Intercultural encounters: Intertwined complexities and opportunities in international students’ experience

International students who study overseas for a finite period (regarded as learners in ‘mainstream’ international education) constitute the largest group of students engaged in international education. This chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges inherent in the educational sojourn experience of these learners. The discussion, underpinned by a theoretical framework based upon a developmental theory promulgated by Urie Bronfenbrenner, offers a psychological perspective on the distinctive processes entailed in an educational sojourn. Likewise, Jin Li’s mind-virtue orientation dichotomy illuminates the likely consequential effects of moving from one academic culture to another. A focus on the less explored perspective of academic acculturation offers invaluable insight into the factors that are arguably central to the quality of students’ educational experience that are often closely connected to their engagement or disengagement. Supported by the strategic priority given by universities to the internationalisation agenda, a greater appreciation of intertwined complexities and opportunities that underpin the claimed transformative international experience raises questions about the roles played by the institutions, staff and students themselves in maximising what international education can offer, not only to educational sojourners but equally, in realising ‘internationalisation at home’