Abstract
The article focuses on the impact of internationalization on university lecturers’ practice. Based on interviews with 36 employees from Danish universities, we discuss what internationalization means for the classroom relationship between university teachers and international students. The article is inspired by an intercultural communication model that highlights how respondents’ reliance on a simplified image of self and other leads them to the construction of a perception of international students from a deficit perspective. Following an examination of perceived differences in learning approach, classroom practices and student/staff roles, we propose that an intercultural pedagogy be developed, underlining the need for a symmetrical learning and teaching platform in international education.
Introduction
When attempting to characterize the current state of the global knowledge economy, researchers in international education rely on ideas of ‘flows’, ‘journeys’, ‘transnational connections’ and ‘interculturality’ (Britez and Peters, 2007; Manathunga, 2007; Singh and Han, 2010). Shared by all is the realization that the globalization of higher education involves a new kind of pedagogical thinking, which is inspired by notions such as ‘double knowing’ (Singh and Shrestha, 2008; Tange and Kastberg, 2011), ‘knowledge transfer’ (Volet, 1999) and ‘cross-cultural cooperation’ (Prescott and Hellstén, 2005; Volet and Ang, 1998). Similar concepts are found within the academic discipline of intercultural communication and, arguably, international educators can benefit from the analytical tools already employed within this field (Illman, 2006; Jensen, 2006). In consequence, this article applies a model developed in relation to professional intercultural encounters to the situation in an international classroom, asking to what extent such a framing of self and other may point us in the direction of a new, inclusive pedagogy.
An examination of the social dynamics in international education requires a coming to terms with the concept of ‘internationalization’. Of particular relevance are postcolonial positions that tend to associate internationalization with an educational market dominated by Western institutions (Madge et al., 2009; Rizvi et al., 2006) and, alternative, European perspectives that refer to a regional knowledge economy based on student and staff mobility (Dale, 2007). From the postcolonial research we have adopted the questions of power and inequality, which are important factors when analysing student and staff relations. Drawing on Australian experiences Michael Singh (2005: 10) describes how non-native learners are commonly regarded as ‘“empty vessels” to be filled with Euro-American knowledge’, and Shen (2007) notes a similar tendency in relation to Chinese students at British universities. Yet one has to be critical when applying such postcolonial arguments to the situation outside Britain or Australia. As Shen (2007) observes, Chinese students notice the difference between British universities – which mainly seem interested in recruiting foreign students for financial reasons – and German, French and Danish institutions which also see internationalization as a way to ‘[attract] and [keep] the best brains’ (Shen, 2007: 223). Shen’s findings highlight the need to acknowledge the existence of a particular European dimension to internationalization. Teichler (2004: 7) defines this ‘Europeanization’ as the ‘regional version of either internationalization or globalization’, and central to this is the image of the travelling scholar who contributes to the creation and consolidation of a transnational ‘Europe of knowledge’ (Dale, 2007; Kenway and Fahey, 2007). At least in theory, this means that foreign students are perceived as potential contributors to the European knowledge economy rather than mere sources of financial income. But the international students move into educational cultures that are framed by specific national and/or institutional histories, and this increases their risk of misunderstanding, marginalization and academic failure. As a result, Europe’s ‘travelling scholars’ may be subjected to power structures similar to those suggested in the postcolonial studies.
Many scholars choose to examine the question of internationalization from the position of the students who travel in pursuit of new knowledge and relationships. We find it equally important to consider the situation on the receiving side, as host universities and staff will need to adapt in order to accommodate a growing number of non-native learners (Nilsson, 2003). A key role is played by the academic staff who are simultaneously responsible for the socialization of non-native learners into a new academic system and the evaluation of their performance. If we look specifically at the Danish situation, the internationalization of education affects university lecturers in a number of ways. First, the establishment of international study programs frequently involves a change from Danish into English-medium instruction. Unlike British staff and students who can continue to work in their native tongue, Danes have to teach and learn through a foreign language, which creates a consciousness that international courses are somehow different. Second, Danish universities’ growing ability to attract foreign students has increased classroom diversity. Although many appreciate the cultural perspectives added by the foreign students (Tange, 2010a), lecturers’ attention is inevitably drawn to a native/non-native distinction that may encourage stereotyping (Illman, 2006). Third, the expansion of institutions’ international programs has motivated some lecturers to pedagogic innovation, prompting them to develop strategies specifically aimed at multicultural and multilingual groups (Tange and Kastberg, 2011). This article hopes to further such reflective thinking by underlining the social dynamics involved in the encounter between local lecturers and international students.
