‘World-travelling’: a framework for re-thinking teachingand learning in internationalised higher education

Vivienne Anderson

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract In an era of unprecedented student mobility, increasingly diverse student

populations in many national contexts, and globally interconnected environmental and

social concerns, there is an urgent need to find new ways of thinking about teaching and

learning. Static assumptions about so-called ‘Western’ versus ‘non-Western’ teaching and

learning approaches or ‘local’ versus ‘international’ students are inadequate for responding

to the complex histories, geographies and identities that meet and mingle in our higher

education (HE) institutions. In this paper, I use Marıa Lugones’ ‘world-travelling’ as a

framework for discussing international and New Zealand women students’ reflections on

teaching, learning and transition in New Zealand HE. I conclude with some suggestions as

to what effective pedagogy might look like in internationalised HE if we think beyond

culturalist them-and-us assumptions and recognise students’ complexity.

Keywords Higher education � Internationalisation � Women � World-travelling �Teaching and learning � Transition � New Zealand

Introduction

Language that categorises some students as ‘different’ or ‘other’ has a long history in

educational literature, and literature on teaching and learning in internationalised higher

education (HE) is no exception (Madge et al. 2009; Rhee and Sagaria 2004). ‘International’

and ‘local’ students are often portrayed as distinct and oppositional groups; enrolment

status (international vs. local), ethnicity, and/or culture are privileged as categories of

analysis; and gender is considered only in passing or as a secondary concern (Bullen and

Kenway 2003; Kenway and Bullen 2003; Madge et al. 2009; Mayuzumi et al. 2007; Rhee

and Subreenduth 2006). International students in general, and international women

V. Anderson (&)University of Otago College of Education, 145 Union St East, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealande-mail: vivienne.anderson@otago.ac.nz

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students in particular, are often represented in deficit terms, for example, as foreign, ‘not

integrating’, academically needy or disadvantaged (Anderson 2012; Bullen and Kenway

2003; Kenway and Bullen 2003; Madge et al. 2009; Rhee and Sagaria 2004). Bullen and

Kenway (2003, p. 41) describe research as ‘culturalist’ where the researcher privileges

cultural difference as ‘‘a primary analytical tool’’ (citing McConaghy 1998, p. 345), or

assumes that international students are necessarily different to local students. To Bullen

and Kenway (2003), assumptions of (international students’) difference reveal hierarchical

and colonial views, with particular consequences for international women students, who

are positioned as ‘‘both the colonial and the feminine other’’ (p. 43, also see Kenway and

Bullen 2003; Rhee and Subreenduth 2006; Mayuzumi et al. 2007). Instead, Kenway and

Bullen (2003, p. 17) call for ‘‘self-reflexive’’ research that foregrounds women’s own

‘‘storylines’’ and ‘‘lived experiences’’ in internationalised HE.

In this paper I foreground six ‘international’ and six ‘local’ women students’ reflections

on their negotiation of New Zealand HE contexts.1 The women were self-selected partici-

pants in my 2005–2006 doctoral research project, a critical feminist ethnography (Pillow and

Mayo 2007) involving the development of a social group for international and local women

students and partners of students in collaboration with International Office staff at a HE

institution (HEI) on New Zealand’s South Island. A full account of the group’s development,

organisation and outcomes is available elsewhere (see Anderson 2013), but in brief, the

group was established as a student club with all advertising material stating clearly that it was

also part of a doctoral research project. Informed consent was sought from all women prior to

their involvement in the group. As both a fellow student and researcher, I was a ‘participant

observer’ in the group (Angrosino and Mays de Perez 2000; Evans 1998); data were col-

lected through both participant observation and 28 interviews with 20 women over 2 years.

(I interviewed eight women twice who were based in the city during both years of the

project). My primary research questions were: (1) how do women’s accounts of their

material lived realities reflect or problematise the international/local student binary under-

scoring much research, policy and practice in internationalised HE, and (2) how might

research that centres women foster new insights in terms of policy, research and practice?

In this paper I use Lugones’ (1987) ‘world-travelling’ as a framework for reading the

women’s reflections on their teaching and learning contexts beyond ‘‘monolithic and

monologic discourse[s]’’ (Rhee 2006, p. 609) and culturalist assumptions of international

students’ difference (Bullen and Kenway 2003; McConaghy 1998). After explaining my

theoretical framework and the context in which the research occurred, I focus on three

themes that emerged in the women’s accounts—communication, social connections and

expectations of studenthood—before considering some implications for policy and practice

in internationalised HE.

Theoretical framework

Power, agency and discourse

Three concepts that underpin the remainder of the paper are power, agency and discourse.

Poststructuralist literature offers a useful way of thinking about these concepts and the

1 In this paper, I use the terms ‘international’ and ‘local’ in reference to students’ enrolment status in NewZealand HE. I recognise the irony that, in writing to trouble static and essentialising ways of categorising/identifying people, I am stuck with language that categorises (Kumashiro 2006).

