Securing Uni enrolment is not enough: How can you learn effectively in Australia?
An Australian student, who has never studied management, will say something different: “Well, I have not studied management but in my view, it is about working with people to get things done. I myself do a lot of management in my work as a customer service manager in a retail shop. I have to deal with people and I find this job quite sensitive….”. The professor interrupts: ‘Well, I got your point’.
This is not always the case, but most Asian students try to recall knowledge from books while people trained using interactive teaching and learning try to respond to questions more reflectively, linking concepts with practical context. In many situations, international students do largely suffer from rote learning approaches which they carry from their previous education systems. In a popular example, A Hindi film called ‘Three Idiots’, famous in South Asia, exposes the limits of rote learning.
This does not mean Western (including Australian) system of education is superior to non-Western or Asian way of learning. But here our focus is on how Asian students can get most out of the Australian style education.
Your learning culture clashes when you start a university course in a different country
Just imagine what happens when a Chinese student or a student from any other country, for that matter attends an Australian university classroom for the first time. New place, new language, new people. It might throw them off; the diversity of students, difficult-to-follow native English accent, new cultural environment and so on.
This is a situation of cultural clash in today’s international education industry, and the scale of this experience is enormous. Surveys report that Australia alone receives about one million students every year from overseas.
You should adapt to a new learning culture
Many Asian students often come from cultures where hard-work is very much valued, and they seem to rely too much on books and fail to make their own judgements, opting to aimlessly believe what they are taught. The question is – are these hard-work oriented values enough? Of course, this does not apply to all Asian students but this is a pattern frequently found.
The Western’ method of education is not necessarily the most superior educational system. However, there are certain aspects of this educational system which the Eastern style education can learn from. A few of these are as follows. In the West, many educationists advocate that it is now time to shift from the culture of hard-work to smart work, thus allowing for a reasonable dose of fun and leisure in life while undertaking studies. This does not mean that all time is spent on leisurely activities without an adequate amount of time spent on studying.
There is also wider structural reason to support smart study culture. The rising costs of living and soaring university fees for international students mean that financing education has become even more challenging than ever for international students. Research shows that international students are facing additional pressure in balancing work and study. Only a small proportion of these students are fully funded; many must work to earn money while they study.
On more practical level, lack of knowledge about plagiarism becomes a major limiting factor for international students. Students with school level education in the Western system have better orientations to critical reading and skills to cite others’ works, leading to a heightened understanding of plagiarism than international students, who were not exposed to such knowledge.
Asian students also appear too submissive to the teacher in the class. They need to adjust themselves to more empowered teaching and learning practices in Australian system, where you can engage with a teacher in a more effective dialogue.
You should remain open and reflexive all the time
A large group of students coming from Asia are not generally brought up to be open and reflective, which forms an important method of learning in Western education. When most Asian students speak, they try to memorise things they have studied earlier and appear less confident and more nervous than their Western counterparts. Students with schooling from Western institutions often have good training in managing confidence in presentations right from their school days.
As Asian students, you also bring a lot of strengths which you can recognise and mobilise while studying in Australia. In Australian university circles these statements are quite common: some Asia students are good at mathematics and engineering while others are great at IT. These are certainly strengths that need to be recognised and cherished.
Final word
So, in conclusion, international students need to be self-reflective on their educational values and find ways to reconcile their own learning values with the pedagogies of the Western universities. This is essential to get most out of your investments in terms of time and financial resources. Most importantly, culturally engaged interaction is the key to satisfaction, learning and achievements that can allow you take on international career after graduation.
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