The structure of the argument is as follows: after an account of our theoretical position, research design and methodology, we examine how Danish university lecturers contribute to the construction of a simplified notion of the self and other. We suspect that the lecturers perceive certain practices as normative, while dismissing others, and that an overcoming of this ‘normal/deviant’ distinction constitutes the first step towards an intercultural pedagogy. Our principal analytical tool is the model of intercultural communication developed by Jensen (1998, 2006), which is applied to interview data collected at five Danish institutions of higher education.
Theoretical position
As our analytical framework we have adapted the model for intercultural communication put forward by Iben Jensen (1998, 2006). Originally inspired by Gadamer’s social positioning theory (Harré and Langenhove, 1998), Jensen proposes an actor-oriented, dialogical approach, which sees culture as a dynamic created in and transformed by social interaction. For our conceptualization of culture we rely on Jensen’s anti-national and anti-essentialist definition, which emphasizes that (1) intercultural communication needs to be placed within a critical, historical context, (2) culture cannot be reduced to single dimensions such as nationality or ethnicity and (3) power plays an explicit role in intercultural relationships (Halualani et al., 2009: 25). Jensen’s model incorporates the four key elements of position of experience, cultural presuppositions, cultural self-perception, and cultural fix-points, which are defined below.
Positions of experience refer to the mental and embodied experiences that actors achieve from their positions in society. The concept is inspired by Gadamer’s (1989: 302) ‘horizons of experience’, which he defines as ‘the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point’. Of equal importance is the notion of positioning. According to Jensen (2006: 42) this involves an acknowledgement that ‘social positions and experiences are not floating in space, but are created in social structures’. Of particular interest to our case are positions of experience relating to actors’ socialization into disciplinary, institutional and academic cultures. Such experiences have implications for the way individuals understand practices in a multicultural classroom, providing an unofficial benchmark used to determine whether or not a position is socially acceptable. In an international learning environment, shared primary and high school experiences may thus lead native staff and students to the formation of a powerful alliance and to a conscious or unconscious marginalization of alternative educational traditions.
Cultural presuppositions describe a simplistic understanding based upon experiences with, feelings about and opinions towards social groups with whom one does not identify. In this respect the notion of cultural presuppositions can be compared to processes of stereotyping (Illman, 2006) and cultural othering (Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 1996). The concept is inspired by Gadamer’s perspective on understanding, which suggests that comprehension always involves an element of pre-understanding (Bukhdahl, 1967). In communication this means that no matter how basic the knowledge we have of another person or group, we draw on this when interpreting that person’s actions or messages. One example is university lecturers’ tendency to ascribe particular student practices to cultural rather than situational or personal factors. Hence lecturers may explain the reserved manners of some Asian students with reference to Confucian tradition rather than by looking at the circumstances surrounding the immediate learning situation (Zhou et al., 2005).
Cultural self-perception can be defined as the way in which actors express their identification with a particular social group or community. Cultural self-perception relates to cultural presuppositions in the sense that one depends for the construction of an idealized self-image on a set of deviant practices and values that can be used to define the cultural other. In this respect Jensen’s model relies on an Us–Them distinction similar to that found in the earlier theories of Barth (1969) and Jenkins (1997). When manifested in intercultural communication, cultural self-perception takes the form of an ethnocentric benchmark that tends to favour the organizing principles of one’s everyday life in comparison with the unfamiliar customs of other people or societies. This means that university lecturers are likely to associate desirable classroom practices with students from a socio-cultural, institutional and linguistic background similar to their own, which may privilege native learners at the expense of their international peers.
Cultural fix-points refer to the focal points that arise in the course of conversation, and which highlight to the interlocutors that their interaction should be regarded as an ingroup-outgroup encounter. In order for a topic to qualify as a fix-point, at least one of the actors must feel strongly about the issue and, consciously or unconsciously, express such emotional engagement. A common way to identify fix points is through conversational analysis, where for instance one may attend to deviations in participants’ rhetorical rhythm, speech turns, eagerness and argumentation patterns (Jensen, 2006: 44). Because we draw on interview data, we have employed a thematic analysis, centring on student conduct described by several lecturers from different disciplines, programs and faculties. Recurring topics are dialogue and classroom participation, which underlines the importance of student-staff interaction to the lecturers’ professional identity.
