 2014	HSE	MA	Social Justice	Toni, France
	Home countries of the students
1	Brazil, China, Cuba, Japan, Peru, South Korea, Syria
2	Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK
3	France, Germany, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland
4	Austria, Finland, India, Italy, Mongolia, Myanmar, Netherlands, Russia, Thailand
5	Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, USA

In the class meeting minutes, each class member’s physical appearance, body movements and other nonverbal elements were recorded. When interpreting these elements, the analytic focus was the causes, especially those related to racialism, nationalism or cultural differences, and the effects of certain multicultural and transnational behaviours.

The collected data are specifically analysed in Sections 5 and 6.

4. The metro of emotion in multicultural higher education

According to the classifications of emotion by several psychologists, this study began with the attempt to map the metro of emotion (see Figure 1). Ten lines—attitude, self-regulation, discourse, mood, temperament, ethics, response, self-control, social awareness and adjustment—were laid out to link 59 stations of emotion. It was sent out along with the 15 important emotions in higher education for the participants to recognise: confidence, sensitivity, anger, honesty, individuation, labelling, arrogance, care, appreciation, confusion, politeness, jealousy, neglect, happiness and conscience, which are listed based on personal class observations and teaching experiences in China, USA, South Korea and Russia.

Two questions were prepared for the multicultural classes: (1) What line(s) and station(s) do you think are misplaced? (2) If we compare our feelings in multicultural higher education to a metro of emotion, what are the five strongest impressions you have felt about the services of the staff and faculty in your host university?

Only nine respondents who were studying in USA answered the first question: Three from India, two from China and one from Oman, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Azerbaijan, respectively. They reported 45 disagreements about the 59 stations on the map (6 for discrimination and loneliness, 4 for ignorance and 3 for each of the confusion, melancholy, hypocrisy and sorrow points). The possible unanimous agreement about the 15 designated emotions for multicultural higher education would be confidence, individuation, arrogance, appreciation and conscience. When considering the possibility of all the involved participants, the differences about what emotions are and what functions or malfunctions they serve would be much larger. Paul Ekman (1992) pointed out one reason—“the failure to recognise that many of the emotion terms refer to variations within a family” (p. 173). The complexity of emotional phenomena also helps to explain these differences culturally developed along with the lines of race and nation and between the lines of enculturation and acculturation—not only in the regulation and expression of emotions but also in emotion-related judgements. However, these disagreements are the very sources of potential research to effectively promote multicultural higher education.

The struggles for the harmonious development of enculturation and acculturation when they face racialised and or nationalised emotional choices—especially nonverbal—are evidently reflected in the replies from most learning scholars who came from largely different cultural backgrounds: the five strongest emotions the respondents have experienced in their host universities in China, Russia, South Korea and USA.

The data were a random collection. The respondents’ contributions roughly reflect the state of emotional clarity in higher education. The purpose of this article was to point out the influence of national or cultural sentimentalism and to explore the ways for multicultural instructors and students to be more aware of the subtleties of nonverbal emotional signals in order to avoid labelling. Some of the “negative” emotions mentioned in these tables have partially proved that cultural sentimentalism still exists, mostly nonverbally, in today’s ivory towers. The international students from Bangladesh, India, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia provided the most essential information about the challenges of embracing harmless cultural differences: why would their “bodily” differences, as suggested by their cultural identities, influence their emotional experiences, as expressed in the surveys? Obviously, they were sometimes hurt in their host universities because of their physical differences and cultural affinities.

One possible explanation to the comparatively positive collections from China and South Korea is that the respondents were friends in the same universities. That roughly implies that multicultural classrooms of high diversity may maintain high rapport as well. Such goals challenge but also motivate the instructors if they are also culturally diverse. In the survey for multicultural and international instructors is a question: If we compare our feelings in multicultural higher education to a metro of emotion, what are the five strongest impressions you have felt about your classes at the hiring institution(s)? Almost all of the 10 multicultural instructors from Burki Nafaso, Canada, China, New Zealand and USA experienced conscience, individuation, sensitivity and care that best promotes the learning dynamics of multicultural higher education.

