Education/teaching

This paper explores the adaptation patterns of international Chinese and Vietnamese students in relation to academic writing practices in a higher education context. The study utilises a trans‐disciplinary framework for interpreting students’ and lecturers’ practices within institutional structures. This framework has been developed by infusing a modified version of Lillis’ heuristic for exploring students’ meaning making with positioning theory. A prominent finding of the study indicates the emergence of three main forms of adaptation, committed adaptation, face‐value adaptation and hybrid adaptation, that the students employed to gain access to their disciplinary practices. The findings of the study give insights into ways that a dialogical pedagogic model for mutual adaptation can be developed between international students and academics. The aim is to enhance the education of international students in this increasingly internationalised environment.

"Competency-based training and training packages are mandatory for Australian vocational education and training (VET). VET qualifications are designed to provide learners with skills, knowledge and attributes required for Australian workplaces. Yet, towards the end of December 2011, there were 171,237 international student enrolments in the Australian vocational education sector (AEI, 2012). VET currently ranks second behind the university sector by volume of international student enrolments in Australia. The flow of international students into Australian vocational education, their diverse learning characteristics and their different acquired values have created new challenges as well as possibilities for teachers to transform their pedagogic practices and contribute to reshaping the pedagogy landscape in vocational education. Drawing on interviews with 50 teachers from VET institutes in three states of Australia, this paper discusses the emergence of international vocational education pedagogy that enables international students and indeed all learners to develop necessary skills, knowledge and attributes in response to the new demands of the changing workplace context and global skills and knowledge mobility. This article addresses a number of important issues concerning the interrelationship of international pedagogy and learner-centred education, notions of productive and inclusive pedagogies, trans-national skills mobility, cultural diversity and internationalisation within the context of the Australian VET sector. Finally, the significance of these issues to educational providers and teachers across different educational levels and national contexts is discussed.

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In Australia, all vocational education and training (VET) qualifications must be based on competency-based training (CBT) and training packages. Yet, since 2005, there has been a major expansion in the number of VET international students in Australia, 85% of whom are from Asia. Given this development, the teaching and learning contexts in which competency-based training and training packages are located are becoming increasingly diverse and no longer reflect the traditional training characteristics and boundaries that apply for domestic students. This paper examines the relevance of training packages and CBT for teaching international students in the Australian VET sector. It draws on interviews with teachers and international students from 25 public and private training providers in Australia. The discussion of the findings aims to assist the VET sector create a curriculum framework that supports flexibility, adaptation and responsiveness so that international students' divergent and shifting study purposes and complex learning characteristics can be catered for effectively. This contributes to helping the sector remain viable in a context in which a VET course is no longer a pathway to migration.

Investigating ELF/ESL students' experiences in constructing their academic written texts seems to be of great significance in EFL/ESL writing syllabus design and teaching. The case study reported in this paper explores the underlying factors which shape students' ways of supporting ideas in academic essays in English. Drawing on Lillis' (2001) talk around text framework, the study examines the writing experiences of students from Vietnam and mainland China at an Australian University. Based on the students' reflection on their different ways of meaning making, this paper argues for the need to challenge the tendency to essentialize cultural rhetoric patterns and their effects upon Chinese and Vietnamese students' writing in English as a foreign or second language. Several implications for teaching EFL/ESL writing have also been drawn from the findings of this study.

National and global challenges have given rise to the need to prepare Vietnamese graduates for effective adaptation to the increasingly changing professional field, their community, their
society and the globalised world. The tertiary education curriculum thus needs to take into account the employment market, socio-cultural demands and students’ individual needs in order
to develop highly educated populations for the world of work and for the current knowledge economy. Based on a case study of the translation curriculum in a B.A. (Bachelors of Arts) language program, this paper addresses the mismatch between the demands of the translation employment market and the curriculum within the context of Vietnamese tertiary education. It
raises a number of important issues related to the tensions between the centralised curriculum, learner-centred education, the actual demands of the employment market as well as the issue of capacity building in response to the socialist-oriented market economy and the changing workplace context in Vietnam. Implications are drawn not only for the translation curriculum, but
also for the reform of the Vietnamese tertiary education curriculum as a whole, in order to enhance graduate employability.

Understanding factors influencing international students’ decision to engage in international education is essential for education providers to better cater for students’ educational expectations and enhance their attractiveness to international students. Whilst there has been extensive research on the reasons why international students undertake cross-border higher education, international students’ motivations in enrolling in diploma and associate degree programs are still under-researched. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 30 international students from China, this research found that pathway to higher education appears to be the most important factor motivating international students to undertake diploma and associate degree study. In addition, prospect of immigration, English language, previous academic performance, agent’s recommendations and relatives’ and friends’ advice  are amongst the important factors that students take into account in their decision to choose vocational education and associate degree programs. This research also examines why Chinese international students have chosen diploma and associate degree programs in a dual-sector University over vocational education colleges. It found that the flexibility to articulate to higher education, international reputation of the program, opportunity to gain hand-on experience, program duration, program offerings and favorable location are key issues that these students draw on in their decision making.