The previous section has introduced the four concepts that we use to structure our findings in the analysis below. We now turn to the analysis, using interview data from five Danish institutions to examine how university teachers perceive and construct differences in their classroom encounters with students from other national and educational traditions. Prior to this, we offer an account of our data collection and processing.
Research design and methodology
The current discussion draws on research interviews undertaken as part of an investigation into the importance of internationalization to university lecturers’ ability to act and interact with their students (Tange, 2010b). Over a period of three years, 36 interviews were performed with employees at five Danish institutions, covering the academic fields of engineering, business, life sciences, social science and humanities. Initially, research sites were selected because of their relatively large proportion of international students (396 out of 2062 for Engineering, 1215 out of 8000 for Business and 400 out of 3400 for Life Sciences). Two institutions were added later in order to test specific questions relating to problem-based learning (Social Science) and domain loss (Humanities); they have a lower proportion of international students (278 out of 3101 for Social Science and 1175 out of 13097 for Humanities).
Contact was established through organizational gatekeepers at the universities’ international offices and study administrations, thus taking advantage of their easy access to organizational networks and knowledge (Bernard, 2006). At this stage gatekeepers were informed of the principal selection criteria, namely that we were looking for lecturers involved in international teaching who had no special qualifications in English. The final sample included 34 lecturers and 2 administrators; the latter were included because of their insight into organizational processes related to internationalization. Within the group there was a spread in terms of age, gender, discipline, work experience and teaching method employed. In terms of nationality, four international members of staff (three Germans and one Swede) were included because of the non-native perspectives on Danish educational culture they could offer. All had sufficient language skills to partake in conversation in Danish and were thus capable of interacting as effectively with local students as their Danish peers.
Data collection started with Engineering in March 2007. Four interviews were conducted which represent an initial, exploratory phase in the inquiry (Kvale and Brinkman, 2009). Between 2007 and 2009 an additional 32 interviews were conducted with Business (eight interviews, 2007/08), Life Sciences (eight interviews, 2008), Social Science (eight interviews, 2009) and Humanities (eight interviews, 2009), addressing the themes of language, cultural diversity and classroom experiences. Interviews were conducted at respondents’ home institutions and lasted between 40 and 60 minutes. They were subsequently transcribed ad verbatim, amounting to approximately 500 pages of raw data. Parallel to the interviewing process, an initial analysis was carried out, which allowed for the continuous integration of emergent questions into the interview guide (Spradley, 1979). Once data collection was completed, the interviews were subjected to a second, more thorough analysis, which organized statements under the overall themes of language, culture, knowledge, and organization.
For the purpose of our analysis we have focused on interview references to ‘culture’ and ‘diversity’ because they may help us to identify what criteria respondents use to categorize their students. Given the interview focus on ‘international’ education, lecturers inevitably talk about nationality, but many add that diversity cannot be reduced to national culture, and that factors such as gender, age or discipline are equally important. This confirms our understanding of culture as a complex phenomenon. When looking at the categories that emerge from the data, three are particularly prominent. First, all lecturers classify students according to national culture, and the countries mentioned most frequently are Denmark (22 respondents), China (19), Spain (12) and France (7). Second, lecturers group students on the basis of region, distinguishing between students from Eastern Europe (11), Southern Europe (11), Africa (8) and Asia (7). A final differentiation is made in relation to educational culture where respondents speak of Danish (22), Southern European (13), Eastern European (8), Asian (7) and Anglo-American (6) traditions. Interestingly enough, there is no clear pattern except for the high number of references to ‘Danish’ national and educational culture, which suggests that the lecturers are engaged in a cross-cultural comparison between their native, Danish position and any non-native practices that seem to challenge this norm.
