Professor Jian’s research in general concerns what human do to transmit knowledge and skills and, specifically, it explores issues relevant to the core research question of how non-native adult learners learn to use Chinese language beyond the levels of fantasizing, gazing, or random dressing (“performing monkeys,” so to speak) to becoming crosslinguistic and cross-cultural communication experts capable of effectively and productively functioning in and negotiating with Chinese culture. 

There are three lines of inquiries in Professor Jian’s research: 

1. Integrating behavior culture research with language instruction. That is, instead of sprinkling “culture notes” mainly about achievement culture and basic or exoticized information culture, it explores ways of embedding behavior culture with language instructional materials, curriculum designs, and classroom instructions.
2. Developing framework for expertise-driven advanced level language curriculum including domain-specific language courses, domain-specific research and presentation courses, in-country domain-specific research project, and in-country participation in domain-specific community of practice, with the aim of making the transition from learning Chinese to learning and doing things in Chinese.
3. Investigating variables affecting the process and outcomes of “performed culture” in the crosslinguistic and cross-cultural context. It explores issues such as what cultures CFL learners may be performing, hybridity by default vs. hybridity by design, the highlighting/hiding in metaphorical conceptualization of Chinese culture, staging transformational experiences for aspiring learners, the dynamics between learner agency and target cultural constrains,  transitioning from learning a language to learning in a language to doing things in a language, transitioning from “performing monkeys” to social actors—participating and contributing members of a community, goal-directed negotiating intentions and expectations in the co-constructed multilingual and transcultural Third Space. 

Professor Jian’s recent publications include Third Space and Chinese Pedagogy: Negotiating Intentions and Expectations in Another Culture (coeditors Xin Zhang and Xiaobin Jian, Routledge, 2021); community-based learning intermediate to advanced course Perform China series (editor Xiaobin Jian) with three volumes published: Perform Suzhou (coauthors Xiaobin Jian, Jianfen Wang, Junqing Jia, Chenghua Feng, Soochow University Press, 2016, Routledge, 2018), Perform Guangzhou (coauthors Xiaobin Jian, Xin Zhang, Zhini Zeng, Qingdao Publication House, 2019), Perform Qingdao (coauthors Xiaobin Jian, Kai Liang, Xuezhou Yu, The Ohio State University Foreign Language Publications, 2021); and domain-specific advanced course Negotiating China series (editor Xiaobin Jian) with the first volume published: Negotiating the Chinese Workplace (coauthors Junqing Jia and Zhini Zeng, The Ohio State University Foreign Language Publications, 2023).