“I’m not an ESL teacher and I’m not trained to do it”

Abstract

This article discusses how teaching faculty in a western Canadian university respond to the growing number of Chinese international students in their classrooms. Interviews (n=21) and survey data (n=60) reveal that professors struggle to communicate academic expectations across language and cultural barriers; develop cross-cultural content; engage students in active learning in the classroom; and provide effective feedback on written work. This in-depth account shows how faculty negotiate demands to both adapt to and create an “internationalized classroom” in the absence of institutional supports. Unsurprisingly, we confirm that adaptation is a struggle. Faculty rely on a combination of personal experience, disciplinary grounding, and stereotyping to inform their efforts. We conclude with a discussion of the limited utility of “Confucian Heritage Culture” (chc) as a path to meaningful change. Though frequently invoked to describe the preferences and behaviors of Chinese students, the homogenizing and misleading assumptions of the chc framework prevent faculty from recognizing the contemporary reality of these students’ country of origin and leads them to neglect individual student learning styles and needs.

This article reports findings from a study conducted in a large faculty of arts at a research-intensive university in western Canada as it struggles to integrate a growing number of international students into its classrooms. Based on interviews with (n=21) and a survey (n=60) of teaching faculty, we present an in-depth account of how faculty respond to imperatives to “internationalize” their classrooms. While we believe these results to be generalizable to any university setting in which the student body is diversifying in this way, we focus particularly on faculty experiences and responses as they relate to the increased presence of “mobile talent” from mainland China. Throughout this article we use the terms “Chinese students” and “Chinese international students” interchangeably to refer to students from mainland China.

The Faculty of Arts (hereafter “the foa”) has seen a significant influx of students from the Peoples’ Republic of China (prc) over the past decade, the result of active recruitment efforts and a rapid expansion in “talent” mobility from China to Canada over the past decade. 1 Indeed, the number of international students in Canada grew by 92% between 2005 and 2015, with more than 33% of these students hailing from mainland China. 2 Such numbers, proportions, and growth are mirrored at our research site, which saw its international student cohort grow to comprise 24% of undergraduate enrolment over the same period. 3 Growth in international students across university departments is uneven due to not only variations in student demand and program availability, but also to the proliferation of memorandums of understanding/agreement (mou/moas) that see various faculties, departments, and units pursuing a bewildering array of partnerships with institutions abroad. Of particular relevance to this study, an articulation agreement with a Chinese university specializing in foreign affairs has seen several hundred undergraduate students transfer to the foa following one year of study on the mainland.

The impetus for this study was reports that Chinese international students enrolled in foa programs have been struggling. Service units responsible for international student care had become concerned with not only academic performance but also general well-being. Enrolment in some junior year courses had come to be dominated by these students, and teaching faculty regularly expressed dissatisfaction with students’ English language and academic skills, not to mention with other classroom behaviors they believe make effective teaching difficult. For units whose mission and continued relevance depend on the recruitment of international students, student maladjustment and failure had become a threat to recruitment. Indeed, given its increasing reliance on the collection of differential tuition and fees, the prospect of decreased enrolment of mainland Chinese students was now perceived as a threat to the financial stability of the university itself. In this fraught atmosphere, the foa and the university’s internationalization unit had become open to research seeking better understanding of the needs of students and teaching faculty alike. Armed with such data, the foa and the university’s internationalization unit might work toward better teaching and learning supports for international students, and for mainland Chinese international students in particular.

In this article, we focus on the experiences of Canadian academics teaching in undergraduate classrooms with growing numbers of mainland Chinese students. We recognize that “internationalization” is now a global phenomenon occurring in diverse socio-cultural, regional, and/or national contexts. Our aim is not to propose a universally appropriate response to the fine-grained dilemmas of internationalization. Rather, we hope that an exploration of problems faced in the classroom by teaching faculty in this Canadian university and the strategies they adopt can inform the policy and practice of others working under similar pressures.

Literature and Conceptual Background

Internationalization is broadly perceived as a positive force for change in higher education. On this view, globalization stimulates research and teaching to move in directions that encourage new avenues of knowledge exchange and intercultural understanding. While optimistic, this perspective is often balanced with critiques that point to neoliberalism and Western hegemony as dominant drivers of internationalization. 4 Overall, there is a consensus that globalization makes internationalization in higher education unavoidable if not inevitable, but also that realizing its promise requires deeply considered, intentional responses.