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connections between them. I use the term ‘discourse’ in reference to the ways in which

language reveals and reproduces unequal relations of power, establishing a ‘‘common

ground for discussion [while] precluding other perspectives’’ (Monkman and Baird 2002,

p. 499). From a poststructuralist perspective, we become acting, speaking subjects in a

given context through discourses that ‘subjectivate’ us, that is, by being seen, read, or

named in certain ways (Davies 2006). Power is therefore relational—revealed and

reproduced through institutional and discursive practices (Paechter 2001).

Dominant discourses, as naturalised ways of thinking about, naming, and regulating the

world, reflect and protect the positions of those who are most powerful (Kobayashi and

Peake 1994). One example is the use of dualistic categories to categorise or define people

(Kobayashi and Peake 1994). In HE, the ‘learning styles’ literature categorises students in

terms of an East–West, collectivist–individualist, and dialectic–dialogic framework (Bullen

and Kenway 2003), where so-called Eastern cultures are seen as exhibiting a concern for

group harmony and interdependence; characterised by a large power differential between

teacher and pupil; and emphasising teacher-direction, memorisation, and knowledge recall

(for example, see Choi 1997; Ho et al. 2004; Samuelowicz 1987; Scheyvens et al. 2003). In

contrast, so-called Western cultures are described as valuing independence and self-

expression; exhibiting less formal relations between teachers and students; and placing

greater emphasis on argument, debate, and critical thinking (Choi 1997; Ho et al. 2004;

Holmes 2004, 2005; Scheyvens et al. 2003). Kobayashi and Peake (1994, p. 227) contend

that such binary categorisations are not merely descriptive or a way of ordering the world,

but they ‘‘exert and maintain political power’’.

However, dominant discourses or ways of categorising people, are never ‘all there is’, and

although some discourses carry considerable force (Palumbo-Liu 2002), recognising the

instability of all discourses is vital if we are to avoid simply reproducing them (Ong 1999;

Rhee 2006; Rhee and Subreenduth 2006). People who are constructed as ‘other’ in dominant

discourses are active in constructing themselves and others as they move between different

social worlds (Lugones 1987, 2003; Mayuzumi et al. 2007), each of which is marked by

many forms of power and many different (dominant and resistant) discourses (Ichimoto

2004; Lugones 1987, 2006). Lugones’ (1987) ‘world-travelling’ is useful for foregrounding

this complexity in relation to internationalised HE, because it facilitates attention to both

dominant and resistant discourses, and people’s agency in relation to them.

Worlds, world-travelling, ease and comfort

Lugones’ (1987, 2003, 2006) work sits within the broader work of ‘Borderlands’ feminist

scholars who theorise and affirm women’s lived experiences of negotiating socio-cultural

and geographical borders, and plural ways of being and knowing (also see Anzaldua 1987;

Flores 2000). Although Lugones (1987) does not write about education per se, her notion

of ‘world-travelling’ provides a useful framework for thinking about women’s experiences

in internationalised HE for the following reasons. First, it rejects static notions of (cultural)

difference while acknowledging that human differences shape people’s negotiation of

social (or educational) worlds. Second, Lugones’ starting point is a view of minoritised

people (in her words, everyday ‘world-travellers’) as necessarily skilful, offering a pro-

ductive contrast to dominant representations of international students as ‘different’ or

‘other’ in internationalised HE. Third, Lugones conceptualised ‘world-travelling’ with

women’s experiences in mind.

Lugones (1987, p. 9) describes as a ‘‘world’’ any social context, whether a ‘‘whole

society’’, or a smaller context within a society. ‘World-travelling’ refers to both movement

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between contexts and the sense of belonging to more than one world at the same time. To

Lugones, world-travelling involves literal shifting; being different people in different

contexts; having different personalities or characters; or behaving, using language, or space

in different ways. She affirms as a ‘‘necessarily acquired flexibility’’ the ability to move

between (for example) behavioural, values, and/or linguistic codes, whether intentionally

or as a necessary part of everyday life (p. 3).

Lugones (1987, p. 12) identifies four factors that can facilitate a person’s sense of

comfort or ‘fit’ in a world: being able to communicate freely, having a sense of connection

with at least one other person, being familiar or agreeing with behavioural norms, and

having a sense of ‘‘shared history’’ (or shared everyday understandings) with another

person (p. 12). Noble (2005, p. 114) expresses similar ideas, suggesting that whether or not

we are ‘comfortable’ in a context depends on our ‘‘sense of ‘fit’’’ within it: whether we are

recognised as ‘‘rightfully existing there’’, and whether we experience a sense of belonging

in relation to the ‘‘habits, routines and artefacts of…everyday environments’’. Notably,

both Lugones (1987) and Noble (2005) conceptualise differences as fluid, highlighting how

a person might find a context comfortable or uncomfortable in one way and not in others,

and how specific sources of comfort can mitigate other factors that make a context

uncomfortable. Lugones (1987) links an affective sense of comfort to agency, noting that a

person may ‘‘privilege one or more ‘worlds’’’ over others, for example, ‘‘if [she] experi-

ences [herself] as an agent in a fuller sense that she experiences [herself] in other ‘worlds’’’

(p. 12). Conversely, a person may disown a world where she feels dominated or unable to

act beyond others’ perceptions or assumptions. However, Lugones cautions that feeling

completely ‘at ease’ in a world is dangerous, since it tends to reduce our willingness to

‘travel’ or to engage with other ways of being in and seeing the world.