Research findings
In the analysis we attempt to investigate the social positioning of Danish university lecturers in their intercultural encounters with students whom, for one reason or other, they perceive as ‘different.’ At this stage we should like to stress that we do not consider this a question of racism since there is no clear pattern across institutions, departments and disciplines with regard to the countries, regions and academic cultures associated with problematic student actions. Instead we argue that the interviews document how native lecturers attempt to come to terms with the relatively vague notion of an international student ‘other’ who is characterized by his/her deviation from the conduct that local staff and learners regard as ‘normal’ in a Danish university setting. Such an interpretation involves a foreground of practices, including ‘doings and sayings’ related to (1) understandings, (2) written and unwritten rules and (3) normative engagement or feelings (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki et al., 2001). As a point of departure, one may ask: (1) Do the lecturers and students have a shared understanding of what classroom teaching is? (2) if not, what kind of action do lecturers expect, and how may student behaviors violate such written or unwritten rules? (3) Is there a prototypical ‘good’ student, and if so, where does this idea come from?
Positions of experience
To recapitulate, positions of experience involve the personal and group histories that influence actors’ present perception and evaluation of the practices encountered in the meeting with another individual. Given our focus on staff-student relations, we believe that the most relevant experiences are those that respondents have accumulated within the educational system and, in relation to this, two types of experiences seem particularly important, namely those associated with a specifically ‘Danish’ educational culture and those related to particular institutional settings. One thus sees a distinction between knowledge gained before and at the university, which is interesting as these two possibilities have different implications with regard to the non-native students’ ability to become accepted as full members of their new academic environment.
Conversely, many respondents seem to agree that there is a special, ‘Danish’ way of doing things. The lecturers rely on the pre-understanding that the Danish students have acquired special skills as part of their primary and secondary schooling, and that such knowledge places them in an advantageous position vis-a-vis the non-natives:
Well, our Danish students will – actually from the first year that they study here – they will be taught project work, problem-oriented work, team working, and things like that. And they are also accustomed to that kind of thing from high school. They seem to bring this kind of culture along with them. Not everybody finds it fun to work in groups, but they know what this is about and have experience with it. But I think some of the foreign students, they don’t have that kind of experience and I think that is a shame. (Lecturer, life sciences)
This position implies that higher education is the continuation of a socialization process which started when the students entered primary school. Lecturers highlight how the Danes have developed skills in team working, problem-oriented learning and conflict resolution, and that certain abilities can therefore be taken for granted in higher education. When asked to carry out a project, the Danish students appear to start at a higher level than non-natives with little teamwork experience, and even if they distance themselves from such practices, respondents regard this as a key factor behind local learners’ strategic decision to work in homogeneous Danish groups.
If, in comparison, experience is something that is acquired upon one’s admission into a specific academic institution or program, non-native learners are placed in a stronger position. Universities that rely on a very particular learning philosophy will have to establish a joint frame of reference for all students during the first and second years of the bachelor programs. Regardless of nationality or educational background, students will start on equal terms, gradually accumulating the experiences necessary to succeed within the system. One respondent reflects on such a process of academic socialization:
Well, term one is really not about anything else, largely, than what is problem-oriented learning: What does it mean, and what does it mean to put a project together, and what kind of group dynamics is involved? But really, what does this imply for the way you study a discipline, that you cannot expect to be presented with a topic or a theme, but will have to be explorative. . . [H]ere the Danish and foreign students follow exactly the same, how do I put it, course. Because we assume that none of them knows this, right? (Lecturer, social science)
The two quotations highlight the contrast between an understanding of experience as skills that are obtained in primary and secondary education, and as a work method that all learners have to acquire when starting a new university program. The first position makes academic socialization a very difficult task for the non-native learners who have limited access to the national, ‘Danish’ educational culture that the lecturers choose to emphasize. In comparison, the second interpretation makes socialization the responsibility of the university, which at least in theory establishes equal terms for all students arriving in year one.
Cultural self-perception
Respondents’ positions of experience – as Danes socialized into a national educational tradition or as university lecturers associated with specific institutional cultures – reflect on the image they create of themselves as teachers interacting with their students. The interviews show how the lecturers are inspired by the ideal of a democratic teacher who facilitates knowledge-sharing rather than authorizing particular scientific methods or theories. But at the end of the day, the lecturers are also responsible for the evaluation of students’ performance, and one suspects that the respondents’ notion of an ‘equal’ relationship between staff and students favours a particular kind of learner.