Key words: international students, Chinese students, diploma, associate degree, higher education, transition pathway""

Vietnam's open-door policy, its socialist-oriented market economy, recent growth in cross-border education and skills mobility, regionalisation and globalisation have created an increasing demand for Vietnamese graduates to develop not only their English language but also their intercultural competence. This paper discusses the issue of student intercultural learning and development in the Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) class. Especially, it addresses the use of film as an innovative approach to engage Vietnamese students in intercultural learning and development in the EFL classroom. The study reported in this paper draws on rich sources of data which include in-depth interviews with students, student reflective journals and video-recorded class observations at a university in central Vietnam. Overall, five key themes relating to student intercultural learning through film have been identified in this study. These include enhancing knowledge about cultural differences, engaging in cross-cultural comparison, breaking cultural stereotypes, immersing students in authentic learning and living in the world of ‘other’ culture and the integrated mode of intercultural language learning. The study is a significant contribution to scholarly research on the use of media objects to enhance student intercultural learning in language classrooms in developing countries.

The increase in numbers of international students who have English as a second language (ESL) and are studying in English-medium universities has renewed the emphasis of English language development in higher education, particularly concerning academic writing. Much of the discussion has concentrated on developing best practices in providing support via Language and Academic Support (LAS) programs. However, the main challenge in recent years has focused on integrating disciplinary and language learning. What has been largely missing from the discussion are the views of lecturers and students regarding the strategies they use to develop academic writing in the discipline. This paper addresses this issue. The analysis reveals that academic writing within the disciplines is largely an individual endeavor for both lecturers and their students. Lecturers focus on explaining what skills students are required to demonstrate in their assignments, but students are more concerned with understanding how they can develop these skills. The implications are discussed concerning the development of a whole institutional approach for integrating language and disciplinary teaching.

The study reported in this paper explores issues of motivation and learners' identity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classroom in Vietnam from the perspectives of the learners. It was conducted with thirty English-major students at a university in central Vietnam. While relevant literature appears to place much emphasis on students' extrinsic motivations related to institutional needs, their linguistic need, and social needs in learning EFL writing, students are not only concerned with these but more significantly, with their intrinsic motivations such as their interest, passion and inspiration, which are linked to their personal and cultural needs in writing. Students in this study show their potential to write independently, creatively and passionately if they are really motivated. This reflects an image of students who are able and ready to write with a sense of authorship in a foreign language, which is different from how they appear to be in the routine described with writing as imitating the model and developing some preconceived ideas. The research also suggests that decisions about appropriate methods and materials for teaching writing in the study context need to be based on a comprehensive interpretation not only of visible signs or visible needs (mainly shaped by institutional requirements and social expectations) but also of what is deep inside students' act of writing in a foreign language, involving their own cognitive and affective process embedded in their unrecognized needs.

Tran, L. T. & Nguyen, N. (2015, forthcoming). Re-imagining teachers’ identity and professionalism under the condition of internationalisation. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice.
Around the world, 4.3 million students are engaged in international education each year. However, there is a paucity in theory and empirical research on teachers’ professionalism in international education. This paper aims to fill out this gap and contribute to our understanding of teachers’ changing roles and identity due to the impact of internationalisation and the growth of international students. Drawing on positioning theory as a conceptual framework to understand teachers’ roles and identity, this paper shows the emergence of teacher sub-identities as a reciprocal intercultural learner and an adaptive agent. It argues that these sub-identities are central to teachers’ development of cosmopolitan qualities in the contemporary context of international education.

Cao, L. & Tran, L. T. (2015).  Chinese international students in Australia: An insight into their help and information seeking manners. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives. 14(1), 42-56.
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This paper unpacks the meanings and implications of the mobility of international students in vocational education - an under-researched group in the field of international education. This four-year study found transnational mobility is regarded as a resourceful vehicle to help international students ‘become’ the kind of person they want to. The paper justifies the value of re-conceptualising student mobility as a process of ‘becoming’. Mobility as ‘becoming’ encompasses students’ aspirations for educational, social, personal and professional development. Theorising mobility as ‘becoming’ captures international students’ lived realities and has the potential to facilitate the re-imagining of international student mobility with new outlooks. Mobility as ‘becoming’ is construed through the manners in which overseas education facilitates not only the redistribution of social class capital but importantly the pursuit of the integrated forms of profession-advanced capital and migration-oriented capital. This research suggests the importance to draw on the integrated and transformative nature of Bourdieu’s forms of capital in understanding the logics and practice of the social field - international student mobility.