Like Lugones (1987), many other scholars also critique ‘‘static, monolithic, and value-

laden perspective[s] on cultural identity’’ (Kim 2008, p. 360), and call for a view of

identities as complex, fluid and ambiguous (for example, see Chawla and Rodriguez 2007;

Kim 2008; Madge et al. 2009; Rhee 2006; Rhee and Subreenduth 2006; Villenas 2006).

Reflecting on his experiences as a blind person in sighted educational worlds, Hull (2004)

applies the term ‘world-travelling’ explicitly to education. Like Lugones (1987), he affirms

the skilfulness needed to negotiate unfamiliar worlds, calling for a view of teaching as a

‘‘trans-world activity’’ (Hull 2004, p. 103). Hull argues that as ‘‘trans-world profes-

sional[s]’’, teachers would recognise that ‘‘in a different human world…the nature of

knowledge, what is taken to be knowledge, [and] what is regarded as being important or

unimportant knowledge, may be different from’’ their own (p. 105). I turn now to a

consideration of the context in which my study took place.

Internationalised HE in New Zealand and the use of categories that other

In New Zealand policy, internationalised HE is primarily envisaged in ‘market’ terms, in

particular, as ‘export education’ (Butcher 2004; Lewis 2011). As in many other contexts

(Rizvi 2004), striking asymmetries mark HE provision. In 2011, 70 % of all international

students were from the Asia region (International Division Ministry of Education 2013),

and 90 % of Asian international students were enrolled on a full-fee paying basis (Ministry

of Education Information Officer, personal communication, 12 March 2012). In contrast,

relatively few New Zealand students choose to study in Asia and most educational

exchange relationships are with HEIs in Europe, Great Britain, and North America.

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Discussions in the public media have often conflated ‘international’ with ‘Asian’ and

‘Asian’ with ‘other’ (Collins 2006). This is problematic since Asian migration to New

Zealand has a similarly long history to Anglo-Celt and other ‘white settler’ migration, and

ethnically Asian students in New Zealand HE include international students, first gener-

ation migrants, and fourth or fifth generation New Zealanders (Ip 1995). Some New

Zealand literature on teaching and learning in internationalised HE reveals ‘‘culturalist’’

tendencies (McConaghy 1998, p. 345; Bullen and Kenway 2003), for example, positing

‘cultural difference’ or ‘distance’ as an explanation for Asian students’ reported lack of

inclusion in classroom contexts (Deloitte 2008; Ward and Masgoret 2004), and explaining

perceived teaching and learning differences in relation to an East–West, collectivist–

individualist, dialectic–dialogic binary framework (Ho et al. 2004; Holmes 2004, 2005).

In the New Zealand context, the application of culturalist frameworks to research on

international students’ experiences positions New Zealand students as a homogenous norm

against which ‘other’ (Asian) students are read, simultaneously obscuring the Asian her-

itage of many New Zealanders and the rich diversity of New Zealand’s Asian student

population (Anderson 2008; Collins 2006). Women are largely represented in deficit terms,

for example, in relation to the constraint, burden, or distraction of family responsibilities

(Howes 2001; Scheyvens et al. 2003), and their anxiety or disadvantage in classroom

contexts (Beaver and Tuck 1998; Howes 2001). Sometimes culturalist and gendered dis-

courses intersect, for example, Howes (2001, p. 29) identifies ‘‘Asian females’’ in inter-

nationalised HE as especially disadvantaged when relating with male staff, landlords and

fellow students due to their ‘‘lack of assertiveness’’. Notably, university staff in Bullen and

Kenway’s (2003) Australian research expressed similar perspectives of Asian international

women students. Kenway and Bullen (2003) contend that it is problematic both to ignore

women, and to reduce them to discourses of disadvantage, and Doherty and Singh (2005,

p. 69) stress the need for teaching that is responsive to the ‘‘complex, fluid, and changing

voices of students’’, not grounded in assumptions about their sameness, difference or

learning styles. It is to the voices of women students that we turn now.

Women’s reflections on their New Zealand higher education context

My doctoral research interviews asked women to reflect on their experiences studying and/

or living in New Zealand and on their involvement in the group (see Anderson 2013). The

12 women who appear in the remainder of the paper were all students at the time of the

interviews and geographical ‘world-travellers’ (see Table 1) who had lived in New Zea-

land for 7 years or less. Table 1 provides an overview of the women’s ‘names’,2 birth

countries, enrolment status and level of study at the time of the interviews. The women’s

reflections on teaching and learning in internationalised HE exceeded neat categories,

thereby problematising an international–local student binary. The women reflected on

different kinds of educational worlds and noted factors that they associated with a sense of

comfort or ‘‘ease’’ (Lugones 1987, p. 12). While for most of the women these included a

sense of familiarity or connection, the women also described familiarity as constraining,

and unease or unfamiliarity as a source of enrichment, personal growth and freedom.

