Ethnographic insights to enhance intercultural awareness in synchronous online teaching – Chinese music students’ daily lives at a state-driven higher education institution

This ethnographic study investigates Chinese music students’ everyday lives to strengthen intercultural awareness in synchronous online teaching. It is based on three months of fieldwork following 38 conservatory students, supplemented by a university study-abroad experience, using observations, explorative surveys, interviews, and autophotography. The analysis explores how schedules, practice routines, dormitory lives, and social relations shape participation in education. Drawing on practice and activity theory, synchronous teaching is conceptualised as the interaction of three activity systems: local students, local teachers, and a foreign host (online education provider). The findings emphasise the importance of local context and recommend fostering intercultural awareness by helping foreign host organisations understand students’ priorities, time zone-fatigue and unpredictable schedules. This is significant because internationalisation at a distance can reproduce inequities when host institutions interpret student behaviour through their own educational norms. Students’ lived realities are therefore essential for designing culturally responsive pedagogy and supporting expansive learning across borders.