engaging chinese ideas through australian education research: using chéngyŭ ...

This article was downloaded by: [The UC Irvine Libraries]On: 02 November 2014, At: 01:27Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Discourse: Studies in the CulturalPolitics of EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdis20

Engaging Chinese ideas throughAustralian education research: usingchéngyŭ to connect intellectualprojects across ‘peripheral’ nationsMichael Singh a & Jinghe Han ba Centre for Education Research , University of Western Sydney ,Sydney, Australiab Faculty of Education , Charles Sturt University , Bathurst,AustraliaPublished online: 30 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Michael Singh & Jinghe Han (2009) Engaging Chinese ideas throughAustralian education research: using chéngyŭ to connect intellectual projects across‘peripheral’ nations, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30:4, 397-411, DOI:10.1080/01596300903237180

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596300903237180

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdis20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/01596300903237180

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596300903237180

Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Engaging Chinese ideas through Australian education research: usingchengyu to connect intellectual projects across ‘peripheral’ nations

Michael Singha* and Jinghe Hanb

aCentre for Education Research, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia; bFaculty ofEducation, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia

The increasing number of higher degree research students from China in theuniversities of multicultural Australia as elsewhere has added to the mountinginterest in pedagogies of postgraduate supervision. This paper explores theproposition that efforts to articulate Chinese ideas through research in, for andabout Australia have to negotiate positions that would allow or disallow theirembedding in the Australian education research community. To do so, theliterature on higher degree research supervision in multicultural contexts isreviewed. Then the co-operative approach used to document a higher degreeresearch student’s experiences of integrating knowledge from her Chineseintellectual heritage into her research is explained. The third section illustratesa research intervention whereby Chinese knowledge was articulated throughresearch in, for and about teacher education in Australia. The fourth sectionpresents evidence of three different responses to this move to embed Chineseideas in the Australian education research community. Specifically, the responsesof Australian academics to her use of chengyu to theorise her evidence isexplored.

Keywords: chengyu; Chinese intellectual heritage; Chinese research students;postgraduate supervisory pedagogy; other knowledge traditions; scholaryargumentation

Introduction

The flows of international students bring with them possibilities for accessing

knowledge from their homeland, presenting the potential to shake peripheral

Western nations free from the parochialism that centres the quest for theoretical

resources in Western Europe and North America. The growth in higher degree

research (HDR) students from China in the universities of nations such as Australia

and New Zealand has generated increasing interest in pedagogies of postgraduate

supervision. This paper reports on an investigation into the pedagogical possibilities

for extending the capabilities of HDR students from China for scholarly

argumentation by engaging the theoretical resources available through their

intellectual heritage. This involves supervisors co-operating with Chinese HDR

students to document their developing capabilities for participating in, and

producing research that uses Chinese ideas to theorise education in peripheral

Western countries. Engaging in research ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ Chinese HDR

students is warranted, given the need for, and benefits of their accessing and using

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0159-6306 print/ISSN 1469-3739 online

# 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01596300903237180

http://www.informaworld.com

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

Vol. 30, No. 4, December 2009, 397�411

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

http://www.informaworld.com

China’s conceptual resources to coherently reflect on the character of the education

they are studying abroad (Heron & Reason, 2006; Singh, 2009). In this context, this

study addresses the following questions: How might Chinese intellectual resources be

used to intervene in research into Australian education? How do education

researchers in Australia respond to such an intervention?

The proposition explored in this paper is that efforts to articulate Chinese ideasthrough research into Australian education have to negotiate contrasting positions

that would either allow or disallow their embedding in the Australian education

research community. There are five sections to this argument which are developed

through the following structure. First, a review of the literature focuses on HDR

supervision in multicultural contexts. Second, the co-operative approach used to

document a HDR student’s experiences of integrating knowledge from her Chinese

intellectual heritage into her research is explained. The third section illustrates a

research intervention whereby Chinese knowledge was articulated through research

about teacher education in multicultural Australia. The fourth section presents

evidence of three different responses to this move to embed Chinese ideas in the

Australian education research community. The paper concludes with the suggestion

that engaging Chinese HDR students with their intellectual heritage of argumenta-

tion could extend their capabilities for building research projects that link the world’s

peripheral nations in knowledge production.