In the remainder of this section, I consider the women’s interview accounts in relation to

three themes that emerged across them: communication, social connection, and expecta-

tions of studenthood. These themes correspond with three of Lugones’ (1987) four ways of

2 All names used are pseudonyms.

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being ‘at ease’: being able to communicate freely, having a sense of connection with at

least one other person, and being familiar or agreeing with behavioural norms. My aims in

focusing on these themes are twofold: (1) to highlight how the women’s accounts com-

plicated simplistic assumptions about international students or ‘others’ in internationalised

HE; and (2) to consider how structural factors might promote or preclude a sense of ‘ease’

for students who negotiate new educational contexts (Lugones 1987).

Communication

Madge et al. (2009, p. 41) suggest that for international women students, ‘‘having a voice

and claiming agency’’ can be difficult. Lugones (1987, p. 12) suggests that a person is more

likely to be comfortable in a ‘world’ if they are both ‘‘a fluent speaker’’ within it and they

know ‘‘all the norms that there are to be followed’’. Noble (2005, p. 114) describes comfort

as partly a result of ‘‘our success in appropriating an object or environment…accommo-

dating ourselves to it; and…the extent to which we are able to appropriate or

accommodate’’.

Considerable literature emphasises the need to foster international students’ accom-

modation of or adaptation to new teaching/learning environments and approaches (for

example, see Campbell and Li 2008; Mak et al. 1999; Rienties et al. 2012). However,

Doherty and Singh (2005) question whether adaptation is necessarily always desirable,

suggesting that calls for international students’ adaptation can belie assumptions of (so-

called ‘Western’) pedagogical superiority. Lugones (1987) emphatically rejects a view of

second language learners as ‘lacking’; instead she affirms the skilfulness inherent in

negotiating different linguistic codes or communicative norms (also see Lugones 2006).

In my study, international and New Zealand women students’ reflections on commu-

nication revealed both agency and struggle. International students Violet, Sharon, Frances

and Deanna referred to ‘‘language problems’’ that reduced their communicative confidence

in New Zealand HE. However, in most cases, these ‘‘problems’’ were clearly pedagogical

rather than linguistic. For example, Sharon and Violet, who had previously studied in

Taiwan and Malaysia respectively, described some teaching staff as hard to hear, listen to

Table 1 Women’s ‘names’, birth countries, enrolment status and level of study in New Zealand HE

Name Birth country Enrolment status Level of study

Arui China Local student Undergraduate

Deanna Switzerland International student Postgraduate (Doctoral)

Fiona Canada International student Postgraduate (Masters)

Frances China International student Undergraduate

Jillian USA Local student Undergraduate

Laura USA Local student Postgraduate

Roja India Local student Undergraduate

Sharon Taiwan International student Undergraduate

Stella South Korea Local student Postgraduate

Violet Malaysia International student Undergraduate

Wakuwaku Japan Local student Postgraduate (Doctoral)

Yukiko Japan International student Postgraduate (Masters)

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and/or understand. Despite having studied English and in English for many years, both

women described difficulties decoding New Zealand English. Sharon explained that lec-

turers’ speaking speed and failure to provide printed support material made it difficult for

her to take notes:

They speak too fast. I mean they speak in their natural way but… their natural way is

not my natural way because I have to… literally think it first and then it takes

time…And they don’t provide… the handout beforehand (emphases Sharon’s).

Violet described how she had recorded university lectures in New Zealand in an attempt to

adapt to (and understand) her lecturers’ speech. However, the results of her adaptation

were mixed:

Their voices are so flat [laughing]! And…in the lecture…when you have the recorder

you sort of…depend on it,…so you get like…oh so boring. I go to sleep [laugh-

ter]!…We have a real good…lecturer in Malaysia…[but] this [New Zealand] one is

so boring…So…that makes it feel like I don’t really want to go to the class. One

[lecturer]…his words are not interesting, but at least you…can try to look at the

PowerPoint, read his stuff and…get some material (emphases Violet’s).

Violet revealed a reflexive awareness of her own pedagogical preferences, suggesting that

her ability to listen, understand and engage with the lecture was increased or diminished

depending on the lecturer’s ability to convey enthusiasm, include interesting content and

use supporting visual material. Sharon implied that if her New Zealand lecturers had

consistently moderated their speed of delivery and provided lecture notes prior to lectures,

then ‘‘accommodating…to’’ (understanding, concentrating on, and engaging with) their

teaching would have been less difficult (Noble 2005, p. 114). Friedenberg (2002) argues

that, while particularly important for students who are unfamiliar with local accents and

idiom, such relatively simple adjustments can benefit all students’ learning.

Campbell and Li (2008, p. 387) associate New Zealand university teaching with a

‘‘Socratic teaching approach’’ that ‘‘elicits students’ active participation in classroom

activities’’. However, Frances and Sharon’s accounts provided a counter-view. Frances

used the term ‘‘language problem’’ not in reference to individual students’ linguistic

deficiencies, but a lack of student–teacher interaction in large New Zealand undergraduate

lectures:

F I think the language problem is [an] obstacle, so in China we have quite a lot [of]

interaction with the professor…and we don’t have tutorials, whereas here we have

tutorials.

