Face as a transcultural phenomenon

The Concept of Face as an orientation of social and pedagogic action in Higher Education

This paper focuses on the question to what extent a special orientation of social and pedagogic action, the orientation towards Face, can be shown to be a presumed construct in higher education in Spain and to what extent this can be connected to the concepts of Face observed in Chinese-speaking cultural areas. Face is understood as a transcultural, individually and collectively significant orientation pattern, the knowledge and effective implementation of which can form the basis of pedagogically significant internationalisation strategies.

The basic aim of this paper is to identify Face as a social orientation for a European language and cultural area as well, especially in the field of higher education as an area of pedagogic action, and to use this as a basis for designing study-enhancing learning and teaching constellations among
international students.

Face is of high relevance as a relational construct in the field of
teaching/learning style research. Based on these results, implications for face-sensitive teaching are identified and suggestions for the design of study-enhancing learning and teaching constellations for international
students are made.