Higher degree research supervision in a peripheral nation

Teaching in a peripheral Western nation is complicated. As with cross-cultural HDR

supervision generally, the research education of HDR students from China studying

in multicultural Australia remains problematic (Clark & Gieve, 2006; Cooper, 2004;

Grimshaw, 2007). In part this is because, as Connell (2007, p. 84) suggests,

‘multiculturalism framed Australian policy on ethnicity and immigration until the

1990s revival of racism [even though the former is seen] as a key to contemporary

democracy’. There are also claims that what and how students from China have

learnt interferes with what and how they learn in English. Wu and Rubin (2000)

report that there are said to be deficiencies in the way they organise and write research

papers; a lack of originality in their writing; their limited expression of personal

views; over-use of cliches and deficiencies in constructing research arguments. Some

Western educators may read a research paper by a Chinese HDR student using a

structure which delays the statement of purpose or makes abrupt shifts in focus as

problematic because it differs from the deductive approach of reporting researchwhich, in some Western countries, typically begins with a thesis statement. Much of

the focus of criticism of international students from Asia is on issues of sentence-level

accuracy, with considerations about grammar and lexicon overriding conceptual

development as the key criteria for evaluating their research writing.

Liu’s (2005) study also points to absences in instructional resources prepared for

Chinese students. Specifically, there are problems with regard to the ordering of

material in a research report in terms of importance; the explaining of logical

fallacies; and the lack of advice regarding how to anticipate and engage those who

might oppose or refute one’s argument. In particular, Liu (2005, p. 12) observes that

these resources do not teach Chinese students that a research argument demonstrates

the ability of the researcher ‘to create a sense of interior debate, of allowing other

398 M. Singh and J. Han

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

voices their say, and maintaining equilibrium among those voices [in terms of]

fairness and reasonableness’. Missing from this material are instructions on the

dialogical rhetoric involved in truth seeking, such as how to address the counter-

claims of one’s adversaries. This is an important component of creating a research

argument.

However, Clark and Gieve (2006) argue that the assumption that a single,homogenous, unchanging nation-centred educational culture is all that is required to

understand or explain the learning strategies of Chinese students is not without

serious problems. Labels drawn from this claim to ‘large culture’ determinism

provide Chinese students abroad with a restrictive identity. They suggest that lecturer

frustrations in teaching students from multi-ethnic, multilingual and multi-religious

backgrounds may be related to ethnocentric biases that are reinforced by nation-

centred education now being pressed into an international service industry.

Specifically, Clark and Gieve argue that there is a tension between those approaches

to education which celebrate students’ input into the learning process, and customer-

oriented approaches that emphasise essential learning outcomes through quasi-

quality assurance regimes. That the students lack the knowledge and experience for

doing the former may be related to the client�provider relationship in which they

now work.

Miike (2006) provides a sense of education through an account of efforts to make

knowledge more comprehensive and culturally inclusive, seeing it as a way ofenlarging and revitalising non-Eurocentric forms of education. The intellectual

heritages accessible by students from Asia are presented as a possibility for

supplementing, enriching and challenging the narrow, nation-centred optics of

Western education research. Foreshadowing Connell’s (2007) thesis, Miike (2006,

p. 13) argues that multiculturalism lends legitimacy for deriving ‘theoretical insights,

rather than mere data, from Asian cultures, [noting that] a multicultural database

itself does not necessarily guarantee a plurality of theoretical standpoints’.

The intellectual culture of China and its education systems provide HDR

students studying in Australia with multiple resources upon which they can draw for

their doctoral studies. For Connell (2007, p. vii) this means taking seriously the

intellectual traditions of the global periphery as providing theoretical tools, methods

and forms of communication ‘to learn from, not just about’. The focus here is on

exploring possibilities for creating a dialogue between peripheral nations, Australia

and China, using ideas produced in China � and elsewhere. Sen (2005) has

contributed to this debate over changing the global dynamics of knowledge

production through making (the difficult) connections between intellectual projectsin the periphery by drawing attention to India’s intellectual heritage and its neglect in

the metropolitan West. Likewise Wright (1998, 2003) has added to this global

dialogue by bringing East and West African knowledge into global communication

channels. Together these scholars are exploring ways of working from different

intellectual positions to build an interconnected series of intellectual projects of

investigation and knowledge production.