A number of scholars have acknowledged that care is the centre of human emotions (Mayeroff, 1971; Mayeroff & Gaylin, 1976; von Krogh, 1998). Care motivates “mutual trust, active empathy, access to help, lenience in judgments, and courage” (von Krogh, 1998, p. 137–138). But when the respondents addressed the question: “Do you agree that care is the centre of our emotion?”, they shared interesting insights. Ten American instructors submitted their answers. Nine said no. Only one said yes. Among the 44 students who also responded to the same question, eight American students said yes, and three said No. Altogether the students gave 13 noes and 31 yeses. It is interesting that the American students who would supposedly care less than their instructors chose more “care”.

The Urban Dictionary has the following entry—“Care” said when you really don’t. A very sarcastic statement that is usually funny. Person one: oh wow! look at me I’m so great. Person two: “care”. So “care” was used as “no” by some Americans. But the point is not to label this particular emotional utterance as a cultural product of individualism and liberalism—which are sometimes not positive for the emotional development of an individual. The point is that these instructors were actually “caring” to inquire the real “ways” to “do”—not “say” or falsely “show” the “care”.

Interestingly, as Matias and Zembylas (2014) wrote in their article—“When saying you care is not really caring”: “Emotions of Disgust, Whiteness Ideology, and Teacher Education”: “The demands to reconsider the “truthfulness” of emotions are instructive because … the emotional responses of students and teachers are often associated with emotional diminutives which … may in fact mask other emotions that are socially unacceptable …” (p. 320). So the emotional nuances in the choices of these surveys actually “truly” contribute to the design of this metro of emotion: depending on a particular “somebody”, each emotion could be the centre. Also, any true emotion will change when the “body” is situated in a different space. In the map of metro, the next stations for “care” are “confidence”, “politeness”, “clarity”, “loneliness”, “worry”, “hypocrisy” and “neglect”. It shows the map used in this research is a possible, but not the only, design.

Another example can explain why priority should be given to the individuation of emotional clarity over the differentiation of cultural or national identities. When the surveys were sent out through emails, almost all the respondents who had a chance to see the original design did not disfavour the sight of a red heart as the mark of a choice. But three American instructors used other ways—the symbols or letters of “√”, “x” and “y”. One of them specifically wrote that the red heart was an unusual way. We cannot, however, simply jump to the conclusion that using the sign of red heart (or red cross) or not is a cultural index. Many Western participants followed the “rules” of this current study, although in their hearts, they might believe that surveys should follow the usual “rules”. Their emotional clarity, though, made them to cooperate with the authoritative designer of this current research.

5. Findings

5.1. The surveys

111 international students contributed their information and ideas. Table 2 shows their simple demographic information.

Table 2. Number of respondents and their home countries

Number of respondents	Countries
1	Azerbaijan, Australia, Bahamas, Ecuador, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Portugal, St. Kitts and Nevis and Venezuela
2	Bangladesh, Belgium, Finland, Jordan, Mexico, Pakistan, Rumania, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Thailand and UK
3	Indonesia
4	Austria, India, Italy and Japan
5	China and South Korea
7	France
8	Germany
11	Russia
25	USA

Altogether 40 instructors joined the discussions: 20 from USA, 5 from UK, 3 from Canada and India, respectively, 2 from China, and 1 from each of Burki Nafaso, France, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia and South Korea.

5.1.1. Survey 1

This survey has two parts for the eight master students of an international affairs class. Because the master student of teacher education did the same questionnaire, her answers to the same questions were also included.

The first question was: What are your attitudes towards other class members, the discussion subject and the professor of this class in general? Attitude is Line 1 in the metro of emotion. These are the numbers of choice made by the nine participants (Table 3): almost all the participants contributed the positive values of the classes—7/9 (80%) or 6/9 (70%) votes for appreciation or respect. Because the author visited both classes, their choices of less positive values are trustworthy. There were moments in each class when a class member felt “dignified” or lost, and later looked indifferent as some signs of social oppression or discrimination surfaced. The different votes to “care” towards people, other class members or the instructor, was far less than those to “care” towards discussion subject. That can be explained in two ways. First, these class members did not “care” enough about interpersonal communications, especially nonverbal interactions, which accounts for the high rate (6/9, 70%) of ineffective rapport. Second, they put the discussion subject, thus the score—the ready ticket for racialism, nationalism or cultural Chauvinism to enter the classroom—over the interpersonal relations. They needed the grade most.