V So over there your lectures were more like… a tutorial and a lecture, like you were

talking with professors you could ask questions…F Yeah… whereas here…V The lecture you sit and you listen?

F Yeah…and you won’t answer questions, because they don’t ask the questions

(emphases original).

Frances contrasted the (inter)active learning expected of students at her Chinese university

(see Mok 2006) with New Zealand ‘‘chalk and talk’’ approaches that position students as

passive and silent recipients of teacher knowledge (Doherty and Singh 2005, p. 66). For

Frances, accommodating to undergraduate lectures in New Zealand had involved learning

to sit silently (Noble 2005).

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Notably, elsewhere in their interviews, Frances and Sharon’s accounts could be read as

echoing a binary distinction between Eastern/Western dialectic/dialogic, collectivist/indi-

vidualist pedagogical approaches (Holmes 2005). Both women associated New Zealand

HE with expectations of student independence, and Sharon identified New Zealand

expectations that students engage in ‘‘critical thinking’’ as different from expectations of

students in Taiwan HE. Frances remarked that ‘‘only two lectures per week’’ in New

Zealand means ‘‘you don’t have much communication…with the lecturer’’, and Sharon

contrasted the ‘‘critical thinking’’ required of students in New Zealand with a reliance on

teacher direction required in Taiwan:

I think the studying here is… based on the students. You have to learn about it

yourself; you cannot rely on the lecturer…and that’s different. Like back home the

lecturer’s just kind of like an instructor…they give you the key points and emphasise

that that is really important…and explain really clearly…Here (you have to do)

really critical thinking, do your own research (emphasis original).

However, Frances associated independent learning with limited student–lecturer contact,

and Sharon, with a lack of explicit lecturer guidance. As such, their references to the

‘independent learning’ and ‘critical thinking’ experienced in New Zealand could also be

read as revealing a kind of pedagogical neglect (Bullen and Kenway 2003; Johnson et al.

2000). Although, elsewhere, Frances also described her New Zealand university’s

independent learning expectations as ‘‘freeing’’ (see below), Sharon blamed herself for

having failed to feel a sense of ‘fit’ (Noble 2005), and expressed a desire ‘‘to retreat to a

safe place…Taiwan’’ (Anderson 2012, p. 333).

In my study, communication appeared as a broader issue than vocabulary, syntax, and

semantics, but some women also reflected explicitly on language use. Fiona (an interna-

tional student from Canada) and Yukiko (an international student from Japan) identified

the capacity to understand ‘local’ humour and engage in ‘‘small talk’’ as facilitating a sense

of acceptance and comfort. Along with Sharon, New Zealand students Wakuwaku, Arui

and Stella described such communication as easier when both speakers have a shared sense

of history or ‘things in common’ to talk about (Lugones 1987). Sharon indicated that she

found it more ‘‘straightforward’’ learning in Mandarin than in English, and Deanna (who

had come to New Zealand from Switzerland) noted, ‘‘We…foreigners have to double

check more often which simply takes time’’ (emphasis Deanna’s). Deanna contrasted

assumptions of monolingualism in New Zealand with educational policies in Switzerland

that actively accommodate multilingual students (for example, allowing students to use

bilingual dictionaries in university examinations). She noted the irony that while multi-

lingual students in New Zealand are expected to adjust to English-only teaching and

learning approaches, the HEIs that recruit them often make few curricular adjustments to

support their learning (Jiang 2011; Skyrme 2007).

Social connections

Much literature on international students’ experiences of HE is concerned with their

integration or adjustment to ‘host community’ environments (for example, see Lee and

Ciftci 2014; Rienties et al. 2012; Wang and Hannes 2013). Lugones (1987) describes social

connectedness as crucial in facilitating a sense of belonging or comfort in an unfamiliar

‘world’. Noble (2005) associates an affective sense of comfort or belonging with others’

‘recognition’ or acknowledgement that we are ‘‘legitimate participants in a given setting’’

(p. 115).

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Some New Zealand literature portrays Chinese international students as having par-

ticular difficulty integrating in New Zealand, explaining this in terms of their ‘cultural

difference’ and ‘distance’ from New Zealand students (Deloitte 2008; Ward and Masgoret

2004; Ward 2006). However, my research interviews problematised neat distinctions based

on ethnic affiliation and enrolment status. Social connections emerged as a key concern for

international and New Zealand women students alike and some women’s perspectives on

New Zealand HE suggested that a focus on particular students’ apparent ‘lack of inte-

gration’ is misplaced when HE teaching approaches may limit students’ capacity to con-

nect with each other.

Sharon and Laura (a US-born New Zealand student) identified large and anonymous

undergraduate classes as spaces in which it was difficult to connect with other students.

Here Sharon compares her university classes in New Zealand and Taiwan, saying:

You don’t really have classmates here in your class. You don’t know anyone here

and back home it’s like…we remain in the same class for four years…And when you

have discussion, you know everyone so it’s easier to talk…And then here you don’t

know anyone and then nobody wants to talk to you (emphases Sharon’s).

