Abstract:

In the UK, the internationalisation of higher education attracts a massively increasing number of South-East Asian students (Bodycott and Walker, 2000). While considerable attention has been given to explore the implications of internationalisation for “Western” students, the author would like to pay attention to the increasing number of international students from China and Taiwan and the teachers who teach them. While there have already been a number of studies aimed at the learning behaviour of Chinese or Taiwanese international students in higher education, the study here concentrates on the teaching behaviour of the lecturers who teach them. Therefore, the main focus of this research is to identify how British lecturers teach when they have students from various cultural groups.

This is a report of the process and findings in the author’s case study at the present stage. The main purpose of undertaking the study is to identify the lecturers’ current teaching situation when teaching the increasing number of international students from China and Taiwan (ISCT) in British higher education. This case study is taken place in Department of Education in two institutions in North of England and South of England. The author reveals the different cultural backgrounds of ISCT and British students. Moreover, to understand the lecturers’ perspectives and teaching skills used in class, the author took place 3 kinds of interviews as a pre-pilot study, several lessons of observation as the pilot study. After analyzing the data collected in both pilot studies, the author set the design of her main study and has finished the data collection in both the sample institutions so far.

In addition, the author undertook her project to identify the sample lecturers’ points of view about the difference between ISCT and British students. In terms of the nature of knowledge and teaching strategies, the author enquired about issues which are commonly recognised in higher education when teachers teach both ISCT and home students in the UK in the interviews. Moreover, the author also discusses if the lecturers’ teaching strategies are affected by ISCT’s learning behaviours which are strongly affected by Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) by analysing the data collected in the observations of the sample teachers’ lessons and the content in the interviews with them.

Keywords:

Culture, Internationlisation, Teaching Strategy, Learning Style.