Cross-cultural comparison of students’ academic engagement

Higher education around the world is undergoing serious transformations influenced by technological, social and economic processes. Universities are striving to keep their competitive positions on the market of educational services. Today many countries are involved in the global education ranking race. On the way to leadership some countries are guided by experience of more successful racers, adopting their «best» practices. Logically, all countries seek for prosperity and make efforts not to remain on the periphery. However, such factor as culture or national mentality can interfere with transformational processes in education. The study is aimed at conducting a comparative analysis of academic engagement of bachelor students enrolled at Russian, Chinese, Japanese, British and US universities and establishing the role of culture in the existing differences in the educational systems of these countries. The sample includes 26,648 students studied at the selected universities in 2016-2017 academic year and agreed to participate in the international project ‘Student experience in the research university’. The index of academic engagement in class was generated with the Factor Analysis. The results of the oneway analysis of variance (ANOVA) show the significant difference between the level of students’ academic engagement of Russian, US, UK, Chinese and Japanese universities. According to the results, students in China are the least engaged among students of other countries because they are not required to demonstrate active participation. Russian and US students are described as the most engaged in comparison to students of other countries. The findings of the study confirm the importance of taking into account existing cultural aspects in developing academic strategies, communication with international students in class, and conducting comparative research.