The UK Professional Standards Framework: applying it to support for international students

Any or all of these interpretations of the term 'international students' are possible although some are more problematic than others, for example the issue of mother tongue other than English, or UK students with a non-UK heritage. Some interpretations will exclude EU students while others might be mainly concerned with single nationality groups such as 'Chinese students'. What is important is not to see 'international students' as a homogeneous group:
' "International students" are no more a homogeneous group than any other group of people. Terms such as "international students", "EU students" and "home students" reflect fee status but are often used to differentiate between the groups in ways that can be perjorative.' (Trahar 2007, p.6)

The unique feature of support for student learning in higher education is deemed to be a scholarly approach to subject enquiry and knowledge creation as well as a scholarly approach to pedagogy.
For further reading on the links between research and teaching see Jenkins, A., Healey, M., Zetter, R. (2007)

You will probably have identified that the following stakeholders will be common to both international and home students:
Parents
Employers
Funding bodies
Business leaders
National Governments
Other home stakeholders might include:
Quality Agencies
Regions in which institutions are located
University employees

The stage that you have reached in your professional life will have an impact on your engagement with delivering support for international students: if you are new to the profession you will have limited experience of teaching international students and may have fewer opportunities to effect changes at the level of the curriculum or institution. More experienced colleagues will have had more engagement with issues of an internationalised higher education and may be in a position to develop internationalised approaches to curriculum development, to mentor others or to engage in the wider debates on this issue.

Your answer may reflect the difference between disciplines that are international by nature or implicitly international and those that do not have an obvious international dimension. It is worth noting that even those disciplines that would consider themselves naturally international are being delivered within a UK context and although they may make reference to other cultures and societies, they are likely to structure knowledge in a very culturally specific way.

You may not believe that the learning community to which you belong deliberately excludes international students but there are a wide range of conditions that might lead to exclusion for reasons of language, culture, academic tradition, belief systems and attitudes of other members of that learning community. For example, a course based around high levels of independent study, student-led seminars and tutorials might pose considerable challenges to a student whose academic experience was gained in a country where the courses are delivered primarily by means of lecture and exam. Failure to adjust to this difference and a lack of support could easily lead to that student feeling excluded from the learning environment and ultimately, rejecting it by non-participation or simply dropping out.

Action research is generally agreed to be:
Practice-based | Participatory | Reflective | Transformative | Collaborative | Iterative | Evaluative
Unlike an experimental scientific method action research is a process whereby the researcher is a participant in that process and works with the research subjects in order to effect and reflect on change.
There are several theories of action research, however, some of which may emphasise some of these ideas more than others.

Further definitions of Action Research:
"Three of the many definitions for action research are: a "systemic inquiry that is collective, collaborative, self-reflective, critical and undertaken by participants in the inquiry" (McCutcheon and Jung 1990, p.148).

"a form of collective self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out" (Kemmis and McTaggert 1990, p.5).

"action research aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to the goals of social science by joint collaboration within a mutually acceptable ethical framework" (Rapoport 1970, p.499 as cited in McKernan 1991, p.4).
All cited in Masters (1995)

You may have chosen some or all of the following:
Prior experience | Expectations | Needs of all must be considered | Belonging | Not the way I am used to doing things
UK academic culture can clash with the previous academic experience of international students, leading to feelings of discomfort and isolation, and to conflict between their expectations and the reality of their UK university life. Inevitably, this could lead to increased drop out rates and underachievement.
Consider the quote from a Chinese student:
" 'Unfortunately, the British students are not very welcoming. It is not that they are unfriendly; more that they make it clear that they seem to prefer not to be with us. I invite the British students to join us for our discussions and, even though my classmates have said to me "Why do you keep asking them to join us? They will never come", I persist in trying.' " (Trahar 2007, p.18)

You may have chosen some or all of the following areas:
International students are the 'problem' | Expectations | 'Dumbing down' | Need to adapt
Consider the following quote from a UK student:
' "I am paying a lot of money for this course and I don't see why everything should be slowed down sometimes for foreign students.' " (Trahar 2007, p.17)
UK students have strong feelings about the presence of international students too, and their needs should also be considered.

You may have chosen some or all of the following:
International students are 'the problem' | 'Dumbing down' | Needs of all must be considered | Need to adapt
There is an obvious tension for staff between providing academic and language support for international students so that they can cope with complex ideas without feeling they have to 'dumb down'; and the feeling that students in many ways, should adapt to the standards and expectations of the course that they are joining.
'In cultures where traditional knowledge is highly respected, the capacity to criticise and question is less important in the learning process. For example, a student from Taiwan once told me that she had trouble understanding why she needed to use words of her own when the words of the scholar she was "quoting" seemed so much "better" than any English words she could use.' (Trahar 2007, p. 23)

You may have chosen some or all of the following:
International students are 'the problem' | 'Dumbing down' | Not the way I am used to doing things | Recruitment
Consider the following assertion:
"There can be a vast gulf between the marketing strategies promoting the opportunities for mutual understanding offered by the fresh and enriching perspectives of international students...and the lived experiences of academics and the student community..." (Trahar 2007, p.8)
It is inevitable that international students are attractive to institutions because of the higher fees that they pay, and the idea of sharing understanding and cultural knowledge is also intensely appealing, so international students will only increase in number. In the light of this, consider whether international students receive the appropriate opportunities and support from institutions that those higher fees deserve.