Teaching international students:effective learning strategies for all

Jude Carroll Oxford Brookes University‘Teaching International Students’ project

5 May 2010

Why talk about teaching international students?

Global educational mobility

‘Work-arounds’ & rhetoric are not enough

Issues & dangers of not …..

Growing good practices

Some numbers … ‘international students’

• UK: 15% and rising (22.9% increase 2010 UUK)

• 12% of first degree students

• 66% of full-time taught postgraduates; 50% of full-time research degree students (43% of all research postgraduates)

“This is no longer a ‘minority’ issue…..”

Rhetoric abounds

…. the main benefits of the globalisation of

higher education are not financial (as

valuable as that may be) but

intellectual and cultural. The coming

together of people from different parts

of the world to study has the potential

to form creative global communities

that learn to interact and collaborate

in new and previously

incomprehensible ways. Such is

the dynamism of life in the ‘global

village’.

( UK VC quoted in Shiel & McKenzie, 2008, p. 1)

My guesses: here, in 2010

…you probably have to teach differently.

…all your students will need to adapt to their new educational setting – and you will need to help them.

…you will need to change how you teach and what you teach to accommodate cultural and linguistic diversity.

… you are already making some of the necessary changes.

For students, for all students, university study means……

• ‘New game, new rules’

• …… new skills

• …. new disciplinary language + sometimes, English

• …. new goals

Approaches to managing academic cultural diversity

Denial ‘I teach. It’s up to them to learn.’‘I teach Chemistry. Oxygen is the same everywhere’‘I didn’t admit this student who can’t speak English’

‘Repair’ ‘You fix them and then I’ll teach them’‘These students can’t….. They don’t ….. They are not motivated….’

Students must adapt ‘These students need to learn new ways, our ways.I’ll help them do that…. a bit’

Teachers accommodate and adjust their practice ‘OK, it’s not reasonable to expect XXX so let’s change it to require YYY. But this [ZZZ], this

we cannot and will not change…..’’

Students adapt, Teachers accommodate and adjust

This will never be easy – for either side.

Requires a move from unconscious to conscious action, [from ‘natural’ to deliberate]

5 suggestions for managing cultural/language diversity in teaching and learning

1. Accept & learn about academic cultural difference

2. Identify, teach & support students’ skill development – Start early and keep going. Teach English.

3. Use teaching methods that encourage participation and collaboration

4. [Create a globally-relevant curriculum]

5. Anticipate and manage trouble (expectations, integration, group work, plagiarism, etc)

1. Academic cultural difference

There is ‘culture’, expressed as artefacts ….. like how you greet people, what you eat, what you call people

There is underpinning cultural norms …. how you resolve an argument or how formal you are with strangers, how loudly you speak, how close you stand…… what makes ‘a convincing argument’

And there are shared, deeply held beliefs about how things should be…..

Exactly the same is true for teaching and learning…… but we are less likely to expect the differences or to know about them.

Different academic cultural expectations

• I call my teacher Dr. xxx

• A good teacher notices I need help and offers it.

• A good teacher tells me the questions and tells me good answers

• To learn, I must listen to the teacher. Really listen.

• I read the textbook many many many times. I know that the examination questions and answers will be from the textbook.

• I tell my students, ‘Call me Jude’.

• My students must ask for help. Then I will help with study-based issues.

• I select the issues but the students must find their own answers

• I want students to talk about problems and issues with each other. What’s their conclusion? ..argument?

• I want students to read around the subject. I want them to choose good bits from reading, lectures, labs….and to weave them together to make an answer. Their answer ….

The important point: you need to know your own academic culture ……

Students base their actions and expectations on their previous academic cultural experiences. [‘I expected the UK to be the same….’]

You notice surprises and differences as students act upon their assumptions…. As they ask questions, speak, work together, act on your instructions, try and learn….. [‘Cultural bumps’]

You learn what your expectations and assumptions are by noting the differences.

Then you tell your students explicitly some of those expectations and assumptions. ‘Tell them the rules’

Not all differences are benignNot all ‘bumps’ are curiositiesIn an institution where they are just waking up to cultural difference:

A Chinese postgrad student reads the guidance on ‘Open Book’ examinations. He takes in his textbook covered in margin notes, with glued in sheets of lecture notes plus glued in copies of old examinations and many worked-out answers [he did the work].

The teacher sets a ‘tried and tested’ exam question requiring detailed calculations from data which is the same as data used in 2002. The student is spotted copying the answer then reported for cheating.

