This case study investigated the perspectives of East Asian international students and U.S. mainstream faculty members to gain an understanding of how the two epistemological systems in Western and Eastern cultures may affect or direct the course of East Asian students’ intercultural learning experiences. This dissertation was to provide a comprehensible theoretically and empirically based argument. This paper was constructed around the academic challenges faced by Asian international graduate students as related with three theories – feminist pedagogy, social constructivism, and second- and foreign-language acquisition – for the purpose of looking into the three interconnected domains of cross-culture, cognition, and academic English literacy.
Mixed methods of survey and interviews were the two primary sources for gathering data. Seventy-two East Asian student volunteers completed the survey questionnaire for gathering demographic information, general learning attitudes and English academic competence. The interviewees included 7 doctoral student participants and five faculty members in the same filed of Curriculum & Instruction. As a result, three assertions were synthesized to form the storylines of Asian international graduate students’ academic challenge.