‘My Door is always open’: interpreting conversations

with international and BME students

Judy Ling Wong (Black Environment Network),

Carolyn Roberts

and Kenny Lynch

(University of Gloucestershire)

SRHE Conference, Liverpool, 9-11th December 2008

Structure of the talk

• What’s the issue about IHBME students?• Research methodology• Key emergent themes• Good practice examples• Conclusions

‘Culture is not just a matter of overt behaviour, it is also the (social) rules, beliefs, attitudes and values that govern how people act and how they define themselves’

(Kennedy, 2002)

‘Traditional’ IHBME student issues

• Access and transition to HE (Sovic, 2008)• Equality, and law (Madood and Acland, 1998)• Language and cultural challenges (Cho et al, 2008)

including around assessment• All students engaging with appropriate curriculum

‘content’ (Bird, 1996) • Differences in individual learning styles e.g. ‘The

Chinese Learner’, ‘orientalism’ (Said, 1978; Dunbar, 1988; Reid, 1989; Saravanamuthu, 2008)

• Loss of ‘identity’ (Chow and Healey, 2008)• Achievement of BME groups (HEA, 2008)

Changing nature of 21st C Higher Education pedagogy• More interactive, inquiry-based, experiential styles of

learning• Less structured classes, with fewer boundaries and more

learner autonomy• More interactions and collaborative working with staff and

fellow students• More projects, including community-based and off-campus

activity, and placements• More expression of personal opinion in class, sometimes

confrontational• Staff act as facilitators or coordinators

Research Focus• To evaluate the experiences of IHBME students,

particularly as they integrate and adapt to new, more student-centred styles of university teaching and learning

• To identify any obstacles they face• To suggest good policy and practice for institutions, and

for students themselves• Caution! Provisional survey only

Theoretical frameworks? Said’s concept of the ‘other’, and Luke’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ plus epistemic and other theories of learning and conceptual difficulty in student-centred learning (Perkins, 2007)

Research methodology• Thee universities: one redbrick, one post-1992

with low ethnic diversity, one post-1992 with high ethnic diversity

• Geography, environmental and related disciplines (relatively high levels of AL)

• Short written questionnaire• In-depth interviews and dialogue group

conversations with students and staff – relaxed/participatory, and student-centred

• Interviews recorded and transcribed• Impressions recorded immediately, then

transcripts read for themes by two researchers

Interviewee characteristics• 8 international students (Greece, Israel,

Iran, Japan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, dual nationality). Mostly full time undergraduates, 20s, M/F, all levels

• 8 UK BME students (British Black African, British Asian, Mixed White-Asian, Afro-Caribbean), mostly born in UK or 6-8 years+ residence. Mostly with family in UK. Mostly full time undergraduates, 20s, M/F, all levels.

• 20 academic and support staff

General themes‘If that’s what you call integration, I’m never going to integrate. I’m never going to drop my cultural heritage and be like…I can’t, I’m brown on the outside. I can’t do that no matter how Western I dress, I can’t be like you…it’s better you start accepting and understanding us than vice versa’

General themes‘Over here everyone calls their lecturers by their first name, whereas in Japan you would never do that and you would refer to them as Professor Somebody. Even if I wanted to ask a question I knew it would feel weird if I called them by their surname so I couldn’t actually say anything and I think that made me a bit hesitant about asking questions…It took me about a year to get over that.’

Key emergent themes• Differences in learning styles and

orientations• Collaboration, groups and idiomatic

language• Fieldwork and related off-campus

community-based activities, residence• Family (or home) expectations, religion

and culture• Time demands, stresses and

workloads, isolation, closed doors

Differences in learning and study styles

‘And again if you read something then one day you might forget it, but when you have done it you have practiced it and you will always remember it.’

‘We have done very general and theoretical things about air pollution, but...I am a more practical person. I prefer taking samples and microscopy and water analysis rather than reading and writing things….you need to see the proper thing of that to have an idea.’

