Impact of International Collaborative Engineering Education Upon the Epistemological Development of Chinese Engineering Students

International collaborative engineering education facilitates the efforts of launching multiple cross-cultural cooperative programs and has enhanced the international learning experiences of engineering students. Intense effort has been geared towards understanding students’ academic performance or extracurricular experience as a result of these international collaborative activities. Considering the impact of students’ epistemic thinking on their academic performance, this study applied modified Perry’s theory to examine the impact of international collaborative engineering education upon the epistemological development of engineering undergraduate students from an international joint program in China. Preliminary results suggest that diverse factors as related with the international teaching and learning environment are closely associated with students’ epistemic thinking. Future studies are proposed to explore other potential factors within international collaborative programs that are associated with engineering students’ epistemic thinking.