If internationalization represents a fundamental shift in higher education, it is also a comparatively recent one. Thus, its impacts on university-level teachers and learners are not well understood. To date, the bulk of internationalization literature has focused on macro-level and institutional policy concerns, with relatively little attention paid to how students and faculty manage the demands placed upon them in the reconfigured classrooms of internationalizing universities. We are not alone in making this observation. A number of researchers have observed that the pedagogical and curricular aspects of internationalization, particularly from the perspective of teaching faculty, have been neglected. 5 The following review of literature focuses on teaching and learning activities associated with internationalization, with a particular emphasis on studies that focus on faculty perspectives.

Internationalization at Home

To state the obvious, “internationalizing” a university is a complex undertaking. Broad distinctions may be drawn between “export” functions and “internationalization at home” (IaH). The former involves activities such as sending students and faculty abroad, forging international research partnerships, or “twinning” campuses with an international partner. The latter refers to a university’s efforts on the home campus to make international students and faculty welcome and valued and to broaden the horizons and understandings of domestic students and faculty. 6 Unlike “internationalization abroad,” IaH poses immediate and intense problems for the receiving university. 7 In this study, we restricted ourselves to a particular aspect of internationalization undertaken “at home,” that is, the impact of the presence of large numbers of mainland Chinese students on teaching and learning in the classroom.

The Internationalized Classroom

Pressure to internationalize teaching, learning and curriculum is fundamental to any IaH project. In what follows we use the term “internationalized classroom” in two senses, one empirical, the other normative. The former sense refers to a classroom created when large numbers of international students enroll in a course, the latter to a classroom optimized to enhance the learning experience of students from all national, cultural, and language backgrounds. 8 In its most restrictive sense, efforts to “internationalize” a classroom might target equitable content mastery for students. Most accounts of the internationalized classroom, however, suggest that encouraging cross-cultural learning and a globalized mindset are also fundamental to a truly internationalized classroom. On this view, internationalizing a course or program of studies requires that faculty place a high value on globalized sensibilities for both themselves and their students. 9

Faculty Role in Internationalization

Accounts of IaH at the institutional level highlight the importance of faculty commitment to the process. 10 Some scholars also observe that, despite the importance of faculty commitment, the drivers and deterrents of faculty commitment have not received much attention in research. 11 Those that have note that bringing faculty wholeheartedly into an internationalization drive is no easy task. Faculty are generally conservative, oriented toward the interests of their disciplines rather than to the university as a whole, protective of academic freedom, increasingly cynical, and mistrustful of centralized professional administration. 12 The perception that international students are valued primarily as a source of revenue and status for the institution undermines faculty faith in internationalization as an educative project. 13 Lack of clarity about the meaning and aims of internationalization is another commonly cited deterrent to faculty engagement. 14 Indeed, in Canadian heis, faculty demand is a relatively minor driver of accelerated internationalization in recent years. 15

Whatever their feelings about internationalization, much of the hard labor of implementation in the classroom falls to individual faculty members whose work comprises a wide range of personal and professional commitments. Given the heavy demands of developing and maintaining a research, publishing, and service portfolio, not to mention the significant rewards attached to doing so, many teaching faculty find it difficult to devote time to changing teaching practices. At the same time, large class sizes and high faculty-to-student ratios make the adoption of “high impact” teaching and learning strategies both impractical and onerous. That international students have significant social and emotional needs that may require the support of specialists outside the classroom merely amplifies the task. 16 Teaching faculty can be overwhelmed when they find themselves “having to serve too many students too quickly.” 17 Such conditions make it difficult for instructors to differentiate instruction, much less to forge the kind of relationships that might help faculty absorb/promote intercultural learning and seek a deeper realization of internationalization in the classroom.