The student writes in his letter to the Disciplinary Board: In China, the open book means, you can bring the material have any notes. So I always feel free to make notes during the lectures, tutorials as well as exercise on the book where is blank. More over as the course website says ‘normal amount of personal notes is ok’. Based on the eighteen years education experience in China, I am sure that notes I make are normal.

Same words, different artefacts, different norms and different beliefs

ReadingWritingCriticalTeacherLearning

‘Good work’Examination

HelpDeadline

9:00

What helps?

• Don’t just share the artefact [‘Call me Jude’]

• Tell them the normative behaviour (‘the rule’) [‘Teachers and students call each other by our first names except when ….’]

• [maybe] Tell them about the underpinning belief [‘Calling me by my first name does not mean we are friends’]

This does not mean that telling students the belief means they will adopt the belief!]

[Link to the next suggestion:] If the normative behaviour requires specific skills, then telling is not enough.

…areas where you need to give explicit information + exemplars

Teaching methods (including reading)

Assessment!…. and WritingMethodsCriteriaThreshold standards

Teacher-student interactions

Suggestion 2:1. …academic cultural

difference

2. Identify, teach & support students’ skill development – especially at first.

Support students’ English.

3. Methods to encourage participation

4. Globally-relevant curriculum

5. Anticipate and manage trouble

2. Skill development

Identify what new skills [reading, writing, locating sources, analysis, technical skills, time management…..]

Identify where they will be taught

Design in diagnostics

Design in practice and feedback

Start early (but not too early … not in induction) and keep going

…. skills development must have a programme focus

‘We don’t have a programme, just a collection of courses’

Yet …. everything we know about improving quality and engaging students in their learning relies on having a focus at the level of the PROGRAMME.

Radical idea: we could use the needs of international students to develop and encourage a programme approach.

Suggestion 3: 1.…academic cultural difference

2. … students’ skill development, especially English.

3. Methods to encourage participation

4. Globally-relevant curriculum

5. Anticipate and manage trouble

3. Teach for participation

Lecturing for learning. Lecturing in English for learning.

Seminars for all.

Supervision adjusted to students’ needs for structure

Project groups which pull students together.

None of this is easy. All requires moving to conscious use of methods.

The Teaching International Students Project

Run by the Higher Education AcademyFunded through the Academy, UKCISA & PMI2

2 year project

TIS Team: Janette Ryan, Jude Carroll, Fiona Hyland (ESCalate), Inna Pomerina (Economics), Melodee Beals

(History, Classics & Archeology) , Simon Steiner (Engineering) , Malcolm Todd (C-SAP), Ali Dickens (LLAS), Andrea Frank (CEBE), Caprice Lantz (Psychology), Richard Atfield (BMAF),

Adam Child & Katherine Lagar, HEA

TIS activities

• Website with teaching Resources Bank• Research database (links with IDP, CAPRI &

CICIN)• Outreach activities and partnerships (Project

Champions)• Series of events with HEA Subject Centres and

other HE groups

Responses to date• A lot of interest and support• 3,000 website hits in the first two months (from the UK, Ireland, Spain,

Australia and Canada)• More than 20 universities offered to host an event• Offers of resources or articles• Case stories from students and staff (but we need more)

Getting involved

• Contact internationalisation@heacademy.ac.uk

• Via website: www.heacademy.ac.uk/internationalstudents

Suggestion 4:

1.…academic cultural difference

2. … students’ skill development, especially English.

3. …. encourage participation by all

4. Globally-relevant curriculum

5. Anticipate and manage trouble

4. Globally-relevant curriculum

Different for each programme

Not just about the content […though rethinking content may be important]

Huge range of opportunities- Introduction activities- Type of problems for students to solve- Reading lists- Guest speakers- Research areas- Resources provided in the Library

Include, teach and assess cross cultural skills

Create and encourage student integration

5. Manage predictable difficulties

• Difference is hard. Expect it!• Group work is hard. Manage it.• Plagiarism is predictable and understandable. Work with

that.• Students do not integrate spontaneously. Choreograph it.

Encourage it. Even assess it?• Conflict is inevitable. Develop strategies and help the

students develop strategies to manage conflict.

It may be your most precious contribution to their future and the global future we all share.

Final word

All students find university newMost find it new and hardMany find it new and hard and strangeSome find it new and hard and strange and all

wrong, really wrong

Most succeed. Teach for inclusion and the students will succeed with more ease and less pain …. and so will you.