The saturation effect of blended pedagogy on international students’ acculturation in Confucian classrooms

Blended pedagogy, combining lectures and practice, is widely adopted in cultural education, with the expectation that combining multiple pedagogies leads to better cross-cultural adaptation. However, whether this assumption holds when pedagogies are combined at high frequency in the unique, high-context setting of Confucian classrooms remains unclear. Guided by Ward’s ABC (Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive) framework, this study has investigated whether a saturation effect emerges when lecture-based and practice-based pedagogies are frequently combined. Survey data from 386 international students (30.3% female; Mage = 23.32, SD = 7.78) showed that while practice-based pedagogy enhanced all ABC domains (β = 0.14, 0.21, p < 0.01) and lecture-based pedagogy solely benefited behavioral skills (β = 0.12, p < 0.05), their high-frequency combination significantly reduced students’ behavioral adaptation and cultural identity (β = −0.13 to −0.14, p < 0.05). This finding can be interpreted through the lens of Cognitive Load Theory, suggesting that the need to understand high-context social cues while engaging with diverse teaching styles may overwhelm students’ working memory, hindering deeper adaptation. These findings challenge the “more-is-better” assumption and offer practical insights for curriculum design in cultural education.