Perspectives on Chinese International Students

Much of the comparative literature on cultural differences in teaching and learning expectations has focused on “western” versus “eastern” pedagogies. A significant body of literature, however, has explored the utility of the concept “Confucian Heritage Culture” (chc) for understanding the character and plight of Chinese and other Asian students abroad. According to this construction, chc learners come not only from mainland China and Taiwan, but also from countries and regions geographically proximate. While not homogenous, such cultures are seen to share many of the qualities on the “collectivist” and “high power-distance” ends of continua identified by Hofstede. 18 These features contrast, according to this view, quite starkly with the individualism and egalitarianism that characterize “Western” countries. 19 In comparative perspective, chc students are said to exhibit a range of characteristics. They are more deferential to teaching and parental authority than their Western peers. They tend to value effort over talent, and are taught to diligently pursue mastery rather than express original ideas. 20 This contrast can also be characterized as one in which “conserving” knowledge is more valued than “extending” and/or displaying more “speculative” attitudes about the fixity of knowledge. 21 Putatively accustomed to tightly structured lectures, such students may be confused or disoriented by the active learning environments said to be the norm in Western classrooms. Being called upon at random by instructors also raises the specter of losing “social face” should things go poorly. 22

Other scholars, however, note the hazards of classifying cultures according to crude dualisms. Kingston & Forland observe the tendency of Western academic staff and researchers to conflate the Confucian tradition with rote learning, and to attribute all observed differences to this cultural inheritance. 23 Ryan doubles down on this critique: “Western views of ‘the Chinese learner’ remain largely based on outmoded and stereotypical assumptions long past their use-by date.” 24 In some instances, assumptions are nominally positive, as when Asian students are depicted as “model minorities.” In other cases “deficit views” are invoked. 25 Despite facing diversity on a daily basis, faculty in prominent international student receiving countries tend to frame cultural differences in Manichean terms. 26 Of course cultural stereotyping is not a sin committed exclusively by teaching faculty in the Anglo-American academy. 27 Indeed, in the experience of one of the authors, teaching faculty in the universities of mainland China, an emerging competitor as a student-receiving country, are equally prone to labelling students in both positive (“American students are more creative”) and negative ways (“African students have poor language skills”).

The Study

As noted above, this study was conducted in a large liberal arts faculty at a comprehensive, research intensive university in western Canada. The foa houses more than twenty departments and units focussing on on fine arts, language and culture, humanities, and social sciences. When the study began in 2015, the foa housed over three hundred tenured or tenure track faculty and a similar number of adjunct instructors. Ethics clearance was obtained for the study, which was conducted in two stages. A round of individual faculty interviews was followed by a survey of all instructors in the faculty.

Among the interviewees, eleven were tenured or tenure track faculty and eight were adjunct instructors. Two were doctoral candidates with considerable teaching experience. Nine social sciences and humanities disciplines were represented, and two-thirds of respondents were female. Most interviewees had some form of second language teaching or learning in their background. Half had what could be described as substantial or extensive international experience, having studied, taught, or learned other languages for significant portions of their academic careers.

Of the sixty survey responses received, 58% came from tenured or tenure track professors. The sample included thirteen graduate students, eleven of whom were principle instructors. Once again, approximately two-thirds of respondents were female, and a substantial minority of respondents were adjuncts. Fewer of these respondents had a second language or extensive international experience, which we attribute to the lower average age and years of experience of this group.

We conducted eighteen semi-structured, individual interviews, each lasting between 30 and 60 minutes. All were recorded and transcribed. nvivo was used to code the data. Two researchers’ initial coding of these interviews primarily followed the structure of the interview guide, although we were also alert to emergent themes and encouraged interviewees to share additional ideas or observations. To focus the interviews, we asked participants to draw on their experiences in undergraduate classes they deemed most representative of their experiences teaching international students, but participants were free to share observations from other classes they had taught.

Based on the interview data and our ongoing review of the literature, we then constructed a detailed survey and disseminated it to be completed online. The survey included both closed and open response questions and queried faculty about their own language learning backgrounds, their professional development activities, their observations of international students’ learning needs, and any strategies or adaptations to teaching practices that they were using in response to students’ learning needs. We received sixty usable responses. Many completed surveys included substantive responses to open-ended questions, which contributed to the qualitative analysis we had already conducted. The survey response rate was approximately 9%.