Table 3. Attitudes towards others in the classroom

Other class members		Discussion subject		The professor
1	Dignity	1	Dignity	1	Dignity
1	Indifference	7	Care	4	Care
4	Care	6	Appreciation	6	Respect
1	Jealousy	1	Awe	6	Appreciation
7	Respect			1	Awe
7	Appreciation

The second question was: What are your main choices for the following routes of the metro of emotion in this class? These learning scholars have comparatively a high level of emotional clarity. Although most of them have shared the “positive experiences”—confidence, self-esteem, clarity, determination, conscience, differentiation, consciousness, interest and sensitivity, they also reported the few “negative” emotions—discrimination, cynicism, hypocrisy, hesitation, labelling, arrogance and alienation. As observed in the visited classes, they surfaced mostly in nonverbal forms, but sometimes actually helped to sustain the sense of immediacy. The nonverbal dynamics of these nine master students will be further discussed in the section of class observations.

5.1.2. Survey 2

Sonya (pseudonym) showed great interest in this study, and patiently replied to all the questions of six pages. When she described her attitude about the whole university—as both a student and tutor—best reflected the complex realities of multicultural higher education: anger, disgust, indifference, neglect, care, worry, jealousy, respect, appreciation, admiration, incomprehension and enthusiasm.

Her complicated attitudes came from the unsettling nature of a newly internationalised university—where international and national faculty and students had relatively less opportunities in bettering or promoting cross-cultural emotions and where cultural differences were usually simply labelled, but not responded and respected in individual and immediate contexts. That led to her self-regulation experiences as mostly “resistance”—irresponsibility, dignity, confidence, loneliness, self-esteem, courage, perseverance; and her discourse emotionality as “exploration”—care, indulgence, cynicism, kindness, politeness, determination, boldness, hesitation, self-esteem, respect and fear, although she also reported clarity, peace and joy.

But comparatively, when the emotional confusion was not a problem, as was the case of her teacher education class, her emotional experiences were mostly “positive”, and her sense of individuation was helpful.

She was emotionally alert in most of the visited classes as will be mentioned in the description excerpt. Her answers to other questions were added to the following survey.

5.1.3. Survey 3

Several friends mentioned the complexity of the prepared map. So when the administrator of an international student office kindly offered to conduct a survey for this study, the map was taken away and the focus was to collect information about emotional clarity (especially nonverbal) in multicultural higher education. Twenty-nine international students in HSE responded to the survey. Then it was developed differently with or without the map of emotion when the special cultural issues of China, Russia, South Korea and USA were considered. Altogether 103 international students who were studying in the four countries joined the research (74 students responded to all the questions of this survey.

The participants reported all the 15 attitude emotions that can be mostly detected through nonverbal signals. The large number of “care” (91/114, 80%, in the successful class, 23/114, 20%, in the less successful class. Note: 114 is the total number of offered choices, 91 is the number of chosen choices in the successful classes and 23 in the less successful classes. The following numbers in the brackets follow the same pattern), “appreciation” (109/127, 80%, 18/127, 15%) and “respect” (138/176, 85%, 38/176, 23%) that multicultural higher education have been successful. However, it also faces new challenges: “indifference” (49/163, 30%, 114/163, 70%), “neglect” (9/75, 12%, 66/75, 90%), “anger” (7/68, 10%, 61/68, 90%) and “estrangement” (15/37, 40%, 22/37, 60%).

All the high numbers in the eight multiple-choice questions and the written responses show nonverbal emotional clarity—care, sustainability and immediacy—is important in transforming multicultural intelligence. Nonverbal signals are necessary and should be integrated into the reciprocal process of enculturation and acculturation. This is specifically supported by the written answers of the 67 respondents. A large amount of the comments were about the challenges of being an instructor of multicultural and transnational classes. Students from Russia, India, Spain, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Oman and France all reported the lack of nonverbal communications from their instructors. A few of them also pointed out the lack of multicultural approach: The subjects are prejudiced against some students from one country but not against others (Thailand); subject/questions were more favourable towards one cultural group (India); not multicultural teaching approach (Morocco); only prefer the students from the country they are excited to talk about (Indonesia); they do not adapt their style to intercultural settings (Germany). Some even suggested their preferred intercultural nonverbal communication methods: When speaking English as a second language, she should look at us (Bangladesh); more visual materials (France); include some hands on activities to make discussion interesting (Pakistan). For the attitudes of their class mates, they complained a little about cooperation: not many got involved in the class (Morocco); all members are negative. They didn’t participate in the discussion (India); native [Russian] students were not active by coincidence (Germany); classmates use other languages I don’t understand (China). These problematic situations are largely connected to racial, national or cultural preferences, and some of the “harsh” remarks are the very reflections of such sentiments.