Here it is useful to consider examples of such resources, specifically the students’

multi-competence as speakers of English and Chinese languages, and their capability

for accessing China’s intellectual heritage. In terms of multi-competence for

languages this provides them with access to knowledge that can enhance their value

as a member of Australia’s educational research community, and can be relied upon

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 399

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

to make positive contributions through which they ‘negotiate their outsider status

with co-participants’ (Clark & Gieve, 2006, p. 65). Let us consider very briefly

China’s intellectual heritage of scholarly argumentation, of which expository writing

is a good example.

In written English the typical structure of expositions includes a thesis statement

that is sustained through a series of evidence-driven arguments, concluding with areinforcement of thesis. The structure of expository arguments in Chinese writing also

includes such sections. However, for reasons for stress, there can be difference in the

patterns of an argument section. Dijin provides for a linear or vertical structure, that is,

after one argument is raised, ensuing arguments are developed, so that the argument

moves in a logical sequence from a surface to a deeper level. Another argumentative

structure is called pingxing, which takes a horizontal or parallel pattern. Using

pingxing, the argument centres on a particular thesis which in this instance is

developed from different angles and perspectives. In other words, dijin is used to

develop an argument in depth while pingxing aims to give breadth to the argument. In

many instances, the two patterns are combined in Chinese scholarly writing.

Ancient Chinese scholars used a four-section structure in their learned writing,

particularly in expositions, called qi-cheng-zhuan-he style. Qi means ‘to start’, this is

where the writer sets up his/her thesis; cheng means ‘to carry on’, which is where the

scholar provides evidence or accounts of life experiences to support the thesis; zhuan

means ‘transition’ and is where the author establishes his/her argument by arguing

for a particular point of view with the support of scholarly evidence from literature

or other documents; he means ‘amalgamation and close’, and here the scholarreiterates his/her thesis (Wu & Rubin, 2000, pp. 153�154).

Anglophone researchers in the West use nominalisation to condense their

writing. Chinese students use similar strategies to enchant and empower their

scholarly writing, for instance by citing proverbs, idioms, maxims, lines of ancient

poems and chengyu. Among these, the last two are most popular in academic writing.

Derived from ancient Chinese language these features provide modern scholarship

with a repertoire of highly condensed and abstract conceptual references. If the

reader and writer share this discourse, the writer’s use of a four-character chengyu

can create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Therefore, chengyu have a prominent

place in China’s educational effort to construct a nation-wide intellectual culture

around a shared literary heritage. China’s educational culture reinforces intergenera-

tional knowledge of chengyu through school textbooks and popular media.

Similar to, but quite unlike English-language proverbs, chengyu are distinctive

word groups. However, being dissimilar to idioms in English, a chengyu is typically

made up of a fixed number of Chinese characters (han zi) whose pronunciation tend

to rhyme. As Mah (2002) indicates, many chengyu are derived from classical stories,and so have meanings which are not readily apparent and require an educated person

to interpret them. These canonical expressions are part of the intellectual resources

of educated Chinese who are encouraged to use and expected to recognise these, and

therefore they are quoted without attribution (Wu & Rubin, 2000, p. 169).

The following is an example of a chengyu. In the saying xiong you cheng zhu,

xiong means bosom; you, have; cheng, shaped; and zhu, bamboo. When expressed as

a chengyu it means ‘having ready plans or designs in one’s mind’. Unfortunately,

through the process of translation much of the meaning expressed in the literary

qualities of this chengyu is lost. In the Song Dynasty (960�1279 CE), the great visual


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

artist Wen Tong gained renown for his bamboo drawings, having grown various

types around his home. No matter what season, sun or rain, he went to the bamboo

forests to observe their growth. He pondered the length and breadth of the bamboo

poles and, the shapes and colours of the leaves. With each new understanding, he

returned to his studio to draw what was in his mind. Over a long period of time,

these practices deeply imprinted on his mind images of bamboos in different seasons,

under different weather conditions and at different moments. Eventually, wheneverhe stood before the paper with a paint brush, the various forms of bamboo which he

had observed first-hand filled his mind’s eye. He drew very vivid and lively bamboos

with confidence and ease.