Members of the research team independently coded the interview data. Rough deductive categories were in place because we had designed the interview schedule drawing on key themes identified in the literature review, as well as in preliminary, informal conversations with informants from the university’s international office and the foa. For example, we were aware that faculty might perceive Chinese international students as lacking in language skills; interview questions were therefore written to probe for observations and experiences from which instructors drew these conclusions. These were subsequently coded into categories like “classroom participation” and “written assignments.” At the same time, we remained alert to emergent themes. An example of a key emergent theme was professors’ reliance on informal learning to acquire new teaching and assessment strategies. Thematic coding of open response questions in the survey was used to elaborate existing findings using constant comparative method. 28

Limitations

When the study was initiated, political tension in the faculty was palpable. This was no doubt attributable to a history of funding cuts and the threat of program elimination, not to mention unwelcome pressure to engage in revenue generating schemes. Posed as a potential if partial solution to financial pressures, increased numbers of international students in foa classrooms had not only heightened political tensions, but also represented a fresh point of contention. These conditions no doubt led to some degree of response bias, as those most affected by the presence of international students were more likely to participate. The findings of this study are also colored by the focus on humanities and social sciences, and may not readily translate to other disciplines. Having said this, we note that within this faculty of arts, significant disciplinary differences affect teaching and learning expectations, such as those between its economics and comparative literature departments. This corroborates Sawir’s finding that disciplinary settings are important considerations in the study of internationalized teaching and learning. 29 Finally, it is difficult to generalize findings given the great variability in class sizes, year of study, and disciplinary differences represented in the sample. While we focused on undergraduate classes, some respondents discussed their experiences teaching in small seminars; others were facing substantial numbers of international students in very large lecture settings.

Findings

That teaching faculty in the foa are struggling to adapt to the realities of teaching in internationalized classrooms is not in dispute. In this section, we detail how faculty think through the task of teaching in courses in which large numbers of mainland Chinese students are enrolled and, furthermore, how they act upon these deliberations. Our treatment of the themes that emerged from the interviews is mainly descriptive, though we do engage in a degree of analytical discourse in order to link them to the literature reviewed above. Rather than separating quantitative and qualitative results, we present them together, using one to illuminate the other as appropriate. Where helpful, we have included charts.

Teaching Faculty Perceptions of Chinese International Students

Study participants observed that international students struggle with studying in English, and that a significant proportion of Chinese students in particular appear to be struggling. They noted the use of e-translators in class and lack of vocabulary needed to understand course content and concepts. Professors described low oral participation in class and group work, and students’ inability to answer questions, both in class and in face-to-face conversations.

Quality of written work in English is a significant concern given the centrality of essays for communication and assessment in humanities disciplines. Grading written work is a source of frustration for professors. It is clear to them that students often have “good” or “interesting ideas” but “their ability to express their ideas is inadequate.” Faculty reported that they are therefore unable to assess students’ knowledge and ideas due to language barriers, and feel this is an unjust situation for the students. Faculty feel they lack both the skills and time to grade in ways that would help international students improve their English. They also described grading as more time consuming than usual as they attempt to provide feedback on grammar and diction.

Interviewees confessed to having little knowledge of Chinese students’ backgrounds, an observation documented in numerous studies. 30 Data from interviews and the survey show that instructors perceive these students to be deferential, diligent, reticent in class, and inclined to “stick to their own.” A Mandarin-speaking professor noted that a strong Chinese community exists in the city and that this makes it easier for students to live primarily within their natal cultural and linguistic communities.

table 1

Writing intensive classes

The perceived insularity of the mainland Chinese student cohort is a source of frustration for some faculty. First, some expressed concern that students’ already weak English language fluency could not improve without greater immersion. One professor, for example, confessed that she can no longer send most of her Chinese students to co-op placements because employers are not satisfied with students’ English language skills. A related frustration for professors is that seemingly entrenched language and cultural barriers make it difficult for them to form relationships of any sort with their Chinese students. Thus, even if they want to better understand these students, they are often at loss for how to do so.

While we discerned a thread of resentment in professors’ accounts of the insularity of the Chinese student cohort, they also expressed empathy, noting that the students are young, unprepared through no fault of their own, and in some cases operate under a great deal of pressure to please their parents. Self-isolation within home language environments and cultural communities is seen as one of many “survival strategies” that students employ. Respondents offered numerous anecdotes of the strategies Chinese students use to keep their grades up, including strategic selection of courses to avoid those that are writing intensive; the creation of peer study networks and group study; use of e-translators, translated material, and exchanges of assignments and exams from past courses; and dropping out and repeating courses in which they receive failing grades. Teaching faculty also reported instances of survival entering the realm of academic misconduct, though it should be noted that respondents were loath to conclude that international students are more likely to intentionally engage in academic misconduct. Instead, they to adopt a “care ethical approach” to explain transgressions, most often seeing them as resulting from poor understanding of “Western” academic expectations and conventions than as cases of plagiarism and related forms of misrepresentation. 31 “I know that some international students have trouble understanding what plagiarism is,” said one professor. “In certain cultures, the whole concept of originality is not as, you know, prominent.”

figure 1

Concerns about academic misconduct.