5.1.4. Survey 4

It was prepared for multicultural instructors. Instead of marking the choices for the ten questions about emotional clarity, the respondents were asked to take the “heart” out if they do not agree. Forty professors contributed their information and ideas.

Each nonverbal factor has a fair share of choices (20–30/40, 50–75%): (1) benefits of a multicultural class; (2) challenges; (3) emotional transitions; (4) decoding emotions; (5) emotional differentiation; (6) positivity; (7) negative emotions; (8) talking about emotions; (9) loss of attention; and (10) vulnerability. The highest votes (25–30/40, 60–75%) mean that most multicultural instructors have begun to notice these common nonverbal factors and may have been actively adapting relevant nonverbal emotionality to promote or deal with these emotional issues. The low number for “care” about “negative” emotions and “vulnerable” students shows that it is a big challenge to make no class member “left behind” in a multicultural setting. This will also be addressed in “The class observation”.

Their written answers greatly help to understand nonverbal emotions in multicultural higher education. These instructors’ answers seem to show that they know exactly how to tackle the problems the international students complained about in their written remarks. For example, in response to the students’ reports about the lack of nonverbal communications, a UK instructor would suggest “open body language”, a Canadian instructor more “[i]nteractions and feedback between teachers and students”—“individually outside class time” as a UK instructor pointed out—an American instructor more communications “with those who have the negative emotions”, or those who “need extra encouragement or help” as another American instructor wrote. Just like those students who complained and had adequate cognitive knowledge of multiculturalism, these instructors all showed keen interests in cultural and emotional sociality. If that is the real case, there must be something missing in between these two dynamic ends. One obvious mechanism that is needed is the connection of the instructors’ agendas to the emotional conditions of the students “behind the scenes” as an American instructor mentioned. This will be further discussed in Section 6.

5.2. The class observations

All the five instructors, who were teaching in Far Eastern State Transport University (Khabarovsk) or Higher School of Economics (Moscow) in Russia, have substantial multicultural experiences. Denis was born in Cameroon, but was educated and worked in New Zealand, Australia and Sweden, and has had professional experiences in Poland and Russia as well. Dennis was born in Israel, when young, went to USA with parents, one native Russian, the other native German, and is working in Russia and Israel. Nina speaks both Russian and French, and has been teaching Russian to students from all over the world. Emma—who speaks fluent Russian, French and English—teaches Russian and Teacher Education. Toni who speaks fluent French, German and English was born in Luxembourg, but became a citizen of France, got the PhD degree in Germany, and has been teaching and working in Georgia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Germany and Russia.

In Survey 3, 18 international students reported that their clothes are like those of other class members, but 27 chose to wear differently and casually. Among the 5 instructors and 101 learning scholars in the observed classes, everyone wore different clothes at the moments of observation. Even for religious reasons (“Always abaya”, wrote one respondent with a sign of smile in survey (3) or professional requirements (one respondent wrote that she had to wear her dancing suit), all these observed individuals contributed to sustain the sense of variety.

Table 4 is a brief description of the physical profiles of some religious participants on an observed day.

Table 4. Brief physical profiles of a few religious class members

Ahmed	Black tall hat, thick beard, dark blue sweater, red scarf
Bonita	Greenish yellow abaya
Dalan	Dark wavy bob, white khaki shirt with vertical and horizontal green lines, tight blue jeans, Mongolian boots
Elena	Blue habit and headpiece, black coat, grey trousers and shoes, a golden cross with a long chain
Emma	Black sweater, dark blue skirt and a white necklace
Evgenia	Long wavy half-up dark hair, green blouse, dark blue jeans
José	Black shirt with a white tab collar, black pants and shoes, a black watch on the left wrist (right-handed)
Kristina	Sleek long half-up blonde hair, yellow suit with blue corset, brown shoes
Mila	Sleek half-up braided long blonde hair, white suit, dark blue blouse and shoes.
Nina	Cascading half-up curly long blonde hair, tight black blouse, green skirt, black stockings, black leather shoes, a steel watch on the left wrist (left-handed)
Susha	Thick long wavy dark hair, long dark dress with light blue snaky patterns
Tad	Red shirt, light green trousers with tiny horizontal and vertical blue line.
Vera	Thick dark bob, short sweater with white and black stripes, sky blue jeans

José and Elena were doing full-time church services, so they did not have much room to change their outfits. José even could not choose a colour other than black, but still, he did manage to look different once in a while. Luckily, Elena could have had four colours to wear her nun costume—black, blue, yellow and purple.

