Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 11

internationalisation. Yet whilst the deficit model has
been overturned for gender and race, the deficit
model of “the Chinese learner” is still apparent in
practice and literature, typically justified as being
culturally-grounded in the Chinese education
system (Grimshaw, 2007; Gu & Schweisfurth, 2006;
McMahon, 2011; Wang & Byram 2011). Whilst
it is unthinkable to talk about female or BAME
(black, asian and minority ethnic) as members of
an intrinsically deficient group without intersecting
identities, it seems to remain acceptable within the
wider UK Higher Education context to implicitly
problematise Chinese students as a homogeneous
group.
Superficial impressions of NXU students as needing
“extra” (rather than “tailored”) support - and their
group stereotyping as per Grimshaw (2007) - has
implications for equality of assessment because
of unconscious biases. It is conceded by staff that,
whilst we use anonymous marking for written work,
the idiom readily identifies assessments produced by
an NXU student, even with fluent proficiency in the
English language. This lowers expectations of quality
and risks unconscious bias lowering the mark then
given. The university’s generic marking scale and
clear descriptors relating to cognitive level is useful
here, and for related equality and diversity issues
which might include dyslexia, by relating marking
specifically to evidence of critical reasoning. From
individual grades in a final year module I taught to
a mix of NXU and Keele students, the stereotype is
evidently wide of the mark: the performance of the
majority was comparable to the non-NXU cohort,
with average marks only a few percent below - and
that caused by low scoring outliers. Another issue
that came up repeatedly was poor paraphrasing
of others’ work - academic misconduct or rather
a struggle for students to express ideas in their
limited English? A challenge I would face if trying to
write in Mandarin and being sure to rephrase yet
still make sense. In terms of language moreover, my
experiences teaching NXU students has made clear
to me that English language ability is not correlated
to academic ability. I had a provocative reminder of
the unconsciousness of unconscious bias through
teaching in China in April 2018. Before going, I
already held the view that English fluency does
not equal academic ability, yet I still found myself
genuinely surprised that the three students who
were best with English actually produced amongst
the poorest academic work. English proficiency
is needed for engagement with English medium
teaching, but we should remember that university
education is to develop critical reasoning skills and
that is what we should be assessing (Wild & Berger,
2016).
It is important to recognise differences between
the learning environments, in particular models
of assessment. All assessments at NXU are by
unseen written exam - as is typical practice in
China. Non-exam assessments at Keele therefore
do present a challenge to the NXU students as a
cohort, the overcoming of which is addressed by
Clark & Gieve (2008). I argue that exams in English
are unsuitable for assessment of NXU students
because of primary reliance on ability to write
clearly at speed without scope for corrections in, to
the students, a recently acquired foreign language.
When students could prepare work in their own
time in non-exam assessments, able to carefully
build the English and then submit, they appear
much more able to access and evidence the critical
reasoning skills we want students to achieve (Bloom
et al., 1956; Wild & Berger, 2016). Planning for
teaching in China, I was conscious of addressing
the barriers to learning raised by my reflection. I felt
constructive alignment to make learning outcomes
and teaching explicit (Biggs, 1996, 2014) was
especially important for students being taught in a
newly acquired language. Constructive alignment
was important to address the specific needs of this
group but I argue is best practice for all learners in all
teaching (along with citation and evidence, learning
linked to application and/or research, building
learning in steps, continuing formative feedback,
and accessible resources). One final point is that
NXU students apparently feel an obligation to use a
chosen “English” name rather than their genuine first
name. From discussions at a consultation for Keele’s
Race Equality Charter it appears this is common
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