When people spoke highly of Wen Tong’s paintings, he always said modestly that

he had just put the images of the bamboo imprinted in his mind on to paper. Chao

Buzhi wrote in one of his poems, ‘When Yuke (Wen Tong’s artistic name) was

painting the bamboos; he had their images ready in his bosom’. Thus, this chengyu

means that researchers who do the necessary study to develop sound plans then have

rigorous designs in their mind as they go about doing a project, and so their success

is virtually guaranteed. Thus, mastering the use of chengyu in research writing is an

important step in becoming a competent, educated user of zhong wen (Chinese

literacy).

The evidentiary section that follows presents an account of a modest intervention

in Australian education whereby an early career researcher worked with her

supervisor to articulate Chinese and Western knowledge through her research. The

intervention involved introducing a range of chengyu to supplement the analysismade in English. These chengyu were used to reinforce the research argument being

made with respect to the university retention of the world English-speaking student-

teachers (Han & Singh, 2007). Chengyu were used in the research to elaborate the

proposition advanced by Sen (2005) that there really is useful knowledge in the

intellectual heritages of India and China that might make a small but nonetheless

significant conceptual contribution to education research in peripheral Western

nations. Thus, the chengyu were used to substantiate the importance of extending

and deepening knowledge of ourselves, others and the world, in an era where Euro-

American knowledge production dominates (Connell, 2007). Their use underlined

and demonstrated the value of learning from other intellectual traditions or ways of

knowing the world. Moreover, their use also suggested possibilities for unlocking the

bonds of the familiar, the unexamined, and the taken for granted.

Co-operative experiential inquiry

Clark and Gieve (2006) observe the tendency to classify all students of Chinese

origin as part of a single, fixed and homogenous educational culture, with no attempt

being made to differentiate them or to recognise the dynamics of change in their

educational cultures. This raises a key methodological problem for this project. Clark

and Gieve (2006, p. 63) argue for approaches which study ‘the identity positions

which are available to individual learners who happened to be from China, from

which they can construct a way of being and behaving’. We have taken up their

suggestion for the co-construction of small cultural studies of education. Our focus is

on the ways in which Australian education makes available a range of identity

positions for HDR students from China, and what this means for their agency and


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

research paths. This focus suggests that the learnings of an early career researcher

from China working in multicultural Australia might benefit from being studied in

the local context of the education research community in which she is seeking to

participate.

HDR supervision can, therefore, be more than a matter of pedagogy. It is also a

vehicle for collaborative research. Like Bingham (2003) we found that the writing of

this jointly authored paper was a distinct activity integral to the research project

itself. Methodologically, writing has been central to our process of enquiry. It has

provided the means for generating the intervention, soliciting anonymous feedback

through the peer review process, and stimulating necessary reflections about the

principles and procedures of supervision, pedagogy and research. This has provided

us a means for expanding claims as to what might now count as research and

research education in Australia. Writing was an important means by which we

refined our understanding of the research problem and clarified the grounding of our

arguments using the available evidence. More than this, we found co-operative

research necessary because it meant that the second author, a second-language

writer-researcher, did not have to spend a disproportionate amount of ‘time on the

mechanics of writing � on sentence, grammar and word-level features � rather than

on generating meaning at a higher level’ (Paltridge & Starfield, 2007, p. 46).

Using a co-operative approach we constructed a two-stage research design.

The first stage was to develop an intervention wherein we worked together to

document the second author’s knowledge from her Chinese intellectual heritage so it

could be incorporated into her doctoral thesis and related research publications

(Han, 2004, 2006). The second stage involved testing this intervention through the

processes of blind peer review which provided opportunities for others to

independently judge the value of this approach to contributing to knowledge. Since

the 1970s and onwards there has been much debate about the legitimacy of such

participative approaches to research (Heron & Reason, 2006). These debates have

informed the work of education researchers interested in recognising and engaging

marginalised knowledge and intervening in dominating research paradigms (Con-

nell, 2007; Wright, 2003). Even so, co-operative approaches to action-oriented

enquiry continue to proliferate, merge, overlap and blur. Critical auto-ethnography,

autobiographical self-study, life history methods and appreciative inquiry are now

accepted conventions (Skyrme, 2007; Woodward-Kron, 2007). The legitimacy of

co-operative experiential inquiry has come with the increasing use of these

approaches in the development of empirically grounded, theoretically informed

research (Heron & Reason, 2006).