First, the lecturers’ insistence on equality causes tension in the meeting with students socialized into more hierarchical educational cultures. Respondents comment on international students’ use of academic titles and family names, noting how non-native learners seem to respond negatively to the Danes’ casual style. In addition, several find that when they interact with international students they find themselves placed in the position of a scientific expert, who validates knowledge in a specific course or discipline. This role sits uncomfortably with the respondents’ self-image and has caused some lecturers to challenge student expectations:
It is obvious that they perceive me as the professor and their relationship to me as different. And they may say that they are not used to professors who will talk with them. And really, this is also an important part of week 1, that they discover that I am a person who takes an interest in them. I am a person who wants something with them. I have thought about what I would like, and there is a lot of freedom, but we work together on this. I will not arrive, do a lecture and then leave. (Lecturer, life sciences)
The lecturer’s insistence that ‘we work together on this’ relates to the question of facilitation. Particularly in relation to supervision, respondents explain how they see it as their responsibility to introduce students to the various possibilities that arise in the course of a project. One professor talks about the supervisor as a ‘mentor’ or ‘coach’, who offers qualified advice and feedback on the students’ work, but leaves it to the learners to determine where and how to proceed. Similarly, lecturers may present their classes with a range of theories or methods, trusting that the students are capable of selecting from this pool of knowledge whatever is useful to them. As one respondent puts it: ‘I talk a lot, and then I leave it to [my students] to decide what they find is relevant, and then they can ignore the rest’ (Lecturer, business studies).
The interviews present a self-image of the university teacher as a facilitator rather than academic authority, who is responsible for the framing of students’ learning, but not necessarily for the selection and validation of scientific knowledge. This cultural presupposition depends on an equally idealized image of the learners, as self-driven and responsible individualists who will speak up in class whenever they believe the lecturer is in the wrong. Yet such an idea of the university teacher may differ from the positions claimed by the academic staff at international students’ home institutions, which makes it difficult for the non-natives to decode the written or unwritten rules motivating the Danish lecturers’ practice.
Cultural presuppositions
As discussed above, the lecturers’ self-perception relies on the image of an ideal learner, who is willing to contribute to classroom discussions and take charge of his or her learning process. Because the Danish educational system has provided native lecturers and learners with shared experiences of ‘attractive’ and ‘deviant’ practices, this ‘good student’ is often, if not exclusively, found among the Danish students, who are set up as a benchmark against which any alternative conduct can be assessed. Particularly important to the respondents’ construction of an international student ‘other’ are the themes of participation, reproduction/reflection and critical thinking.
The first theme of participation recurs throughout the interviews, leaving an impression of international students as less willing to partake in the dialogue that lecturers see as essential to university education. All respondents were asked about their first encounter with international teaching, and a common answer was that English-medium courses are characterized by one-way communication because of students’ reluctance to speak up in class. Many ascribe such passivity to language problems, stressing that both natives and non-natives find it hard to work in English. But cultural explanations are also provided, as we see in the following response to an interview question about managing classroom interaction:
[This is] perhaps not unwillingness on behalf of the international students, but sometimes they have another study tradition, where they are not expected to, well, participate, and that they have to contribute. But of course I start with a round where everybody presents themselves, and I introduce myself, and then I explicitly try to tell them that I should like this to be a forum where you also play a part. And that you should not expect me to do all the talking for the next 12 sessions. (Lecturer, humanities)
Equally important is the theme of reproduction/reflection. In their accounts, lecturers name as one extreme students socialized into academic cultures that reward learners for their ability to reproduce the knowledge presented in the classroom. To the Danes this approach is undesirable, prompting some respondents to dismiss learners trained to manage knowledge in this way as ‘parrot-like’. At the other extreme, one finds the reflective learner, who is able to distinguish between various theories and methods, determine which of these work in relation to a specific project, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of different perspectives. Related to this is the question of critical thinking. Instead of choosing carefully whatever concepts are relevant to a particular query, respondents find that some international students take a non-discriminatory approach, attempting to include in their reports or examination answers as many theories or positions as possible. The Danish lecturers tend to dismiss this practice as name-dropping or imitation, which they associate with a more task-oriented approach to education. In contrast to this, respondents promote problem-oriented learning, which they regard as central to the Danish educational tradition. Here the key component is critical thinking – defined by the Danish lecturers as the ability to manage and assess knowledge, make informed choices, and motivate the theoretical and methodological decisions made.
