Fostering the appropriate learning environment? British and Chinese students’ experiences of undertaking an organisational-based cross-cultural group work project in a London University

With the current wide student diversity in British higher education, the debate surrounding the practice of group work asa pedagogic method has adopted an important cross-cultural dimension. It is essential that educators properlyunderstand the dynamics of it if they are to shape effective learning processes and outcomes. In contributing to thisprocess, this paper examines the impact of a 12 week organisational-based, cross-cultural group work project on thelearning experiences of a sample of British and overseas Chinese students. Using the participants’ individual reflectivelearning reviews as the tool of research investigation, the paper ascertains the extent to which the peer consultancyexercise affected the group work experience and examines how the two distinct groups of students –in terms of homeand overseas status and native language acquisition –interacted with each other. The findings suggest that whilst theproject largely succeeded in its aim of exposing the students to a real-life organisational problem-solving context, as anexercise in cross-cultural collaborative working it had a number of decipherable shortcomings. The implications of thesefindings for the preparation, practice and assessment of cross-cultural group work are considered.