Differences in learning and study styles

‘At university what they promote is self learning, self teaching, self everything. I don’t know what I’m paying my fees for! They run English courses…but they expect you to take your own initiative to do things. Partly I think, yeah, that does work, it’s good, and partly I think it’s not promoted enough…’

‘Group work comes from reading from lectures, so what you’re doing in the group work is just gathering information that you have read, from the lectures or from the books, so in your group work you are sort of letting out what you have learned’

Collaboration, groups and idiomatic language

‘People who weren’t very confident with English…- I wouldn’t say they kept themselves to themselves but…when you’ve got a group full of people spitting out English and you may be wanting to say something relevant, but you speak a bit slower, but they didn’t contribute and we had a stalemate, like. I never saw anyone…interact. I mean they were quite happy, there was three of them not just one, but they never spoke English and none of our group interacted…’

Collaboration, groups and idiomatic language

‘If they’re completely different to you it takes longer. Stupid things, like little bits in their own language when you talk to them and you get a bit friendly.’

‘It’s very difficult, very very difficult to find the right group, working with the right person. Sometimes you get back ups from them, some helps because you are always behind or if they are attending…I just found it very difficult.’

Fieldwork and related off-campus, community-based

activities‘I went on an international field trip to America last year and that was very helpful because obviously you weren’t only just learning in the classroom…I <also> found the placement is such a good idea.’

‘We had this field trip to Amsterdam this March and I found it very interesting. I learnt so much when I was on the field trip than when I was looking at things by my studying them in my head… It was much brighter, it was a very good example, it was a very, very good trip for me.’

Fieldwork and related off-campus, community-based

activities‘The University is a civilised society, there’s no name calling, no rudeness, no that sort of stuff but outside of university obviously you’re going to get issues.’

‘I went on a course to Malta for a week and I was lucky because in Geography third year there’s two or three ethnic people…so it was cool…’

‘When we went on fieldtrips the lecturer would say stuff and <the international student>’d say, what does it mean? What are we doing?’

Family expectations, religion and culture

‘I live here, I have my daughter and I have to take care of her. I have to look after myself, have to look after her, have to give her the best and on top of it I don’t have my family here. My parents back home…sometimes I have to think about them…I have to help them in any way, so it is just lots. As a student you don’t really have time to concentrate on your study, living that sort of life. Everything you have to give time for, everything.’

‘I’ve always said British students have a lot more pressure whereas my parents are paying for everything. I don’t have a loan to pay off.’

Family expectations, religion and culture

‘Some people fall behind in their studies because they’ve got responsibilities…There’s other siblings and both your parents work or your parents don’t work, or your parents can’t speak English and they don’t cater for that. They just assume you’ve got all the time in the world to sit and study… but I know every single ethnic minority person has 101 responsibilities…Every Muslim has to pray five times a day…Some people have a job as well. Some ethnic minority students are married because culturally they want to be married young or religiously, whatever, they’ve got a wife to support or a husband to support and they’ve got children.’

Time demands, stresses and workloads, isolation

‘A lot of international students don’t have time to socialise because they go back and have to translate each and every word on the brief…and that leaves them no time to socialise.’

Time demands, stresses and workloads, isolation

‘One of the people who later came to become my friend said to me that they were really amazed about how much effort I made to try out English things – I went to the bar and had a pint of beer and was sick! But I tried… And black pudding. I wasn’t doing it to make them feel better about themselves, but they thought I was making an effort to try and be English, or try the British culture and that’s probably why they were more accepting as well.’

Good practice examples: Language ability

Support is fundamental, and needs to cover specific disciplinary language and idiomatic use/colloquialisms, so that group working and social interaction is possible.

‘Sometimes I don’t understand their explanation because of the pressure on me because I feel they’re in a rush and I’m unhappy, I don’t understand the explanation. I just say alright, alright I get it, thank you very much! And sometimes I didn’t understand it at all…’

Good practice examples: Personal tutor relationships

Beyond implementation of the legal duty to promote race equality, or the financial need for high levels of retention. Needs goodwill, staff development and monitoring of student opinion.

‘In my first year my personal tutor…I still speak to him though, ‘cos I was very comfortable with him so we still speak to him even now about certain issues, and he is very open about them which is fine.’

Good practice examples: Personal tutor relationships

‘What do you think could be done here?’

‘At this University?’

‘Yes. Or in this Department?’

‘Oh God, in this Department! Having an ethnic minority lecturer would be nice. There’s not one ethnic minority lecturer…I think there’s one Asian guy but I’ve never seen him…If every department had an ethnic minority officer or something…they’d get better academic results so in the long run it’s for themselves really..’