The English word “habit” has two meanings—(1) “something that someone does regularly, sometimes without knowing doing it”; (2) “a special piece of long clothing worn by monks and nuns”. This word is appropriate to explain the nonverbal dynamics in a transnational classrooms: (1) what we wear shows our social identity, thus nonverbal communication constitutes a large section of social meaning; (2) our habit, usually deeply rooted in racial (or ethnic), national or cultural preferences, is always ready to intervene between the processes of acculturation and enculturation. Almost all other European languages share these two meanings when this word is used. Especially in French, it is also related to “live” (j’habite à Paris). The dressing habits did provide large amounts of nonverbal dynamics to these classes. Each class meeting was like performing a play in which each class member contributed their own costumes.

Usually Yukiko was quiet in class. But on 28 October 2014, she wore a pair of red shoes. Artyom who sat behind her noticed and began to talk to her. She turned back to face all other European classmates for the first time. The class moved to a free chat while Jessica and Dennis, the instructor, were setting up the projector and screen. Kamila took a sip of her coffee happily, and Fina put her finger on her lips while others were talking to Yukiko. Dennis joined and asked Artyom to explain the Russia word of “blood” (кpoвь) to make the transition to the topic of oil as threat. Jessica happily moved her body and after putting her hand on the hip, introduced Yukiko. When Yukiko began to make the presentation, her accent was obvious. But when she slowly read the captions of the red maps, the accent was gone. Claude, at one point, brought in the issue of “threat” to the relations between USA and Europe. Yukiko listened carefully to the “White” conversations and ended her presentation with her responses. Dennis, with an applause gesture, said, “Forgot to give Willa a hand. Let’s do twice”.

But there is also hidden danger if the dressing habits or codes are not properly addressed. The cultural messages, in terms of age, gender, nationality or class, could easily influence the emotional processes to mediate the power relations (Svašek, 2008). Although all the five classes experienced a high level of rapport and all the instructors set the tables to suit the class agendas, the racial and national sentiments still took some space of the classrooms.

Nina, the instructor of Class 1, spent a lot of time to arrange the classroom. Emma, a student, not the instructor, used to sit with Zoya, and they often talked to each other. After Nina changed the sitting pattern, the classes became focused and the interactions were more reciprocal. But during the breaks, the class members often formed themselves into cultural groups, which was not always helpful for their studies. In Class 2, Yukiko chose to sit at a marginal place, and made an impression that the European class members formed a dominant group, which was not exactly true. If she “turned around” a little bit, as she did in her last class, then the label of “silence” would be differentiated. Denis, the instructor of Class 4, prepared the desks and tables for the discussion panels and presentations. Interestingly, the sitting pattern on 12 December 2014 gave a strong impression of geopolitics: the Indian Ocean [India (Bonita, greenish yellow abaya), Thailand (Tad, red shirt), Myanmar (Htin, red pants)], the North [Finland (Lakki), Mongolia (Dalan, Kabul)], West Europe [Austria (Antonia), Netherlands (Tess)] and three Russian groups. It was a Public Policy class, so the classroom looked like a debate between three Russian groups and three international groups. During the group discussions, the class members began to visit different panels. At some point, two new circles were formed: the White and the Coloured. After Maxim led a large panel discussion at the corner of the classroom, the drama of racial and national differences built up when he was presenting “Environmental Policy in Malaysia”. It lasted six minutes. “Mr President”—Tad stood up abruptly to challenge Maxim. When Tad sat down, the group (including Lucca, Lisa and Dima) performed an active picket. Bonita held up a paper sign “angrily” while the others shouted all sorts of slogans. The whole class was cheerful. Alex stepped forward to negotiate, but Anton came up and tore the paper sign into pieces. While all these nonverbal actions promoted the understanding of the subject, they revealed the deeply embedded cultural and national sentiments.

Toni, the instructor of Class 5, speaks fluent German, so in the class the five students from Germany, Hungary and Austria were sitting closest to Toni. They also responded actively, mostly nonverbally. Except Zoe from USA, all the other members were less enthusiastic. In Class 3, maybe because of the convenience of tutoring, all the international students were at the back, grouped according to nationality. These arrangements were not made by the instructors, but the racial and national emotionality did influence, consciously or subconsciously, the outlook of these multicultural classrooms.