There were two reasons for using the method of co-operative experiential inquiry.

First, this long-established form of research provides the basis for collecting the

evidence needed to gain the perspectives and definitions of insiders necessary for a

given intervention. In this instance, the written responses from Western reviewers to

an intervention by an early career researcher to integrate knowledge from her

Chinese intellectual heritage into Western research. These responses are analysed

below. The value of this research is in informing the development of an explanatory

study of which this paper is a part (Han & Singh, 2007; Singh, 2009; Singh & Han,

2008a, 2008b). The research reported here is part of a larger investigation into

changing supervisory pedagogies, specifically what it means to enhance the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

capabilities of early career researchers from China to participate in the education

research community in multicultural Australia.

Second, not all issues which cause problems for international HDR students can

be solved personally. Thus, another reason for using co-operative inquiry is to create

a means for understanding what some Chinese students take as personal concerns

about peer reviews as sources of public deliberation. However, the evidence and its

interpretation provided here makes no claim to represent an account of researcheducation as experienced by other Chinese HDR students studying in multicultural

Australia. Nor is it an attempt to characterise this student’s experiences as

representative of all overseas HDR students from Asia. Her experiences do not

allow for making any such generalisation. Furthermore, the use of co-operative

research does not mean that the argument made here provides an absolute solution.

No claim is made for the unquestionable authority of the findings presented in the

following sections. Thus, this is but a modest contribution to what is an engaging and

significant issue in current research in this field (Connell, 2007).

The evidentiary sections to follow present the results of a co-operative study

that attempted to clarify how this individual was variously positioned as a result

of an intervention through which she sought to introduce knowledge from China

into her educational research in Australia. This provides a basis for informing

debates about changing such research. The next section documents the interven-

tion made by an early career researcher from China working to articulate chengyu

through a research project about teacher education undertaken in multicultural

Australia. This is followed by the presentation of evidence of three differing

responses to this intervention from the research community in which she is seeking

to participate.

Articulating chengyu through research about teacher education in

multicultural Australia

Among the chengyu used in this research intervention, one was chen mo shi jin. This

idiom was used for capturing the characterisation of Asian student-teachers’ ‘silence’

and ‘apparent passivity’ with respect to their participation in Australian lecture halls

and tutorial rooms. Chosen for its familiarity, a translation of this chengyu is ‘silence

is gold’. Guli, an international student from China enrolled in an Australian teacher

education programme, contrasts quietness with the activity of making presentations:

We Chinese or Asian people are very quiet in class. Students must be quiet. The moreyou listened in class, the more you gained. Here the lecturers push you to be actors andto do presentation in class. This makes me awkward and uncomfortable. (S: Guli)

This chengyu provided a vehicle for interpreting one reason why Chinese students

keep silent in Australian classes: they believe ‘silence is gold’. An origin for this

chengyu, which has a great influence on Chinese students’ education, is the ancient

Chinese educator Confucius. A Confucian education principle is jun zi min yu xing er

ne yu yan, which means, to be a well-educated person, one needs to be an active doer

rather than an active speaker. In this context chen mo shi jin can be interpreted as, ‘by

listening more to the teachers and talking less in class a student is able to improve

her/his learning’. In part, this is because in China, the more information teachers can

impart to their students during the limited time available in class, the better situation


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

their students will be in in the ensuing competitive national examinations and,

therefore, the better university they can gain entry to. This is a decisive factor

determining their future in the extremely competitive labour market. This is one

reason students do not speak much in class; however, they do ask questions of their

teachers, but these discussions usually occur after class. Thus, the students talk less,

so the teacher can provide them with more expert information in the limited time

available for classes. In China, the process of transforming the teacher’s knowledge

into one’s own is usually completed by students doing four or five hours of

homework every day. Thus, it is not accurate to say Chinese students are passive

learners simply because they do not talk much in class. Most are active listeners in

class while they are active doers when they engaged in their homework.