Respondents less often talked about cheating, but believe that exam misconduct and the “grey area” created by group study situations is occupied by both domestic and international students. Most significantly, even where professors identified the problem intentional academic misconduct, they pointed to the moral hazards created when students are placed in high stakes achievement scenarios with insufficient academic tools and language capacities. Discussing past academic misconduct cases, one professor stated, “I don’t know how many times now in … twenty cases we’ve heard about students that don’t want to disappoint family back home.” In some cases, families are expecting students to be admitted into competitive programs with high admission standards, meaning that students must achieve high grades. Professors are troubled by the stress placed on these students. “These students have been set up for failure,” concluded one professor. “The situation nearly demands that they cheat.” Stated another, “I don’t fault the students, but the situation they’re in.”

Given their consistent citing of the need for additional supports for these students, we also asked interviewees for their observations of how Chinese students tend to seek help. Literature reviewed suggests that, as are students from other Confucian heritage cultures, Chinese students are perceived to be more reticent than their host country peers. 32 This perception persists, even though they, like their domestic peers, express a preference for professors who are helpful and approachable. 33 In follow-up survey questions related to student help-seeking, however, our respondents did not identify appreciable differences between the help-seeking behaviors of domestic and international students. However, questions about help-seeking behavior of students did reveal that faculty have few resources at their disposal to offer such help. They encourage students to use office hours, but said that uptake of such support by both domestic and international students is limited. They also refer students to a writing tutorial center on campus or to the International Student Services office, but most faculty could not say whether students follow up on these referrals.

In both interviews and survey data, professors noted that Chinese international students have difficulty understanding academic expectations. 62% of survey respondents believe that international students in general have more difficulty understanding academic expectations than their domestic peers. Faculty offered anecdotes about exceptional international students that give some indication of what these expectations entail. For example, they value students who participate in class, read widely, and take initiative to ask for help. Especially with respect to written work, professors cited “critical thinking” and analysis. Again, holding true to existing literature, faculty perceive that Chinese students are inclined to reproduce knowledge rather than actively process, critique, and otherwise manipulate what they have been taught. 34 As one professor described it, responses received from these students tend to be “scripted rather than analytical.” In reflection assignments and oral participation in class, professors want students to “analyze and critically engage” their own experiences in the contexts of the content and concepts they are learning in class. Generally, faculty believe that their Chinese students differ from domestic students in how they approach their studies, but also feel that students must adjust to norms and expectations of the institution and discipline.

Faculty are generally unsure of what more they can do to communicate their academic expectations. This is especially so with respect to appropriate citation and argumentation style. Interview participants described stating expectations in the syllabus and restating these orally in class. They see few alternatives beyond what they already offer, and the reticence of students only exacerbates the problem. Observations of student misunderstandings were not limited to international students. Some professors made a point of emphasizing that communicating expectations is difficult with all students, but maintain this is more often the case with Chinese international students.

Adaptations Made to Teaching Practices

In survey findings, half of respondents stated that they have made concerted efforts to increase international student engagement. With rare exceptions, it seems that engagement strategies are developed by trial and error. Some professors draw on past experience teaching esl or learning as esl students themselves. In other words, pedagogy for internationalization in this setting is not learned or shared in a systematic way, and is based on practical insights and experiences rather than on formally acquired knowledge and theory.

