Reframing intercultural supervision: Understanding mainland Chinese doctoral students’ adaptation experiences in Hong Kong

Despite a noticeable increase of Mainland Chinese students choosing Hong Kong as their destination for doctoral study, few studies have explored their experiences with intercultural supervision in Hong Kong’s hybridized higher education context. This exploratory qualitative study, drawing on Gill’s (2007) intercultural adaptation framework and Dai’s (2022) conceptualization of in-betweenness, investigated the intercultural supervision experiences of 18 Mainland Chinese doctoral students at a Hong Kong university. The findings indicate that Mainland Chinese doctoral students exhibit distinct adaptation trajectories in intercultural supervision, influenced by their prior academic experiences. The analysis identifies three distinct adaptation trajectories: (1) a stress-adaptation-development trajectory characterizing successful integration into Hong Kong’s academic field; (2) an adaptation-development trajectory highlighting proactive adjustment without stress; and (3) a stress–in-betweenness (non-linear) trajectory where students struggle to fully integrate into the new academic environment, caught between their previous academic background and the host setting. This research extends Gill’s framework by proposing a revised model of intercultural adaptation that sheds light on non-linear development and in-betweenness as a transitional state among international doctoral students. • This study extends stress-adaptation-growth model highlighting the non-linear, hybrid, and context-sensitive nature of adaptation in intercultural doctoral supervision. • This study re-contextualizes the notion of in-betweenness across academic, social, and emotional dimensions. • Intercultural supervision is cross-epistemic and cross-pedagogic, not just cross-national practices.