Undoubtedly, compared with these spatial limits, the temporal “bodily” movements in these five classes were far more successful and effective, partly because these nonverbal emotions were individuated without the interference of cultural processes. The majority of these class members experienced tremendous physical and psychological changes in the good ways, “especially for those maintained a balance between their two cultures” (Ngo et al., 2000, p. 226). All the five instructors demonstrated effective use of body language to convey the message. Also all of them began to think about the students from the perspective of “lower socio-economic backgrounds [who] would be struggling in the classroom”, but if they get the attention of the instructor, who may get help from many resources (Hagenauer & Volet, 2014, p. 254).

One day when Zoya, a student in Class 1, who had to help her father to run a restaurant in a less populated location, was photographing a beautiful aurora—a soaring straight blue beam in the red morning sun, Nina, the instructor, shushed Sayid’s attempt to ask a question and beckoned the whole class to the particular view. After that, Zoya became obviously more motivated. She requested to visit some “real” Russian classes, by which she meant non-language Russian classes. Nina arranged several times for her, and a few for the whole class. The recorded observation was taken from such an occasion. Eight native Russian students joined the debate about the “usefulness” of internet for academic study. Each international participant introduced themselves in both Russian and a native language. Zoya spoke with much confidence and sang a Russian song.

Denis, instructor of Class 4, was almost acting in another class. He smiled four times before speaking without an accent. These are a collection of his physicality—“open hands, fold arms, count with fingers, move over the connection cable (several times ‘across the border’), open and protrude mouth, roll hands, shrug, push elbow, show palms, punctuate with gestures, paw, move head and hand, picture with hands, put hands into pockets, rub forehead, rub hands, and cup chin in the hand”. Nina, the instructor of Class 1, was good at sustaining the immediacy with her hands and eyes. Besides hand gestures, Dennis, the instructor of Class 2, also used silence to summon attention and understanding. The instructors of Class 3 and Class 5 Emma and Toni’s body language was mainly poses and carriages with vocal varieties.

Likewise, the students exhibited helpful nonverbal dynamics. Let us focus on two scenes and see how the processes of enculturation and acculturation can be intertwined through nonverbal individuation:

Tanya moved her hands like Emma, put her foot forward and began her presentation.

This is Emma’s class of teacher education. As a master student, Tanya was intentionally acculturating towards international students. Her Russian education of being a Russian language instructor to international students was a patient and difficult (intense) process of enculturation. Her hands moved constantly, somewhat in “fear” of “losing the job”. But when she—who was wearing a red wool shirt and dark blue pants—briefly glanced at the red pants of a South Korean tutee and danced her foot forward as if she was doing a ballet, she reached another culture—on the basis of acceptable Russian rules—and made the international listeners pleasantly surprised. But this change of acculturation was a result of socialising in multicultural communications that “evokes the individualised inclination of emotions and transforms one’s dispositions to communicate” (Värlander, 2008, p. 147).

This could be further illustrated by Dennis’ class on 28 October 2014:

When Marco mentioned that he was eleven in Iraq during the 1st Gulf War, Fina and Kamila drank coffee. Eva touched her hip with a smiling pose. Willa put both hands to her chin. Marco said, “bullshit.” All laughed. Dennis shushed. Kamila fumbled her blue scarf. Claude and Eva fold their hands while Marco continued. Mila tilted her body, Jessica smiled, Fina grimaced, Eva pouted. Jessica and Willa nodded. Claude bit his teeth to agree. Fina, Mila, Willa, Claude and Jessica put their hands to chins. Claude, Kamila, Eva and Willa folded their hands. Yukiko, Artyom and Jessica put their elbows on the desks. Claude smiled. Jessica put her hands to her face (three times to show “interested”, “disgusted”, and “unbelievable”). Fina and Mila exchanged faces. Mila touched her own earlobe. Artyom and Willa made faces at each other. Artyom raised his index finger and looked at Dennis who pointed at Claude who beckoned Willa.