Similarly, Laura lamented, ‘‘I thought…I’ll get to know people in class…but no one

talked…My first year here I was really isolated’’ (emphasis Laura’s). When asked what

advice she would give to prospective students in New Zealand, Laura suggested that, in

order to avoid disappointment, they should ‘‘not have very high expectations of making

friends through lectures and classes’’. Both Sharon and Laura contested a view of New

Zealand HE teaching as necessarily dialogical/interactive (Holmes 2005) and highlighted

how teaching/learning conditions can foster or preclude opportunities for students to

interact and connect with each other.

Noble (2005, p. 115) suggests that a sense of recognition (and therefore, connection) can

‘‘accrue over time’’, and Lugones (1987), that a sense of connection with just one other

person can make an unfamiliar ‘world’ comfortable. Wakuwaku (a Japanese New Zealand

student) reflected both points, noting that although she initially found it difficult to connect

with other people in her university classes, over time, she was able to make some friends:

‘‘just a few people, a couple of people who you can just talk [to] in the class… that makes a

huge difference’’ (emphasis original). Yukiko and Miho (also an international student from

Japan) described connections with students and staff as offering both a sense of ‘‘being

adjusted’’ and a source of practical information (Ramsey et al. 2007), while Roja (an Indian

New Zealand student), described instances of staff concern that promoted both a sense of

connection and motivation. Reflecting on her return to study after a period of illness, Roja

said: ‘‘You just want to go back because they just value you and they support you’’.

Chawla and Rodriguez (2007, p. 706) describe ethnic (and other) identifications as

reflecting ‘‘naturally-occurring ecologies’’, while Palumbo-Liu (2002, p. 769) notes that

they also reflect a kind of historical ‘‘force’’. Both perspectives were evident in the

women’s accounts of building social connections in New Zealand. Violet, Deanna and

Jillian (a USA-born New Zealand student) identified perceived similarities or shared

ethnicity as a ‘‘comfortable’’ or ‘‘natural’’ basis for social connection. Violet described her

determination to make ‘‘Kiwi friends’’ as an uncomfortable (unnatural?) choice: ‘‘Either

you have to be comfortable [then] you’ll probably only interact with international people,

or you really want to go and make an effort to get to know some Kiwis’’. (Violet used the

term ‘Kiwi’ in reference to ‘white’ New Zealanders). However, Yukiko, Frances and

Sharon noted that non-Asian New Zealand students seemed disinterested in predominantly

Asian international students, contrasting this with the desirability of visible ‘‘foreigners’’ in

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their respective ‘home’ countries. Frances attributed this difference to the relative scarcity

of (visible) ‘‘foreigners’’ in China, saying, ‘‘I think maybe there are too many international

students here, so the Kiwi students…are not curious about them’’. However, Yukiko and

Sharon suggested that the desirability of ‘Western’ versus ‘Asian’ difference revealed

unequal relations of power (see Doherty and Singh 2005; Mohanty 1991; Noble 2005).

Sharon recalled as exceptional an occasion when a ‘white’ New Zealand student had

approached her to initiate conversation, and noted that the student, who had lived in Japan

and China, perceived Asian-ness as desirable and a basis for recognition (Noble 2005):

‘‘Probably… she goes like ‘Oh yeah there’s an Asian student’ [laughter]’’. Chawla and

Rodriguez (2007 p. 702) argue that societies or groups within a society are healthiest if

they remain ‘‘open ecologies, not closed systems that remain separated from each other’’.

Sharon echoed this view, suggesting that students are more likely to recognise and connect

with ‘others’ in internationalised HE if they have an open attitude: ‘‘If the Kiwi student [is]

really interested in [other] cultures, we will get along better’’.

While most of the women in my study reflected Lugones’ (1987) view of social con-

nection as an important basis for ‘comfort’ in a new educational world, Frances also

complicated this view. Here, Frances associates a lack of social connectedness in New

Zealand HE with a welcome sense of freedom, autonomy and agency:

F I have such [an] opportunity to come to study here, to experience some different

cultures and different classes and to find another side of myself.

V When you say find a different side of yourself, could you just talk about that a little

bit more? Because I’m really interested in that comment.

F Like…in China you’re used to that environment…and you are familiar with all the

people. So sometimes you go in the same ways as them, even if you don’t know

whether that’s the way you want to be. Whereas if you [are] in a totally different

environment, no one knows you,… so you don’t need to care about [how] other

people see you, observe how you act, so you can do whatever you like, with total

freedom (emphases original).

Here Frances problematises the representation of Asian international students as

necessarily ‘collectivist’ (for example, see Choi 1997; Ho et al. 2004; Samuelowicz

1987; Scheyvens et al. 2003). For Frances, a lack of connection and belonging in New

Zealand HE offered a welcome opportunity to be and behave differently.

Expectations of studenthood

Lugones (1987) suggests that we are more likely to feel comfortable in contexts where we

are familiar and/or we agree with the norms that govern social interaction and behaviour.