Group Work

Approximately one-third of survey respondents have structured group activities in ways that require international students and domestic students to work together. In interviews, faculty placed high value on cross-cultural group work. With respect to domestic students, the primary desired outcome was exposure to different perspectives and different cultures. At the same time, faculty hope that small groups will provide a safe space for these students to practice listening and speaking in English. Still, the ability of instructors to create cross-cultural groups depends on class composition, specifically the ratio of international to domestic students. We did not attempt to formally assess the outcomes of the use of group work. In interviews with faculty, however, it became clear that successful group work is a “hit and miss” affair dependent on factors well-known to impact the success of group work: class size, the nature and weight of group assignments, the instructor’s facilitation strategies, and students’ attitudes toward group work and the skills they bring to the table. Overall, interviews and survey results suggest that cross-cultural work in groups is seen as desirable, but not always effective.

Internationalizing Curriculum

Most of the professors we interviewed did not substantively alter their course content to engage international students, although many mentioned efforts to monitor the culturally-situated references and examples they used in class. “I have to catch myself,” said one instructor, “and say, ‘Well not everybody in this classroom is Canadian … they might be from China, they might be from Iran or some other country, and they might not have the same experience.’” Some professors seek cultural references and examples from students’ home countries. In interviews, faculty without fail stated that international students bring valuable new perspectives to curriculum and class discussions, suggesting that they tend to agree with Sawir’s suggestion that professors ought to see international students themselves as resources. 35 Desirability and effectiveness, however, in no way ensure implementation. Respondents reported that lack of cultural fluency and planning time are notable barriers to efforts to internationalize the classroom. What’s more, faculty believe that some courses—second language courses and junior economics classes, for example—do not lend themselves to internationalization of curriculum.

figure 2

Strategies employed to engage international students.

Safety and Class Community

Interviewees vary in the extent to which they regard their classrooms as learning communities. Those who are intentional about creating a sense of community in their classes were also likely to recognize that psychological and emotional safety are important preconditions for international students to gain confidence expressing themselves in English. As a rule, professors who have experience studying in a foreign language expressed greater empathy for the struggles of international students and this seems to be reflected in their accounts of classroom strategies. Those who report greater success with international students’ class participation actively seek ways to emphasize that, in the words of one instructor, “we are all in the same boat.” “It’s not just Asian students,” said one interviewee, but, I mean, students who are, generally speaking, shy, or they feel uncomfortable and not super strong in [the subject]. That idea is, I think, is really important.”

Such faculty are not simply aware that all students may experience fear and uncertainty; they are also intentional about communicating this in class. One professor, for example, described asking students to write down their ideas for a couple of minutes before class discussions, explaining to her students that, at conferences “when I’m in a big room and there’s a lot of important people and I want to ask a question, I need a minute to write … just in case I get nervous when I’m asking a question and blank out.” Professors who displayed such intentionality also talked about regularly reinforcing these messages by reminding students that their fears are normal. They openly discussed how they create a “learning community” as a goal for the class. They also emphasized that they do not assume or take for granted that their domestic students have an upper hand in a subject area. “I think that that’s helpful to not assume that people know even what a simple word means, even English speakers, because it’s so natural to them that they’ve never actually thought about the real meaning of the word,” said one professor.

From these accounts of classroom adaptation, we see that faculty believe good learning environments are not simply the product of particular instructional techniques. Rather, they place significant weight on the “feeling tone” of the learning environment and believe that it can be shaped toward greater inclusiveness. 36 Because they make a “safe” classroom a priority, faculty would persist in their messaging, and noted that many of their early efforts took several weeks to take effect. Intentionality and persistence, in other words, are core principles for instructors determined to adapt their teaching to accommodate and engage with international students.

Assignments and Assessments

Respondents report that they rely primarily on two forms of summative assessment: written assignments and exams. Written assignments, they said, are a consistent source of consternation as unintentional plagiarism is an ongoing problem. While they said that they are also willing to read for meaning, language difficulties interfere with their best efforts to fairly award grades. As one instructor explained, “I get the content through the writing, so if the writing is not good, I can’t assume that the content was there…. I can’t really give the points for content, because I’m not sure if they are actually expressing the right idea.” In smaller classes, instructors described efforts to, for example, conference with students to award a better grade for meaning if it could be expressed orally, to mitigate unintentional plagiarism, or to counsel a student to revise and resubmit a failed written assignment. At the same, these strategies are seen as impractical in classrooms with large numbers of students in need of significant supplementary support.

