What Chinese Students Are Facing in US Classrooms: Challenges and Dilemma

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: International student motivations and adjustment needs - table 2

Proposal

Chinese students, for a long time, have been generalized as a group who is quiet, less confident, lack of intercultural communication, and reluctant to voice their opinions in class in the US, attributed to their prior educational experiences characterized as teacher-centered and rote-memorization in China (Hui, 2005; Xu, 2015; Zhao, 2016). Meanwhile, Asian students, specifically students of Chinese origin, have been historically recognized as model minority who are pictured as smart, hardworking and high achiever by the dominant group in the U.S. society (Kobayashi, 1999; Pak, 2001; Ogbu, Simons & National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy, 1994). Results of some research at the time indicated, not without questions, that these voluntary minorities considered education to be important for success in society, and were willing to conform to dominant social norms and didn’t fear that their identity would be harmed by crossing cultural boundaries (Ogbu, Simons & National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy, 1994; Kobayashi, 1999).
These stereotyped descriptions put Chinese students into a paradoxical and ambivalent situation where neither researchers see a complete and clear picture of what Chinese students are facing in the US nowadays. Studies recently emerged have critically examined and claimed that the notion of minority assimilation and conformity to dominant norms of Chinese students be rejected, and find that Chinese students have been not only stressed by living up to the model minority versus silence and passive learning stereotype, but also suffering from every aspect that other minorities have suffered from, including but not limited to racism, discrimination, cultural oppression and identity construction (Cui, 2017; Pearce & Lin, 2007). Chinese students’ marginalized status – often left out of the studies about minorities – have long been ignored and silenced, and their inherent socioemotional and cultural needs haven been disguised by those ambivalent stereotypes. It is a field that needs more attention and thorough studies, while there are surprisingly lack of researches in the US that aim at supporting Chinese students, and addressing their academic and socioemotional needs in a changing world.
Chinese students’ performance in US classrooms shouldn’t be interpreted without relating to political, sociocultural and systemic perspectives both domestically and internationally. The studies about teaching and learning of Chinese students should be reexamined due to not only the rapid and profound shifts in social, cultural and economic conditions in China, but also the barely studied contributing factors in the US educational and sociocultural context (Rajaram, 2013; Cui, 2017). Instead of adopting a deficit or model minority view towards Chinese students learning in US classrooms, this study aims to investigate thoroughly on Chinese students’ learning experiences under particular contexts in order to better understand their academic, socioemotional and cultural needs in a new era of internationalization. The significance of this study is to produce new knowledge on Chinese students, the largest population comprised of international students, based on which to prepare teachers to support Chinese student learning and to shed some light on teaching and learning in an increasingly diverse classroom settings in the US.

Authors

• Jin Zhao, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Wenfan Yan, University of Massachusetts Boston