In my study, women discussed behavioural and social norms in relation to student–staff

interactions and learning approaches. Some scholars associate ‘Western’ university ped-

agogies with expectations of independence and autonomy, especially at postgraduate level

(Bullen and Kenway 2003; Johnson et al. 2000), but the women in my study complicated

this view. Women identified teaching staff as playing a crucial role in enacting and creating

behavioural and social norms in HE contexts that were comfortable, uncomfortable or

unfamiliar; highlighted the role of departments in fostering students’ sense of belonging

and agency; and represented expectations of autonomy as both problematic and freeing.

Fiona and Deanna reflected on differences in staff and postgraduate student relations at

their New Zealand university and in their former HEIs (in Canada and Switzerland

respectively). Fiona explained that, in Canada, she had looked forward to postgraduate

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study as offering inclusion into staff members’ academic ‘worlds’, saying, ‘‘I was looking

so forward to becoming a Masters student because Masters students had completely dif-

ferent relationships with their teachers…You’re part of a world…Whereas an under-

grad…you’re very much a number’’ (emphasis Fiona’s). However, contrary to Fiona’s

expectations, her New Zealand department was characterised by limited social staff–stu-

dent interaction. Fiona described her supervisory relationship as ‘‘hierarchical’’ and

intimidating, and as such, as limiting her sense of agency: ‘‘If there’s a problem, I really

don’t feel that I can say it’’ (emphasis Fiona’s). Similarly, Deanna reflected that ‘‘in

Switzerland PhDs are bad paid staff members, but they are recognised as staff members,

and here they are not, they are students…they are kind of some additional stuff’’ (emphasis

Deanna’s). Here she recalls her interruption of a midday Christmas party to which post-

graduate students had not been invited:

I just went… into the tearoom to eat lunch, and I came in and all the lecturers and

staff were there having nice things… and yeah and I was like ‘oops, there is a party

going on!’ and … I think our head of department was a bit embarrassed and he just

said to me ‘yeah come and join’ and I don’t know, I felt strange. I just ate my

leftovers [laughs], sat there, ate and left because I felt that they should have invited

us.

Deanna and Fiona identified small everyday interactions at departmental level as

communicating recognition or lack of recognition of students’ legitimate presence (Noble

2005).

In contrast, Stella (a postgraduate student) and Wakuwaku (a doctoral student)

described their academic departments as both collegial and supportive. Stella stated that

she found postgraduate classes much more intimate, interactive and student-centred than

her undergraduate classes:

I found the postgraduate paper is really really different to just the ordinary 1, 2, 300

level papers. We have only six students in the class, and… it’s [a] totally student-

orientated class which is so, so nice, you just…learn a lot through that course

because you talk a lot. You have to talk, so you have to think before then, which

means that process makes you learn really…effectively, compared to…ordinary

papers for other degrees (emphasis Stella’s).

Wakuwaku said:

I know…those people who taught me through the past four years, and [I] go to the

staffroom and have a chit chat with staff members and lecturers and other stu-

dents…and it’s [a] very nice environment to be in. I’m very comfortable. I have a

social network inside within the university or department, and also outside of the

university now.

Wakuwaku associated thesis study with expectations of autonomy, but she described these

expectations as both comfortable and familiar, perhaps because of her strong sense of

social connectedness. She commented, ‘‘I’m very very confident about… sort of

disciplining myself, and I’m really good at that’’.

Echoing Stella (above), Frances described impersonal undergraduate lectures at her

New Zealand university as requiring a level of autonomy. While, in some respects, Frances

found limited student–teacher interaction problematic (see earlier), as noted, she also

associated autonomy in New Zealand HE with a welcome sense of freedom. Here Frances

compares her classes in New Zealand and China:

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Here…the lecture is the start of your studying, it’s not the end of your study…It’s

quite open…quite thought provoking…It’s kind of independent working…And also

you can choose whatever classes you like but you don’t need to worry about those

classes you don’t like…whereas in China we have to take some compulsory clas-

ses…that means you have less time to explore or to look for the information or the

stuff you like (emphasis original).

Frances highlighted how familiar social and behavioural norms may be constraining as

well as comfortable, and how unfamiliar (perhaps uncomfortable) norms may also create

valued opportunities to be and behave differently.

In the previous section I noted Sharon’s suggestion that local students’ openness to others

is likely to increase newcomers’ sense of belonging in internationalised HE. Madge et al.

(2009) apply this idea to HE pedagogy, stressing the importance of staff remaining open to

‘‘the possibility of [students’] commonalities and differences at all times’’ (p. 43). Violet

recalled one occasion when such openness was not evident in a tutor’s assignment feedback:

All four Malaysian in the lab…all got returned assignment, ‘ask the Kiwi students

to… proof-read your work before you hand in’. And it was like…that’s discrimi-

nation! Kiwi doesn’t equal good English. I don’t mind her saying like, ‘try and get

someone with good English, or PhD’…But…why is she stressing the Kiwi?

(emphases Violet’s).

Violet highlighted the danger of staff ‘reading’ students solely in terms of their perceived

difference. She problematised the dual assumption that international students will

necessarily share common language problems, and New Zealand students, common

English-language skills.