We did not gather artefacts, so we have not attempted to examine actual assessment practices in detail. In interviews, however, most professors described using common marking schemes to assess written work, typically considering subfields of content, argument, and technical language skill. When we brought up the idea of rubrics or grading sheets, respondents generally responded that excessively refined criteria are too restrictive, that is, a detailed rubric would take away the flexibility to exercise judgment of the overall quality of a student’s work. They also reported that at times they would use this flexibility to decrease emphasis on writing mechanics. To place too much emphasis on this domain, they said, would unfairly penalize international students for their weaker English writing skills and vocabulary.

We designed survey questions to systematically explore barriers to supporting students identified in interviews. Large classes (57%) and lack of time to seek out new strategies, resources and curriculum (42%) were the most cited barriers. The former are seen by faculty as posing two significant drawbacks that impact all students, but more significantly affect international students. First, as class sizes increase it becomes more likely that instructors will wrestle with undesirable compromises in their assessment practices. In such classes, faculty may reduce assessment to one or two written assignments per term, meaning that they receive little to no formative feedback. Second, large classes make it difficult for professors to create community and offer pastoral care to students. When discussing their experiences in large lecture situations, however, they were unable to tell us much about the characteristics of their classes as a whole or, for example, about whether they were able to discern relationships between students’ socio-linguistic backgrounds and their academic achievement. Indeed, they reported that large classes make even the seemingly simple task of knowing who is and who is not an international student difficult. Under such conditions, it often falls to the student him or herself to self-identify. Deep engagement, professors believe, is more likely to occur in small enrollment settings.

figure 3

Barriers to supporting international students.

‘Lack of stocks of professional knowledge,’ such as efl experience, teaching experience, and awareness of cultural backgrounds, are not perceived to be significant barriers to improved teaching. Rather, it may be surmised that many respondents more or less share the perspective of a respondent who stated flatly that “barriers all relate to the language skills of the students, not my instructional knowledge or experience.” Additional comments similarly pointed to professors’ preference that resources be allocated not to faculty professional development but to specialized supports offered to students outside of classes. In addition to reiterating the need for a base standard of English language competency, study participants proposed targeted academic advising, and specialized, perhaps mandatory classes for efl students to learn writing, academic expectations, and further English language fluency. Some noted that faculty development opportunities for “internationalizing” one’s teaching were not available; most, however, had not sought these out and were not inclined to. Almost universally, they attributed problems primarily to students’ insufficient preparation to study in English.

Discussion: Getting beyond “Large Culture” Explanations

Our findings suggest a pair of separate but related strands of analysis. The first relates to findings around faculty perspectives on Chinese students and our discussion above about “large culture” explanations and stereotyping. The second addresses faculty’s varying efforts to adapt to and/or bring into being something resembling an “internationalized classroom.” This latter strand of analysis takes into account faculty critiques of internationalization at two levels, that is, with respect to the university’s failure to provide adequate support and, beyond the classroom, concerning the program of internationalization itself.

Only a handful of the faculty in this study spoke with any confidence in their knowledge of the backgrounds and learning styles of their Chinese international students. Overall, participants believed they had neither the tools nor the bandwidth to work effectively with a rapidly increasing cohort of Chinese students. They were also more likely than not to locate the sources of their difficulties outside of their own classrooms. As a result, few were willing to substantially alter their teaching practices, despite expressing concern for the academic success and wellbeing of their international students. This finding suggests that faculty recognize that knowledge of students’ cultural inheritance and learning styles and preferences is useful. Having said this, most of our respondents relied exclusively on what might be best described as folk theories of Chinese educational/learning culture. At times they recognized that their working theories are overly reliant on stereotypes, but this did not prevent them from adjusting classroom and advisory practices based on such limited or flawed knowledge. We draw attention at this point to Figure 3 above, which shows that “awareness of cultural background” ranked a distant fourth amongst perceived barriers to better supporting international students. Faculty know, in other words, that culture matters and that they themselves are bearers of a distinctive academic and learning culture that may be in conflict with that of their students. The same chart shows, however, that recognizing gaps in cultural knowledge and following up with professional development are a low priority for those who locate the source of their struggles in large class sizes and time pressures.