Qu chang bu duan is another chengyu the Chinese research student used in her

data analysis. This chengyu has as one of its origins the work of the ancient Chinese

educator Mengzi (372�289 BCE). Here it was used to summarise a Chinese-Malay

student-teacher’s idea on teacher�student power relationships:

Malaysia is slowly changing the system as well. Teachers are not so strict now. They startto listen to the student’s and parent’s requirements. I think the education system in Asiaand countries such as Australia have to be combined. You have to be a bit stricter withthe students so that they will listen and learn. In the meantime you need to give studentssome space and encourage the student to be active and creative in class. (S: Mei)

Mei was saying that an ideal teacher�student power relationship involves a balance

of force and giving space to students. This chengyu suggests that countries like

Malaysia and Australia might learn from each other’s strengths, namely qu chang bu

duan (qu: take; chang: long; bu: add to; duan: short). In other words, modest

educators and students learn from each others’ strong points so as to offset their own

weaknesses.These examples are indicative of the way that this early career researcher sought

to intervene in education research by modestly incorporating ideas from China in her

study of teacher education in multicultural Australia. To find out whether this

intervention was open to acceptance or would be rejected, it was necessary to obtain

feedback from those embedded in the research community in which she is seeking to

participate.

Engaging the Australian educational research community with Chinese ideas

This use of chengyu in Australian education research met with contrasting responses

from Australian researchers. As might be expected, not all of them shared the same

orientation to the articulation of Chinese ideas in Western educational research.

Some engaged productively with the possibilities of using these ideas, while others

were sceptical, if not resistant. The following sections detail the three different

responses.

1. ‘Chinese ideas serve no illuminating theoretical function’

The idea of incorporating knowledge from China in Western educational research

posed challenges for some Australian academics. From this perspective Chinese ideas


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

were not seen as providing useful conceptual insights. In response to a paper

incorporating a range of Chinese ideas and han zi (Chinese characters), a referee’s

feedback focused on the following issues:

(1) The author quoted a Chinese scholar’s work in Chinese writing. I can’t see

the function of the quote, as information or conceptually.

(2) It is strange to see an English article with some Chinese characters jammed

in. These characters do not make any sense for an English reader.

(3) It is hard to see the significance and the enlightenment of the references to

Chinese sources in this paper. The Chinese characters and the Chinese

sources should be removed.

Several points can be made about this valuable and informative feedback. First, the

author had used a quotation from Mencius (Peterson, 1979), a well-known ancient

Chinese philosopher, presenting it in han zi with a translation immediately following.

Despite trying to illuminate the world’s multilingual intellectual heritage and making

a theoretical point about the value of knowledge from the world’s peripheral nations,

the author was told that this use of han zi served no such purpose.

Second, the author was told that because han zi do not appear correctly on the

reviewer’s computer screen they had to be removed. This was surprising given that in

China as in Western countries, computers can function in multiple scripts. In an era

of global bilingualism it is surprising that the script did not work on the reviewer’s

computer, presumably the fonts were not installed. However, it is surprising that the

script had to be removed.Third, although the pinyin and han zi used in the paper under review were

translated into English the author was told to provide a translation and to mark it as

such by using parentheses. So, the author was challenged for using references to

Chinese intellectuals because they were not linked to any articles by the Western

scholars in the rest of the journal. Because in this issue of the journal the articles

were meant to be thematic, she was discouraged from using this material because

none of the Western scholars had referred to the Chinese philosopher she had cited.

This has some resonance with Connell’s (2007) argument that even though the

Majority World does produce theory, it is seen mostly as a site for gathering data

while theorising occurs in the metropolitan West.