As Värlander (2008) illustrated, when real care takes place in a multicultural and transnational class, the processes of enculturation and acculturation become reciprocal. Marco is a UK citizen, so he was in the state of both acculturation and enculturation. He was born in Iraq, and the process of enculturation lasted for 11 years. Now his British mindset was giving way for Iraqi sympathy—a nostalgic acculturation. It was an ugly truth—“blood for oil”, so why not use disgusting language? It was not surprising that all European class members were more nonverbally activated to help develop cognition; for them, it was a continuum of enculturation. But when it was about every class, their “action” timing was a process of acculturation: drink coffee, touch hip, put hands to chin, fumble blue scarf, fold hands, tilt body, grimace (without real pain), pout, bite teeth to agree, put hand to chin, put elbows on desk, put hands to face (to show interested, disgusted, unbelievable expressions), exchange faces, touch earlobe, raise index finger and beckon. They accomplished a new episode—a new level of acculturation. Yukiko, while undergoing the usual quiet way of enculturation, put her elbows on the desk without imitating others (Both Artyom and Jessica were sitting behind her and she did not “turn back”.) to indicate she was not just a Japanese girl—a new index of acculturation. Therefore, acculturation is possible if an individual’s state of enculturation is “situated” in a specific immediate context. Otherwise, cultural changes are meaningless if one chooses to jump from one culture to another.

6. Discussion

The high votes of racialised or nationalised anger, estrangement, disgust and neglect indicate a challenge of acculturation. Twenty-four students from the total of 67 respondents (36%) reported that “one cultural group dominated the classroom”. The number from the instructors is 20 from the total of 40 respondents (50%), and one British professor sent a written note that “[t]he dominant cultural group is the leader of the class”. Twenty instructors believed that “[hostility] surfaces when one cultural group dominates the classroom”. Also, most university policies favour the notions of “learning from other cultures” while intending to “increase the intelligence of national markets”. Again, 20 multicultural instructors agreed that “[t] he educational policies of the host university are often nationalistic”. Therefore, although many universities all over the world meant to let significant changes occur in the “non-dominant” group as opposed to the “dominant” group (Ngo et al., 2000, p. 226), the racialised and nationalised emotionality has set the multicultural experiences at domination and resistance.

There are a few “nationalised” and racialised questions in the surveys. One is about privacy issues in American and Chinese societies. Seven out of 9 respondents replied that they had such problems in China. Eight out of 13 respondents from diverse groups reported difficulties of privacy in USA. One American learning scholar specifically wrote a note—“I am American”, which cannot be simply interpreted as national sentimentalism. It can be understood as “I don’t have to answer this because I am American”, or “I do not think so” as a protest to the statement—“Generally speaking, many Americans did not really like foreigners in their hearts”. But 10 out of the 13 respondents from diverse groups voted “yes”. One of the “racial” problems is the issue of “smell”. Fourteen respondents from the “developed” countries voted “yes” to—“Someone in the room smelt badly” Thirteen from the same category claimed that “[some] culturally related life styles prevented me from participating”. One American participant wrote specifically, “The smell distracted my focus”.

But when racial and national emotionality was considered in the context of common purpose, multicultural classrooms became far more interesting than the usual ones. Forty-nine students from the total of 67 respondents (73%) believed that “[each] class member brought in a unique contribution to a subject matter”, and 65% (26/40) of instructors agree. The following statements received high consensus in terms of multiculturalism (votes from 67 students or writer’s country in brackets)—“Different accents actually helped to improve participants” listening/speaking abilities (26); “Different faces helped to sustain a sense of curiosity that promotes interest” (23); “Socialisation became less antagonistic compared with those homogeneous classes” (14); “We maintained constant emotional clarity for related discussion” (29); “We appropriately encouraged and joined relaxing activities” (37); “We had chances to arrange cultural and visual presentations” (32); “Kind of worried about other people’s thoughts, but glad to see different faces” (China).

Another finding was that multicultural classes were calling for more care, sustainability and immediacy, though obviously they had more than usual homogeneous classrooms (votes from 67 students): “The levels of critical thinking and verbal ability were widely different” (40); “Too much information is presented without feedback” (26); “Somehow I felt isolated or alienated” (31); “Some class members distracted the focus when they did unrelated things” (33), “No focused feedback was given to my questions” (29); “I often got no specific guidance in my campus life” (22); “Not many got involved in the class” (Morocco); “Politically incorrect examples?” (Australia); “Not enough information about the studied subject for all students” (Russia), etc.