To sum up, respondents draw on the idea of a prototypical student characterized by a willingness to speak up in class, reflective thinking and the ability to engage critically with the methods and theories presented in the course. In theory, this prototype is non-discriminatory since it relies on skills that can be acquired through education rather than specific linguistic and cultural repertoires. Yet the lecturers’ notion of the ‘ideal learner’ is problematic because it does not take into account that other practices may have been privileged in the non-native students’ home countries or universities. As a result, lecturers end up interpreting student silence as symptomatic of missing analytical capacity rather than an alternative way of performing the role as student in the classroom.
Cultural fix points
Cultural fix points, finally, are the emotional conflicts arising from the meeting between divergent classroom practices and expectations. The interviews provide examples of fix points emerging in response to all activities associated with international teaching, including project work, examinations, and report-writing. In relation to the theme of teacher-student relations, two recurring topics are classroom encounters and supervision, which underline to the respondents the cultural difference between themselves, as Danish lecturers, and students from other parts of the world.
With regard to classroom encounters, tension arises in relation to the form of teaching, student responsibility and dialogue. First, several respondents highlight the contrast between a preferred interactive style of teaching and the lecture-based education that they associate with the non-native students’ home institutions. Lecturers notice how non-natives appear to be challenged by the participatory approach used in small groups or seminars and, occasionally, they end up explaining to mixed groups why they have chosen this approach rather than to lecture. Connected to this is the second theme of student responsibility. Across disciplines and institutions, the Danish lecturers agree that they cannot be put in charge of students’ learning processes, and that learners must partake in the co-creation of knowledge. But as one respondent observes, this causes problems for some international students: ‘This thing about accepting joint responsibility for the teaching or the learning, that is something they need help to do’ (Lecturer, life science). Finally, the question of dialogue relates to the theme of participation discussed above. The interviews show how respondents view a lack of interaction as problematic, prompting them to adopt pedagogic strategies that compel students to talk:
Now I have also myself put an extra effort into creating more interaction. For I have these four-hour sessions. And this means . . . that I have gone through a chapter, a couple of chapters, and then I have included a case suitable for those chapters. . . . And then they have been asked to present that in groups. I actually think it helps. Both because it means that everything does not become sort of one-way: the focus is not constantly on the teacher. And then of course it teaches people to become more involved. And they get the feeling that it is not so easy to be standing up there, in a second language. So I think this has made it easier. It has become more of a joint task to carry this through. (Lecturer, business studies)
Of equal significance is supervision, which to the Danes implies a close relationship between the lecturer and his or her supervisee(s). Once again this highlights the formality issue, as respondents find that some international students have difficulties in partaking in face-to-face interaction with a teacher. Several lecturers explain how non-native learners may withdraw from interaction in order to show respect to their superior, but stress that this conduct becomes an obstacle to the learning process because it hinders the lecturers’ attempt to use dialogue to monitor students’ understanding. Concerning the nature of supervision, the lecturers and international students appear to have different expectations. On the one hand, lecturers emphasize that their role is to offer guidance, and that the students are ultimately responsible for defining, structuring, and carrying out their projects. On the other hand, the misunderstandings described in the interviews indicate that some students have not encountered this type of facilitating teacher before, and arrive at the supervisor’s office believing that they will be guided through the demanding task of project-writing. As a result, meetings cause disappointment and frustration on both sides:
But now these foreigners – I have one at the moment, a Danish-speaking one from Ukraine, and then [the girl] from Laos. They are very uncertain about whether it is good enough, whether my advice is good enough, and whether their own work is good enough. I have never experienced this particularly strongly – well, I have had issues with Danish students; when they have been worried, it is because there has been something to worry about. They have been stuck or there have been other things where you’d say an intervention is justified. But these foreign ones, before they have started writing, even before they have started reading, there is so much uncertainty. (Lecturer, life sciences)
To sum up, the analysis highlights several fix-points relating to classroom encounters and supervision. These causes of tension are important for our understanding of international teaching, underlining how the meeting with alternative learning positions challenges the lecturers in relation to questions of learner autonomy, student-staff relations and the nature of scientific knowledge. Consciously or unconsciously, the lecturers may end up privileging student practices that match their own expectations, which leaves them with an ethnocentric Danish pedagogy that dismisses any alternative conduct as deviant or undesirable.