Fourth, the author was also told that pin yin is ‘anglicised Chinese’. However, han

yu pin yin is the most common system for using the Roman alphabet to represent

zhong wen (zhong: China; wen: literacy). Han yu (Han: the majority ethnic group of

China; yu: language) means the language of the majority Chinese, pin means ‘spell’

and yin means ‘sound’. Thus, han yu pin yin is a system for representing the Chinese

language phonetically using the Roman alphabet; it is not anglicised in either sound

or script. The use of the Roman alphabet with accent markers to represent sounds in

zhong wen does not correspond with (Australian) English phonetics. Of course, the

issue that could be at stake here is the ignorance on the part of editors and reviewers,

and the salient point could simply be a matter of miscommunication or a lack of

experience of the part of all involved. However, in engaging her ignorance with

respect to sociological theorising using Yoruba poetry from Nigeria, Connell (2007,

p. 91) comments.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

As a reader from another cultural background, I did not find this easy to follow. Thelanguage and characters of this creation myth, and the world-view it expresses, areentirely unfamiliar. Well and good � that’s what indigenous sociology is supposed to be.

For Connell, the point is that Anglophone researchers can benefit from encountering

knowledge from the non-dominant centres of the world’s intellectual production by

working through their less than certain understanding of it.

In effect, because the reviewer found the significance of the Chinese script and

the knowledge it represented unfamiliar, it was dismissed as superfluous and

therefore unnecessary. For this reviewer pin yin, han zi and the knowledge these

offered represented the shock of exotica (Sen, 2005), rather than a chance to unlock

and re-examine the familiar. For this Chinese HDR student the reviewer’s responses

to engaging official (Western) knowledge with this peripheral knowledge tradition,

spoke of ‘the black hair and peach skin’ syndrome that now troubles Western

academies and nation-centred fields such as education. This Chinese HDR student

felt that any claims to knowledge she might make about education were obliterated

by the English-only, Western-only presumptions inherent in the reviewer’s comments

about her lack of theoretical purpose. For each of the reviewer’s comments, a

reasoned and informed counter-argument could have been made. Alternatively, this

reviewer’s engagement with the possible knowledge of education represented by the

presence of this Chinese HDR student’s ideas maybe accepted without question.

Another possibility is that the struggle to use this knowledge to inform under-

standings of what Australian educational research might become be continued

elsewhere.

2. The paradox of Others teaching natives English

A second response pointed to the paradox in someone from China claiming to know

enough about English to teach native speakers how to teach it to school children in

multicultural Australia. The following reviewer’s comments capture something of the

tension being experienced by some Western academics. They struggle with new

possibilities arising from multicultural education, the trans-national mobility of

knowledge workers and the globalisation of English:

Because the central paradox is that the quality of written English in this paper does notreflect a PhD graduate from China whose English is good enough to get a job teachingEnglish-speaking student-teachers how to teach English literacy to English-speakingschool students.

This was the response to a draft chapter submitted for review. In accordance with the

schedule and process required by the book’s editors, it was submitted as a work in

progress. Having worked on the chapter for less than three months it took four

months to receive the reviewer’s insightful, if ironic, feedback. There are interesting

paradoxes here. Perhaps this academic does not understand just how much students

of English as a foreign language know about this global language and just how little

some ‘native English-speaking student-teachers’ know (Canagarajah, 1999; Med-

gyes, 1994; Moussu & Llurda, 2008). Apparently, this reviewer was not just

questioning the quality of written expression, but concerned, if not offended that

a foreign student of English was teaching native-speakers about the language (his


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

language?) and how to teach it. The paradox of course is that she had the same fear.

However, the considerable stress this apprehension generated proved unwarranted.

She had taken it for granted that her native English-speaking (NES) student-teachers

would know virtually everything about English, its grammar, discourses, registers

and genres. However, her students’ puzzled eyes proved her assumption wrong. For

example, while teaching the linguistic features of English text types, she had to

instruct her NES students about basic knowledge of verbs because they were

confused by verb groups, complex verbs, auxiliary verbs and phrasal verbs. In

addition to her considerable insights borne of her multicultural experiences, she

brings a rich understanding of English that makes it possible to provide detailed

linguistic information about the language, understand the linguistic phenomenon

which causes her NES students’ language difficulties, and teach effective strategies

for addressing these issues. Ellis’ (2004) research would suggest that her capabilities

in this regard have much more to do with such teachers’ bilingual proficiency rather

than their non-native-speaking status.