Eye gaze, vocal variety and refreshing movement are important mechanisms to draw the class together (Mazer et al., 2014, p. 154). In terms of emotional self-efficacy, multicultural classrooms were ideal theatres for class members to improve their nonverbal social skills. When individuated, the emotional sociality and physicality of the multicultural class members, as observed in this study, were proved to be much more effective than usual classes. According to Survey 3 and 4, among 67 students, 46 and among 40 instructors, 27 expressed emotions through nonverbal activities, 41 students and 29 instructors used vocal variety to make emotional transitions. When the body is compared to be “an active process of embodying certain cultural and historical possibilities” (Butler, 1988, p. 521), multicultural classrooms of higher education provide abundant resources of theatrical balance, contrast and sustenance. These resources help to maintain the level of attention “that fixes and directs the application of one’s physical and emotional work” (de Lauretis, 1988, p. 158). Each participant tended to be more aware of other class members (17); We were all alert to the nonverbal expressions of each class member once in a while (19); [The professor arranged] the classroom to best facilitate the discussion (32); The “enjoyable” class instructors used [body] language, gestures of hands, eyes, head, and other physical activities’ (39) [compare the number of 13 for the less successful classes]; When speaking English as a second language, she should look at us (Bangladesh), etc.

When the cultural differences are nonverbally individuated (as a development of enculturation) and socialised (as a cooperation of acculturation), instead of being racialised and nationalised, then the metro of emotion, regardless of positivity or negativity, “provide individuals with information for adaptively responding with appropriate actions, especially physically and psychologically, that would sustain individuals’ well-being” (Palmieri, Boden, & Berenbaum, 2009, p. 560).

Nina, the instructor of Class 1, wrote to me: “My classes with Russian and foreign students are always constructed on an emotional-sensitive basis. I am convinced that effective learning is possible only in the atmosphere of friendly dialogues and interactions where everyone trusts each other from their hearts and helps each other in any possibly difficult situation” (email, 27 September 2014). In a way, international students and instructors are constantly put in “difficult” situations, so to “console” or “reassure” them is a demanding task. It is a patient process of facilitating the nonverbal energy—religious habits (clothes and behaviours), cultural habits (clothes and behaviours), vocal (musical) signs, bodily movements, visual rhetoric, etc.—the sources to power the metro of emotion so that the multicultural learning or teaching scholars can adjust the right spatial and temporal transitions.

7. Conclusion

As mentioned before, international students and instructors are suffering human beings who need “an appropriation that transforms and perhaps even neutralizes their pain into our sadness” (Ahmed, 2004, p. 21). Their nonverbal beauty, grace and eloquence belie the challenges and hardships they embody. If “their” pain does not become “ours”, as Ahmed would say, they will be “emotional” and “troublesome”. This paper has found some of the physicality and sociality of such emotional difficulties: the lack of genuine care, social Darwinism (which could easily change a multicultural class into a nightmare of segregational racialised and or nationlaised domination and resistance), and the lack of remedial services for emotional vulnerability, for those whose emotional intelligence is either very high or very low, the two groups that could be emotionally violated or resentful as a result of helpless resistance. But these surveys and class observations also supported the proposition that if each multicultural individual’s emotional clarity is taken “care” of and individuated instead of labelling cultural differences, nonverbal emotions provide helpful dynamics for multicultural classrooms, especially in higher education.

In order to do so, special attention should be given to the patterns of marginalising international instructors and students in the policy-making and instructional practice of the host university. This is necessary as showcased in the respondents’ choices—(for example, “No space for us”, wrote one young woman from Saudi Arabia)—and the class observations (for example, the sitting patterns). When these issues are addressed, then most nonverbal emotional experiences would be more “true” and instrumental. That calls for more systematic research and application that really care about the sustainable development of multicultural sensitivity that connects the scenes “behind” between the multicultural learners and educators in higher education.

Acknowledgement

Special appreciation is given for the contributions of Evgenya Gladkaya, Fu’an Liu, Tawat Mahama, Elmira Mustakimova, Vasilina Plakhotina, Lili Di Puppo, Sofia Sadeikova, Ekaterina Schnittke, Yaolong Si, Yuval Weber, and Wanfa Zhang.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The author received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Hanzhou Pang

Hanzhou Pang is Assistant Professor of English who has been teaching English writing, literature and translation at several universities in China, USA, Korea and Russia. His current research interest is emotional clarity in multicultural higher education. He completed his PhD studies with Washington State University in 2010, and was actively engaged in the research interests of visual rhetoric, emotional intelligence and writing instruction.