Good practice examples: Induction and course

literature Induction to expectations about learning styles is crucial, with timetables constructed to allow full participation by everyone, and enlightening literature.‘You look for common ground with people and as soon as you find that you kind of stick to it because the first year at University it’s a foundation year for everything – for your group of friends, for your way of life, whatever – it propagates what decisions you make throughout your university life, and in that year when perhaps you’re feeling most vulnerable…’

Good practice examples: Induction and course

literature Appropriate early support is critical.

Vulnerable students fall very quickly into patterns of working that stem from a feeling that there is going to be no support. They exclude themselves, and try to rely on struggling to make sense of the work and doing vast quantities of work to solve their problems. This socially excludes them and makes them feel even less confident in engaging.

Good practice examples: Student-based solutions

‘If you have difficulties you can see the person from the third year or from the second year who has been through this to explain to you or to guide you – yeah, that would be very good.’

‘I don’t feel very confident, so if we had a meeting like that where you could meet somebody it would be very nice.’

‘Like there’s an Italian girl on one of my modules and it’s really interesting because she made friends with me because I offered to help her because of her language barrier and explain things to her and share my notes with her…’

Good practice examples: Cultural stories

For different groups, ask current students to put positive explanations of how to maintain ‘cultural self’ on the web so that they can be read prior to arrival.

‘Ethnic minorities, they get to positions of influence and they suddenly forget they are an ethnic minority. They forget what the journey was for them!’

Good practice examples: Guidance on working

stylesUse ‘icebreakers’ with diverse groups, with multicultural and international membership.

‘One of the lecturers prepared notes, just like normal lecture notes, but he would say “we will have a formal critique session” and then in brackets “this means that you will be expected to blah blah”…It’s just a little bit easier for them; they know in bullet points what they need to do’

Good practice examples: Drawing on the richness

Celebrate diversity purposefully by including examples in the curriculum, in tuition and on the web. Ask for contributions from existing students, and make them feel important and valued. Reawaken the interest that home students have from gap years. Make university a place for learning about life as well as a discipline.

Conclusions• The major element of participation in active learning is

contextual, in terms of a feeling that one can learn meaningfully, and participate successfully – that there is a welcome, that one is wanted in a partnership or group, and is not being a barrier to others.

• International and BME students have similar (but not identical) learning needs, but are not a homogeneous group

• Active styles of learning are generally welcomed, but there are socio-cultural issues where the perception of IHBME students by mainstream students and vice versa undermine the necessary confident relationships that active learning requires.

Conclusions

• IHBME students’ backgrounds are a huge untapped resource for active styles of learning – not only content but methodology. Narrow views of the curriculum are inadequate

• The issues are similar to those surrounding other aspects of diversity, for instance disabled students’ needs. Change for diversity can benefit all

• Staff want to support all students; there is much goodwill evident.

More conclusions

• The pressures experienced by IHBME students are cumulative

• Establishing expectations of outcomes clearly is important

• Isolation is also a key issue in terms of study, social and institutional settings – active learning can be both opportunity and challenge

• Need to resist tendency to view students as the core problem, instead of other factors (HEA, 2008)

‘Is he ethnic minority himself? Is he English? And what did he say - we’ve got no problems? He thinks we’ve got no problems ‘cos no one's complained. It doesn’t mean you haven’t got a problem...Maybe those people have got problems but they’re silent. That’s often the issue.’

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adult (Hong Kong) Chinese learners. International Journal of Life Long Education, 21 (5) 430-455

Luke, A. (2004) Teaching after the market: from commodity to cosmopolitan Teacher’s College Record 106, 7 1422-43

Madood, T and Ackland T. (Eds) (1998) Race and Higher Education. London: Policy Studies Institute

Perkins, D (2007) Theories of difficulty. Ch 4 in Entwistle, N and Tomlinson P. British Journal of Educational Psychology: Student Learning and University Teaching. Leicester: British Psychological Society

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Creative learning in Practice Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, London: University of the Arts

Acknowledgements• Students and staff at the Universities of Birmingham,

Gloucestershire and Wolverhampton, including Sonia Chilton for struggling with the interview transcripts.

• Funding from the Centre for Active Learning (CeAL), University of Gloucestershire. CeAL is a national Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, recognised by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. http://resources.glos.ac.uk/ceal/

• Support from the Black Environment Network. BEN is a national charity working with black, white and other ethnic communities for full ethnic environmental participation. http://www.ben-network.org.uk