Work in groups for a brighter future - reflections on the feasibility of some Western pedagogical practices
I am working in a context where I have to support international* students (predominantly Chinese) prepare for study at a UK university. Like everywhere else, I adopt pedagogies fostering active learning, group work (GW) and discussions (by GW here I mean classroom tasks where students are encouraged to perform them in pairs or small groups and work together generally). However, I am increasingly perturbed by the fact that there is a mismatch between widely adopted pedagogical pemises and classroom reality. Recently, I chatted to a student in class and they told me they prefer to work individually and do not like chatting and discussing with others. It seemed to be an idiosyncrasy but there are a great number of students predominantly from China who seem to adopt a similar stance. This made me question the suitability of the pedagogy we are largely employing despite it being implemented with view of the fact that it will foster the necessary skills for thriving in the world of work.
Active learning pedagogy appears to be new to most international students from Asia and they do not fully engage in the classroom in my own experience. GW very often comes as a response to industry expectations of HE institutions to prepare students for their future career. This means international students have to adjust to a context they will not necessarily be working in. Most of them go back to their native country to work for a company they have been working for where the workplace processes and communication could be entirely different from the ones they have to engage in at the uni of their choice abroad. On the other hand, there are differences in prior educational experience as well as purely personal preferences for working independently, which might not be culturally bound - a study of students in several European universities found that Croatian students preferred working on their own rather than in a group (Šerić & Praničević, 2018). The results are in unison with what I observe in my classroom full of Chinese students. Could it be a trace form the competitive nature of learning in their previous context?
So who is the flipped learning/active learning model serving? Is it just a box ticking exercise for educators to show they are being up to date with latest (Western) pedagogies albeit it might not be working well in reality?
Another point to consider - with all the talk about decononising the curriculum - where and how does the above fit in? If students are reluctant to participate in group work for various reasons - some culturally-determined and language level related - (Elliot & Raynolds, 2012), then is it not better to adjust pedagogy to their preferred mode of learning? What about student-centered? If the student prefers to work independently and individually, then they should be let to do so. So it turns out all the buzz about internationalisation of the curriculum and student-centered pedagogies are just promotional ways for flashy sounding educational services which do not actually help the student and do not take their previous context and preferences into consideration. Elliot and Raynolds (2012) advise familiarisation on the part of the tutor with their students' prior learning experiences as well as rationalising the use of GW as strategies to make the latter work. But if you have to persuade someone that they need to adopt a certain strategy, pedagogy and way of learning - is it not an imposition of your systems and ways upon the weaker part in this power dynamic?
My search in literature led me to a multitude of articles related to assessed group projects. A further issue arising there is the division of local vs international. The latter seem to not prefer participating in group work due to cultural differences (Li &Campbell, 2008). Lower level students also seem to have a preference of working independently (Chang & Bickman, 2018). For graded group projects, native speaker students prefer to work with those who have high work ethics and are hard-working generally not only for the duration of the assignment (Elliot & Raynolds, 2012). This comes to show that some modes of assessment could create unease and an unpleasant atmosphere due to cultural and language differences among students.
The main discrepancy I see when it comes to these pedagogies lies in the fact that educators rely on students' autonomy and responsibility for their own learning, but deny them the choice of how to learn in the classroom because of other factors determining classroom pedagogy in the students' new chosen context.
A final note - if your toddler hates Brussels sprouts but the doctor said they should be consumed and are very useful, will you still shove them down their throat? I wouldn't. This leads us to another matter that warrants pondering about - the place of the individual tutor in terms of institutional expectations and preferred method of teaching on the one hand and the realities of their teaching practice in the international classroom on the other. Is there a clash between those and how do we establish our "authentic" decolonozed teaching persona? (Sanderson, 2008 as cited in Wimpenny at al., 2021).
* For those too sensitive about the use of this term, I would like to say that I do not burden it with any political or economic overtones, for me it is just part of the dychotomy - local vs non-local student (coming from another culture).
References:
Chang, Y., & Brickman, P. (2018). When group work doesn’t work: Insights from students. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(3), 1-17.
https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-09-0199
Elliott, C. J., & Reynolds, M. (2012). Participative pedagogies, group work and the international classroom: an account of students’ and tutors’ experiences. Studies in Higher Education, 39(2), 307–320.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2012.709492
Li, M., & Campbell, J. (2008). Asian students’ perceptions of group work and group assignments in a New Zealand tertiary institution. Intercultural Education, 19(3), 203-216.
Šerić, M., & Garbin Praničević, D. (2018). Managing group work in the classroom: an international study on perceived benefits and risks based on students’ cultural background and gender. Management: Journal of Contemporary Management Issues, 23(1), 139-156.
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