Here, however, we sound a note of caution. There is risk in foregrounding cultural knowledge as a cure-all for the challenges of the internationalized classroom. In the case of Chinese international students, there is a tendency to look for solutions in “ancient” cultural traditions, as if these are eternal, unchanging, and uninterrupted. Ready references to placeholders like “Confucian Heritage Cultures” means that other potentially relevant influences are missed. In the case of mainland Chinese educational culture, the shifting “orders of worth” of the revolutionary period and the continued cultural productions of the present are surely among these. 37 Few would be comfortable claiming a common educational spirit for students raised in an era in which correct politics trumped esoteric and technical knowledge, as was the case during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We should be equally suspicious of any unified account of Chinese educational culture that fails to take into account the large-scale fusion of local and foreign theories and practices of teaching and learning enabled by the departure and return of more than two million Chinese students over the past four decades. 38

In other words, generational differences in childrearing norms and educational regimes, not to mention political and economic conditions within which a given student is raised, produce a student with a unique set of learning habits and capacities. 39 For China’s post-1980 generation—the generation now filling the seats of the internationalized classrooms of Western universities, it is said that being raised as “flowers in a glasshouse” has not only changed their view of the student-teacher relationship, but also exposed them to a mode of education in which Western and Chinese practices have been integrated. 40 Put simply, it is crucial that faculty consider influences on student learning styles other than “large culture explanations.” 41 Many of these are familiar to faculty, such as socioeconomic background, social class/status, and/or parental educational attainment.

It may be, then, that there are important differences between the learning styles of Chinese international students and the expectations and practices encountered in Western university classrooms. These differences pose dilemmas for Western faculty, who, as this study shows, often feel puzzled when they are unable to engage their Chinese students. 42 The challenges of bridging these differences can be exacerbated when students appear to lack the English language fluency needed to study in an English-medium environment. 43 This perception raises the specter of the “so-called ‘English problem’.” 44 It hardly needs to be repeated that English has become the lingua franca of the internationalized academy.

This being the case, it is not surprising that the language abilities, actual or perceived, of inbound students would become a significant issue in the internationalized classrooms of Canadian universities. Faculty in our study repeatedly raised concerns about students’ lack of facility with English. Faculty comments also touched on a number of discrete issues and generally dovetailed with extant literature pertinent to Chinese international students. They were highly suspicious of their Chinese students’ language proficiency and whether the university was doing a good job of ensuring that incoming students are prepared for the rigors of English-medium studies. 45 They raised concerns about the impact their students’ language skills might have on their ability to teach their discipline to an adequate standard, thus invoking the moral crises of higher education over the skills and competitiveness of graduates. 46 Faculty also linked students’ reluctance to participate with perceived language proficiency. To the frustrated instructor, silence is often read as a lack of ability. But Ha & Li, following Grimshaw, point out a range of possible meanings of silence, including “silence as right, choice, resistance and strategy.” 47 Even the problem of academic honesty and plagiarism is read in part as a problem of inadequate language skills, the underlying assumption being that cheating is a way of compensating for deficiencies in other areas. 48

Conclusion

The findings of this study echo those of existing studies of both the challenges associated with internationalization and the perspectives of faculty tasked with this work in their teaching and research. The original purpose of the study was to document faculty teaching concerns and practices, and findings revealed several areas in which faculty struggle: communicating academic expectations across language and cultural barriers; developing and incorporating cross-cultural content; encouraging full class participation; and providing effective feedback on written work.

Respondents are highly critical of the institution’s recruitment practices and see internationalization agendas, both within their own institution and in higher education broadly, as revenue-driven. This is accompanied by a belief that the university is morally culpable if it “lures” students and their families and then fails to provide the supports that international students need to succeed. Chinese students in this study were objects of a wider discourse concerning adequate preparation of international students to study in English, and faculty criticized the university for failing to set sufficiently high efl proficiency requirements for admission, which they see as setting up both students and instructors for failure. As one survey respondent concluded, “if students are not sufficiently prepared to study in English. It’s a lose-lose situation, because they’re going to be frustrated in the class, they’re not going to get good marks, I’m going to be frustrated trying to teach them.”

Because they perceive the university to be in an exploitive relationship with the Chinese students they teach, they find rhetoric from the institution that positions “internationalization” as an educative endeavor to be cynical. This finding aligns with other studies and commentaries that have discussed the “PR problem” associated with internationalization. Faculty are less likely to invest in internationalization if they perceive that their institution is succumbing to the financial constraints and moral hazards that can reduce an internationalization agenda to a merely symbolic pursuit. 49