Discussion and implications
In theory the most important task for international educators is to create a pedagogical setting that can maximize the learning for all students qualified to be in the classroom. Yet we see in the analysis how respondents end up constructing a perception of non-native students from a deficit perspective, describing them as more dependent, imitative and submissive than the native learners. Occasionally, one suspects that the lecturers are surprised or indeed disappointed that the non-natives do not conform to their idea of ‘good’ learner practice or fail to show their appreciation of a pedagogy based on the critical, problem-oriented perspective that the respondents associate with effective learning processes; this points to three interesting paradoxes.
First, the lecturers provide detailed descriptions of key differences between international and Danish students, underlining the connection between any divergent actions and the educational traditions in the students’ home countries. Over a period of time, the respondents seem to expect their international students to learn to become as independent and self-assured as their prototypical image of the Danish students. Yet little suggests that lecturers relying on this deficit approach have necessarily developed the pedagogic practices that can support international students in their process of becoming ‘good’ learners in a project- and problem-oriented context.
The second paradox is the gap between lecturers’ stated wish for an equal relationship and their construction of a perception of the international students as devoid of certain skills or insights. Despite a self-perception of Danish equality, the lecturers take up a position of superiority in relation to the international students, accepting neither them nor their home universities as equals. The lecturers are rarely explicit in their criticism of other universities. Yet we see little acknowledgement of the fact that alternative pedagogical approaches can be useful because they offer to insecure learners the comfort of a teacher willing to explain complicated theories or to guide students through their learning process.
Third, the interviews reveal how lecturers position themselves as reflective researchers, contrasting their acceptance of multiple scientific truths with the dogmatic approach that they associate with the international students’ home universities. In spite of this, respondents happily rely on personal experiences in the classroom, which causes them to assume an uncritical, non-reflective position of pedagogical superiority.
In order to transcend this present state of ‘good lecturers’ and ‘deviant learners’ we propose that an intercultural pedagogy be developed, taking into account the three paradoxes summarized above. By pointing to lecturers’ construction of an idealized self and other we have provided a necessary first step, highlighting asymmetries of which the respondents may not be aware. Such an initial exploration of misunderstandings has prepared the ground for a more thorough mapping of the educational ‘cultures’ or ‘approaches’ represented in the multicultural classroom. Most urgent for the Danish lecturers is possibly an identification of the hidden norms and values that underpin classroom conduct within this specific learning environment. Once they know precisely what they mean by such terms as ‘equal’, ‘democratic’ and ‘independent’, the teachers are in a better position to support incoming students and thereby reduce their risk of academic failure or marginalization. Over time such attempts to overcome knowledge asymmetries may prompt the development of a learning platform that transcends particular national or institutional traditions by treating all methods and theories as equal.
Conclusion
Drawing on research interviews with lecturers involved in international education we have examined the intercultural encounter between Danish university lecturers and international students. Our main findings are as follows.
First, the interviews show lecturers to be aware of the fact that the educational experiences and expectations of international students deviate from those of the local students, and that this influences the foreign learners’ approach to classroom interaction, student-staff relations and problem-oriented project work. Yet few accept the consequences of diversity, including their own need to adapt teaching styles and contents so that they can offer to the foreign students a qualified starting position.
Second, lecturers draw on an idealized picture of the native students as competent learners, while constructing an image of international students as devoid of the skills required in Danish higher education. This is paradoxical in the light of lecturers’ attempt to define their relationship with the students in terms of equality. However, through their practice the lecturers assume a position of superiority, disregarding the students’ indigenous knowledge and international universities’ pedagogical form.
Finally, in terms of emotions we see how respondents express disappointment when international students do not conform to their idea of a ‘good’ student, or fail to appreciate their effort as ‘best’ lecturers. Even when in scientific terms they describe themselves as open to the existence of multiple truths, respondents rely mainly on personal experiences and expectations when evaluating classroom conduct and norms, which results in a somewhat uncritical view of their own pedagogical practice.
In order to proceed beyond the present condition of ‘good’ lecturers and ‘deviant’ learners, we have suggested that an inclusive practice be developed for international education. The current study has provided an empirical foundation, highlighting how different expectations and experiences influence the way that actors negotiate and evaluate practices within a multicultural study environment. A truly inclusive pedagogy will have to transcend this current state of polarization, acknowledging both parties’ right to teach and learn in a manner fruitful to them. We wish to stress that we find this task too important to be left to individual lecturers and students. Instead we recommend that the development and implementation of a new pedagogy be carried out at university level, thereby establishing a link between actors’ everyday practice and an institutional commitment to internationalization.