Working with international students

Our student population at Manchester Met is enriched and enlivened by a growing number of international students. Some of these students are speakers of other languages, or different varieties of English; most have experience of different ‘cultures’ of education where expectations regarding student and staff roles, typical classroom activities and assessment patterns, support services, accommodation, etc may be varied. Getting to know students as individuals, where practicable, and ensuring we anticipate recurrent difficulties will greatly help these students to contribute fully to the learning community and enjoy their time at Manchester Met.

Familiar classroom techniques include ‘warm up’ activities where students share notions of ‘a good mark’ (there is surprising variety here), their favourite ways of learning, their first memory of school, etc. If a simple ‘Find someone who’ type activity isn’t feasible (please also see Promoting Positive Classroom Cultures) use audience response software (e.g. Padlet) to gather a sense of the international ‘room’.

relationships [are] at the heart of teaching […] emphasising that a meaningful connection needs to be established between teacher and students as well as between students and their peers, if effective learning is to take place

- Co-Creating Learning and Teaching, Catherine Bovill

In many teaching situations there are also benefits to practice based on relational pedagogy. Relational approaches foster ‘reciprocity, joint involvement, intuition, wisdom and trust’ in order to create a space for learning that connects with the participants’ interests (Hedges and Cooper, 2018: 4). Such approaches are particularly important when welcoming international students into your classroom for the reasons explained above.

Current Manchester Met students who are international users of English can take part in the Coaching for Academic English programme, which is free and includes English for Academic Purposes and Academic Skills classes, 1-2-1 writing consultations and online independent study materials.

The Coaching for Academic English website provides more information on their classes and workshops, writing consultations and the online language forum.

It is worth considering the fact that we all have multiple facets to our identities and that as such individuals can be marginalised and indeed privileged in a number of ways. One helpful model for thinking about the complexities of lived experience is ‘intersectionality’, a term that emerged from Black female scholarship, but that is primarily associated with the theorist Kimberelé Crenshaw (1989). Being open to having conversations with students about their experiences of education is another route to developing an Inclusive Curriculum for all.

Active learning is an umbrella term for a method or process of learning that places learners at its centre. The process normally involves learners ‘doing things and thinking about the things that they are doing’ (Bonwell and Eison, 1991: 2).​ Active learning benefits all students but offers disproportionate benefits for individuals from underrepresented groups (Fiske et al, 2020).

More information can be found on our active learning webpage.