Western institutions constantly seek to internationalize favour enrolling Chinese International students for the economic, diplomatic, and intercultural benefits they bring to host institutions and communities (Volet & Ang 2012) and are increasingly faced with the challenges of dealing with the diversity in tertiary classrooms. Scholars claim that Western Higher Education institutions are not doing enough in understanding the international student experience and the nuances of Chinese learning practices, consequently, not innovating their services sufficiently to respond to their needs and concerns (Summers & Volet, 2008). Chinese international students reported the lowest levels of satisfaction and experienced a higher level of discrimination by teachers, university staff, and classmates compared with European peers (Glass, Kociolek, Wongtrirat, Lynch, & Cong, 2015); experience academic stress (Heng, 2019) and struggle to adjust to the Western learning environment and to make a successful transition from the Chinese education system and pedagogical practices to Western tertiary classrooms. Western teachers may encounter difficulties when addressing Chinese international students’ learning needs and concerns.

 Most research on Chinese international students’ experience tends to hold a view of homogeneity, overgeneralization and otherization of this group (Hanassab, 2006). As a result, Chinese students are categorised as rote learners (Watkins & Biggs, 1996), passive learners with “lacks” or “deficits” and a “problematic” group (Tan, 2011). Not surprisingly, how to include Chinese International students in teaching by focusing on specifics of pedagogy or curriculum and embracing the diversity in Western tertiary classrooms become urgent for institutions, such are the challenges to face but also opportunities to create for both academics and international students (Claiborne & Balakrishnan 2020).

The Confucian tradition has been embedded in Chinese culture for around 2,500 years and influences most aspects of Chinese culture, including the education system (Watkins & Biggs, 1996). Traditional Chinese education is described as “teacher-centred,” “classroom-centred,” and “textbook-centred” and the acquisition and transmission models are often adopted in teaching. In contrast, Western culture often promotes collaborative-based constructivism and fosters critical thinking skills in educational approaches and teaching practices (Kang & Chang, 2016). Asking questions and challenging teachers and peers are seen as signs of deep learning, which leads to group construction of knowledge. In western classrooms, transmission-based, participative, and constructivist models of learning coexist (Prosser & Trigwell, 2014); tensions and contradictions exist between the process of massification and its effects, and the pedagogical requirements for quality control.  

There is no simple answer to the complexity of teaching Chinese students in a Western tertiary classroom. Thus, exploring different pedagogical practices and activities and moving beyond a fixed view of pedagogical concepts becomes meaningful in HE (Löytönen, 2017). Yet, a review of the literature shows that a practice-based approach has not been used in this area of study. Through a practice lens, this project aims to investigate what pedagogical practices and institutional arrangements can promote Chinese international students’ engagement to improve their learning experience in the West. By adopting a practice-based approach, this paper disputes the oversimplification and extends existing knowledge of Chinese international students learning to investigate what doings, sayings and relatings (Schatzki, 2019) are in their learning and how western teachers could have a better understanding of their learning practices and what practices they have learned in China continue using in the Western learning environment.

This paper draws on the notions of practice-based theory and studies that focus on a relational perspective (Haraway, 2008), emphasizing the relationships between people and the material world which is continuously changing. With Nicolini’s (2013) practice methodology, this study entails a practical package of theories and methods that are used to study students’ learning practices. This theoretical framework also removes the distinction between theory and method by developing a flexible approach that uses different but relevant theories and methods to address the complexity of students learning (Nicolini, 2012). Such an approach highlights the connectedness and entanglement of students’ past, present and future, “everything that has no existence apart from its relation to other things” (Langley & Tsoukas, 2010, p3). Practice-based studies comprise a diverse body of work that has developed explanations of social, cultural and material phenomena based on the notion of practices (Schatzki, 2019), which offers a good fit to study Chinese international learning in Western, as it stresses the importance of context and culture. Ethnographic methods were used to collect data over 18 months to identify the practices used by students and investigate how they relate to their learning experience. Ethics approval (HE14/079) was granted prior to the data collection. The five participating students in Chinese Commerce Academic Development (CCAD) programs were aged between 20 and 23 years of age, on student visas. None had experience studying outside of China prior to their enrolment in the commerce undergraduate degree. They were shadowed by the researcher weekly. The data collection included participative observation, reflective group discussions, and formal semi-structured and informal interviews with the students and their teachers and faculty members. The interviews were undertaken in Mandarin to enable the students to think deeply and discuss freely in constructing their social worlds. The research project also entailed observations of the students in lectures, tutorials, Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS), CCAD workshops, and library studies. The researcher took field notes during the observation and wrote reflective notes after collecting the data (Schwartz-Shea, 2006). The process enabled the researcher to “zoom in” on the entwined practices and generate the sensitising research questions to identify the practices that students employed in their learning journey (Nicolini, 2012). The data was organised and analysed through consecutive stages: transcribing, translating the data, extracting and categorising key points, generating provisional themes, mapping clusters of practices and selecting data evidence.

This study shows how the informal peer-led, hybrid pedagogical teaching model offers an alternative bilingual and culturally sensitive approach entailing educational, sociocultural, and institutional practices to assist Chinese students to face challenges in learning in Western tertiary classrooms. The findings have profound implications for institutions to improve Chinese international students' learning experience and also for academics to adopt new pedagogical practices to engage Chinese students in classrooms. The findings suggest that a bilingual peer teaching methodology adopted by CCAD leaders could be introduced to the first-year core subjects, in supporting international students to have a transitional pathway into the Western learning environment. The bilingual peer teaching method enabled students to express themselves freely in groups and to interpret subject materials for Chinese students in their first language, and this is perceived to offer great comfort to students who feel unsure and/or anxious about subject materials, assessment tasks, and exams. The findings indicate that the CCAD leaders capably employ the hybrid approach that not only includes Confucius's pedagogy, but also includes the fundamental elements of acquisition, transmission, and constructivist approaches. The Confucius pedagogy inspires students with dialectic questions that help them understand the concepts and disciplinary knowledge. The acquisition, transmission and constructivist approaches are evident in how the students are explicitly taught how to answer exam questions and push students to relate the concepts to everyday accounting and finance practices by using Chinese examples. Lastly, within the CCAD social group, students’ educational and sociocultural practices become entangled with their peers and teachers and are socially, and collectively constructed and co-constructed in their learning (Xu, 2019). The environment not only enables students to connect with other students and support each other through familiar sociocultural practices but also softens culture shock and smooth intercultural adjustments.

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