Having international students in your classes provides educators with amazing opportunities to engage and explore so many diverse ideas and approaches. However, most would agree that it can be challenging to effectively engage students from diverse backgrounds, with sometimes very different educational experiences and expectations in Australian classrooms. For this blog I would like to share a vignette that used as part of an earlier research looking at engaging students from Asian backgrounds. I have changed some aspects of the vignette to make it more appropriate for this public blog, but the full paper is available at https://eprints.qut.edu.au/128326/
I have been teaching information technology related subjects for a very long time. Most of my classes consist of domestic and international students…in almost all semesters I have noticed similar problems where most of the international students do not engage actively in class discussions…. I have noticed, almost in every session, that the international students generally are not as forthcoming with discussion questions and answers as the domestic students. This is particularly the case when there are domestic students in the same class as well as the international students. In one occasion, I had divided the class into small groups of three students each made up of randomly selected students, where two groups had one domestic student each and three groups had all international students, that is, there were no domestic students in these three groups. I gave different questions to each of the groups and they were required to discuss the questions amongst their group and give a briefing to the rest of the class. I would visit each group for about two or three minutes each, just to ensure that they were on the correct track and to solve any confusions that they might have. While doing this I will also identify the group dynamics like anyone who may be dominating the discussions, how the members are participating in the discussions, and how disagreements are resolved. The groups that did not have any domestic students in them generally seemed a little slower at organizing themselves, but the group dynamics was great. All the members were suggesting ideas and a great deal of healthy discussion would follow. Most of the time, no one would become too dominant and all the members seemed comfortable to take part in the discussion. In the groups where there was one domestic student each, the international students, apart from very few exceptions, were rather hesitant to talk and suggest ideas and issues. They were generally in agreement with the ideas of these domestic students. The domestic students almost always would end up becoming dominant in the discussions and they would be the ones to volunteer most of the ideas and would also lead the discussion their own way. The international students in these groups had to be asked questions directly, and only after a lot of probing will they provide answers and contribute towards the discussions, and even then would look towards the domestic students for support. In one other occasion, a tutorial session was organized around a general classroom discussion. I would pose questions to the class and ask students to answer them. This would then lead us towards a discussion. Using a number of questions and different tutorials, I noticed that if the first student that answered a question was a domestic student, the international students would not want to or were not too willing to participate in discussions. But if the first student to answer was an international student, the other international students were more comfortable to put forward ideas. Once again a number of direct probing questions had to be used to illicit responses from the international students. I have also come to identify that some international students, although may have excellent and innovative ideas, will not suggest and pursue it, and some would even adopt an ‘inferior’ solution if it is suggested by a domestic student. I have explored some of these ideas in some detail in the full paper, but would be happy to hear your thoughts.
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December 2019
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Photo used under Creative Commons from Philippe Put