Immigrant Academics and Cultural Challenges in a Global Environme ...

Chapter 1

Introduction Stranger Scholars Abroad*

Femi James Kolapo

The studies in this book illuminate the role of culture in determining the character and quality of the social and professional lives of mobile academics. The chapters look at specific issues that derive from cultural diversity and the management of the heterogeneous classroom and diverse teaching/learning contexts. Teaching, learning, and research are processes carried out in situated contexts and within constructed, inherited, and negotiated cultural milieu—contexts that invariably affect the performance of immigrant academics in their new homes and host academic institutions. The chapters in this book, thus, provide analyses, reflections, and syntheses of intercultural and cross-cultural experiences.