Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 12

for international students (and even international
lecturers), with people often feeling obliged to use
an “English” name to avoid the awkwardness of
staff struggling with pronunciation. Would using
an alternative “English” name be expected of an
ethnically Chinese UK home student or an Asian
home student? Or a white British student with a
unique name? I doubt it, so does that foster a sense
of division undermining equality?
How does this fit with equality legislation and Keele’s
"Equality, diversity and inclusion strategy 2018-
2022" (Keele University, 2018)? I am confident we
meet the first of the three obligations (“Eliminate
unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
and other acts prohibited by the Equality Act”; Keele
University, 2018) in our engagement with NXU
students. But we need to pay more attention to
good quality teaching (and particularly unconscious
bias in assessment) to better “advance equality of
opportunity between those who share a protected
characteristic and those who do not”, the second
obligation (Keele University, 2018). Supportive
engagement with NXU students meets the final
obligation, to “foster good relations between those
who share a protected characteristic and those who
do not” (Keele University, 2018), but is at risk if NXU
students perceive an expectation to use an “English
name” as setting them apart.
To summarise, we need to recognise the risks
and implications of unconscious biases affecting
Chinese students as per the example here of
studying on a collaborative international programme.
Whilst equality and diversity efforts to overcome
gender and race biases in education have rightly
recognised primarily environmental causes (the
social disability model), Chinese students remain
subject to stereotyping as intrinsically different
(within a deficit model). The issues raised here are
pertinent to the Equality Act 2010 and to Keele’s
own equality, diversity and inclusion strategy
(Keele University, 2018) - and addressing these
issues comes back to modelling best practice in the
scholarship of teaching, which benefits all learners.
As the Equality Challenge Unit recognises, there are
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clearly "synergies between internationalisation and
[Equality & Diversity] within a framework of inclusive
practice" (Caruana & Ploner, 2011) and models of
international student adjustment, such as proposed
by Schartner & Young (2016), are an important part
of inclusive education.
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