1.2.2 Reassessing the ‘Chinese Learners’
Characterising the ‘Chinese learners’ in linguistics and education literature often attaches to a ‘surplus’ (Ryan, 2010) Confucian heritage culture, which some Western researchers claim is a fixed, reified and homogeneous national culture with roots in the Chinese individual’s collective tradition of values, or attitudes and learning behaviours; most relevant research falls into three categories, namely, cultures of learning, ethnic and national diversity, and contexts of institutions.Adopting an approach of ‘large culture’ (Holliday, 1999)—a particular mode of geography—or nation-related culture(s) in which unchanging and homogeneous systems of rules or norms may substantially reify the individual’s doings and sayings, some researchers (e.g., Atkinson, 1997; Ballard & Clanchy, 1991; Chan & Drover, 1997; Flowerdew, 1998; Hammond & Gao, 2002; Hofstede, 1986; Nelson, 1995; Oxford & Anderson, 1995; Rastall, 2006; Volet & Renshaw, 1996; Watkins & Biggs, 2001) perceive the Chinese learners as passive, collective, authority-obedient, and lacking critical thinking, effective learning strategies or willingness to participate in classroom discussions.Other researchers (e.g., Brick, 1991; Cheng, 2000, 2002; Clark & Gieve, 2006; Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Grimshaw, 2007; Gu & Maley, 2008; Lee, 1996; Louie, 2005; Phan, 2004; Ryan, 2006, 2010; Slethaug, 2007, 2010; Tze, 2002), on the other hand, examine the Chinese learners’ learning and attitudinal behaviours from a historical perspective by juxtaposing the social and contextual factors, arguing that the Chinese learners are actually active, value-oriented and open-minded, with a spirit of inquiry and reflective thinking as well.
These dichotomies, as some researchers (Aly, 2007; Cortazzi & Jin, 1996b; Jin & Cortazzi, 1998, 2006; Ryan & Louie, 2007) have noticed, largely draw on the distinctions between the Western and Chinese educational cultures of learning.Ryan (2010) fully examines the literature on the Chinese learners and classifies the differences between Western and Chinese/Confucian educational values, which are outlined in Table 1.1.In general, the Western educational philosophy encourages the students to learn through ‘deep’ or ‘active’ (Jin & Cortazzi, 1995) participation in classroom talk, by employing the approaches such as critical thinking, adversarial stance or argumentation.In contrast, Chinese educational tradition is reported to favour a cognitive-centred or learning-listening approach, and hence the Chinese students are ‘surface’ or dependent learners.Being active in Chinese classrooms is recognised by some Western scholars as entailing ‘cognitive involvement, lesson preparation, reflection and review, thinking, memorisation and self-study’ (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996b, p.71).
Table 1.1 Classification of Western and Chinese/Confucian educational values
(modified from Ryan, 2010, p.43)
Notably， China’s education system is a complex and dynamic one that encompasses a multiplicity of beliefs， expectations and practices （Grimshaw， 2007）.By 2014， China had overall more than 280 million enrolled students， 17 million academic teachers， and 0.52 million educational institutions （http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s7567/list.html）.Table 1.2[4]is a panorama of the expected number of the student enrolment for the years from 2009 to 2020.As shown in the table， in 2009， China had 29.79 million expected enroled tertiary students， which was almost one third more than the total number of 20.283 million European counterparts reported in 2011 （http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File：Students_in_tertiary_education，_2011_（1）_YB14_I.png）.
Table 1.2 The expected objective of education development in China (2009-2020)
Notes:* includes secondary vocational education students; ** includes senior vocational education students.
Besides its huge number of students, China also has a large ethnic minority population, discrepant regional cultures and conventions, and unprecedented mobilisation of educational population (Slethaug, 2010).It is hence less likely that the national education system is still hanging on to a traditional Confucian heritage from 2,500 years ago.China has developed a significant role globally, and it is imperative that the society faces the domestic requirements of social structure adjustment and transition, global spread of information technology, and internationalisation of education.As such, it is necessary to re-evaluate the new generation of Chinese students’ identities across specific time and situations, as to where they may adapt to more complex cultures with the infusion of different values, beliefs, expectations, behaviours or norms because of contextual demands and individuals’ interests and needs.
In particular, for the Chinese students in transnational universities, as argued in the previous and current sections, instead of sticking to a simplistic ‘large culture’ explanation, it is important to put emphasis on the exploration of the complexity and diversity of individual students in changing contexts.Gu and Maley (2008), for example, conducted mixed qualitative and quantitative research in order to challenge the deterministic notion of culture on defining Chinese students in a cross-cultural context.They collected 163 questionnaires from Chinese students in four UK universities and colleges and interviewed 41 Chinese undergraduate and postgraduate students in 14 UK universities and colleges.In accordance with their findings, rather than struggling to handle the different teaching and learning styles, these students’ intercultural experiences are much more affected by a psychological and physical challenge to live in a country with an unfamiliar life pattern.Beyond the influence of so called Chinese national-Confucian culture, the majority of these students are reported to be able to adapt to the learning environment, to increase self-confidence and participation in classroom interaction, and to develop a stronger sense of independence in learning, although this varies with the individual’s personality and maturity.Similar to Gu and Maley’s (2008) results, Vinther (2010) discovers the existence of not only the traditional Confucian heritage but also an adaptable one in Chinese students in a Denmark university.She argues that the Chinese students actually adapt more easily and quickly to the Danish culture than the other foreign students because these Chinese students are new to Denmark and thus they are not systemically stereotyped in the society.She then suggests that both the coming and receiving cultures should be aware of the impact of culturalcontext knowledge and individuals’ experiences on the dynamic construction of cultural behaviour.
Indeed, stereotypical representation will become a burden in shaping the individuals as complex subjects.Students are remarkably diverse in the transforming of different cultural backgrounds and the accumulating of educational experiences.Residues of historical values or beliefs ascribe to different genders, geographical regions or social backgrounds, but fewer students will avoid sharing a common goal to negotiate and develop new identities in the changing educational context, where students will form a complexity of disciplinary identities across the ‘culture instantiated in situation’ (Halliday, 1999, p.8).The ‘large culture’ approach dangerously not only fixframes sociocultural ‘patterns and order’ (Vayda, 1994, p.320), but also casts certain groups of people’s perceptions from their own stance towards others ‘in an absolute way’ (Holliday, 1999, p.245).This kind of stereotype regards an individual’s ‘restrictive social identity as a homogenised representative of a national culture’ (Clark & Gieve, 2006, p.56).
Here I argue that culture is not merely determined by historical heritage, but dynamically evolves through history.Labelling and positioning the ‘Chinese learners’ from a ‘large culture’ perspective will fall into a ‘deficit’ (Ryan, 2010) stereotyping of perceiving them as isolated groups with certain deficiencies.This unfortunately ‘can lead us to stigmatize, to generalize and to make inaccurate predictions about what students are likely to do as a result of their language or cultural background’ (Spack, 1997, p.756).Therefore, I suggest that the reassessment on the Chinese students in a cross-cultural context should focus on possible multiple resources arising from the changing social, contextual, historical and individual factors.