Implications for teaching in internationalised higher education

In this paper, I have drawn on Lugones’ (1987) notion of ‘world-travelling’ to consider

women’s accounts of teaching and learning in internationalised HE. This study was small in

size and scope and, like all categorisations, the term ‘women’ is slippery and problematic. It is

impossible on the basis of my data to make broad generalisations, or claims about the

specificity of my research findings to women. However, the study ‘findings’ suggest several

implications. First is the need to recognise students’ diversity and agency in internationalised

HE: their creative capacity for surviving, accommodating to and enjoying unfamiliar and at

times uncomfortable experiences as they move between study and living ‘worlds’. While, as

Lugones (1987) argues, world-travelling by definition involves experiencing discomfort or

unease, this is not always a negative thing. For many of the women in my study, uncom-

fortable encounters with new teaching/learning approaches also offered rich and interesting

experiences, and fostered new ways of seeing self and others. Second, the women’s reflec-

tions call into question a view of New Zealand HE as drawing on a unitary pedagogical

tradition that is inherently superior to ‘other’ pedagogies (Doherty and Singh 2005; Madge

et al. 2009). Some women described the large, teacher-centred, impersonal undergraduate

classes characteristic of New Zealand HE as alienating, isolating, and/or pedagogically

ineffective. Similarly, some described as problematic teaching and supervision approaches

that privilege autonomy and independence. Others appreciated the freedom associated with

autonomous and anonymous learning in New Zealand HE and/or found independent work

expectations ‘‘comfortable’’. However, in general, women associated interactive, student-

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centred teaching practices and collegial staff–student relations with a sense of understanding,

engagement, communicative confidence and comfort or belonging. Women identified

effective and accessible teaching as characterised by clear articulation, explicit explanations

and expectations, engaging delivery, and the use of visual aids (Friedenberg 2002). The

women’s accounts highlight the importance of not assuming that students are necessarily the

same as or different to each other, but recognising that students come to HE with a range of

educational experiences and expectations, and that they are active in making make sense of

their educational journeys (Madge et al. 2009).

The data in this paper highlight the importance of responsive teaching that is open both to

students’ needs and their diversity. Hull (2004, p. 105) argues that the question of how to teach

responsively is ‘‘is not in the first instance pedagogical’’, but ‘‘ontological…and epistemo-

logical’’ (p. 105), that is, a question of what we see as legitimate knowledge and whether we

recognise our own knowledge as contingent, partial and limited. Hull’s challenge is for edu-

cators to become ‘‘trans-world’’ professionals who recognise as limited their ways of seeing the

world, and draw on ‘‘experience, familiarity and imagination’’ to teach all students well (p. 105,

also see Lugones 1987, 2006). While responsive teaching may require an ontological and

epistemological before a pedagogical shift, the accounts discussed in this paper nevertheless

offer some valuable insights into what ‘effective pedagogy’ might look like in internationalised

HE. The first is the importance of fostering opportunities to develop connections in order to

facilitate students’ communicative confidence, discovery and development of shared under-

standings (Lugones 1987), and affective sense of ‘fit’ (Noble 2005). While in many HEIs,

opportunities for connection are offered through extra-curricular activities, the women in this

paper highlighted the value of everyday connections formed through classes, lectures, tutorials

and departmental activities (Ramsey et al. 2007; Sawir et al. 2008). Simple strategies that

appeared in their accounts included staff proactively engaging with students in class, main-

taining a positive and enthusiastic demeanour, and fostering opportunities for peer discussion or

co-operative work. Other characteristics of ‘effective pedagogy’ that the women identified were

clear and explicit communication about both content and coursework expectations; and mea-

sures that affirm bi/multilingualism, for example, close attention to vocabulary and speaking

pace, consistent provision of contextual cues, and flexible teaching practices that avoid dis-

advantaging some students (Friedenberg 2002; Haigh 2002). Yukiko, Deanna, Fiona and

Wakuwaku highlighted the importance for postgraduate students of departmental collegiality

and staff taking an interest in their work. The question of how HE pedagogies at undergraduate

level might allow students to feel part of a class rather than an anonymous member of a

disconnected group warrants further research attention.

Finally, the women’s interview accounts suggest the need to critically reflect on one’s

teaching and student support practices before constructing particular women or groups of

students in deficit or caricatured terms (Bullen and Kenway 2003; Chalmers and Volet

1997; Doherty and Singh 2005; Kenway and Bullen 2003). From a pedagogical perspec-

tive, the construction of HE students and teaching/learning approaches solely in binary

terms (e.g. international-local, Eastern–Western, dialectic–dialogic) risks promoting

reductive assumptions of students’ difference or sameness that are both unhelpful and

inaccurate. More productive is a focus on how we can become trans-world professionals

(Hull 2004), or at least, people who recognise and affirm, rather than subsume, diminish

and manage, students’ heterogeneity (Kim 2012).

Acknowledgments The New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission provided funding support for thisproject in the form of a Bright Futures Doctoral Scholarship. Thanks to the women who participated in theproject, and to Associate Professors Karen Nairn and Jacqueline Leckie, who provided research supervision.

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