3. Connecting with the intellectual projects of peripheral nations to unlock the familiar

A third response was to see this expression of Chinese ideas in education research

about teacher education in multicultural Australia as a useful means for connecting

with Other intellectual traditions in arguing ways to unlock the familiar. Thus, one

academic indicated an acceptance of knowledge having origins in the educational

cultures of peripheral nations, at least for its literary value:

the numerous examples of Chinese proverbs [sic] and wisdom and the writer’s poetic attimes lyrical, turn of phrase, as well as her concluding reflections (which displayheightened reflexivity and which warrant publication in their own right) all of theseenabled the reader to understand something of the intellectual journey and struggle thatthis thesis encapsulates.

A second academic took this otherwise mundane knowledge from China’s

intellectual heritage as providing a pleasing and stylish proposition: ‘I also enjoyed

the use of Chinese idioms and the elegant development of a politically and

professionally sensitive argument.’ For another researcher, chengyu were recognised

as integral to the argument made in the thesis and thus of value to informing

education research in Australia. The use of chengyu represented a possible

interruption of educational knowledge that centred on Euro-American ideas, for

both Chinese and Australian researchers:

She uses these chengyu to subtly underline and cleverly demonstrate the value oflearning from ‘Other’ traditions, practices and ways of viewing the world rather thanremaining locked within the familiar and unexamined. She uses her own language �idioms to flesh out concepts and ideas that may be only adequately conveyed in theEnglish language adds to this, and I believe is a great strength of teacher education fordifference.

This researcher suggests that the introduction of concepts from the intellectual

projects of peripheral nations into Australian education studies may be useful for

rendering the familiar unfamiliar, and points to possibilities for such knowledge

adding valuable insights to the field. For these academics chengyu were not seen as


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

damaging Australian knowledge of education, but regarded as adding value to their

conceptualisations of issues in English. Importantly, the valuable responses from all

these knowledgeable Australian academics indicate the range of positions available

to education researchers when examining or reviewing attempts to express Chinese

ideas through Western research. In turn, they also indicate the responses an early

career researcher from China making such an intervention might anticipate, and

possibilities for scholarly engagements that progress beyond prevailing imaginings ofresearch in multicultural Australia.

Engaging the intellectual heritage of Chinese HDR students to enhance their research

capabilities

This HDR student’s capability in using chengyu in education research reflects the

ways in which the resources of Australia’s educational culture may gain dynamism

due to the multicultural situation in which this early career researcher is now

working. This HDR student’s efforts to display deep research-based learning were

related to how she responded to her learning situation in multicultural Australia,

rather than some mega-cultural determination by China’s Confucian heritage (Clark

& Gieve, 2006). This early career researcher’s perceptions of what she was meant to

do in response to corrective and positive feedback from reviewers, has affected her

on-going approach to research. Some of the feedback insisted that the use of Chineselanguage and/or ideas serve no illuminating theoretical purpose, while some

reinforced her own ambivalence about teaching natives English.

A HDR student from China might be encouraged, by her supervisors or peers, to

acquiesce and take a passive response to the assertion of the reviewers’ power, and

thus, foster an unquestioning response to these critiques. Significantly, there are

other Australian education researchers, with a critical multicultural orientation, who

argued that China’s intellectual traditions could be drawn upon to unlock the

familiar in Australian teacher education. As a consequence of the debate in this

educational context, a scholarly debate which gives expression to mutual respect and

responsibility, this early career researcher was provided with various positions

through which she could make Australian multiculturalism work for her. The

complexities of education research in multicultural Australia are particularly

important to understanding the career trajectory of this early career researcher,

rather than claims about the absolute determining effects of China’s historically

significant educational culture.This early career researcher has been offered three identity positions, one that

silenced her Chinese intellectual heritage; another that silenced her knowledge of the

English language; and a third that invited her to engage constructively with the

meaning of education research in a peripheral nation such as Australia. Now it is

equally important for her to learn how to construct a way of being and behaving

within, against and outside of each. The evidence points to the ways in which this

former HDR student who came from China is being socialised into, and/or otherwise

marginalised from, the Australian education research community. Here her process

of learning to be a researcher involves at least acquiring competence in the research

process, and gaining membership of Australia’s education research community.

Only some of the identity positions offered to her are likely to help in the gradual

movement toward fuller participation in the activities of this community. Acquiring


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

the skills and knowledge valued by this research community to realise such

participation can be a difficult process. This is not in the least because of the

divergence of positions held by its experienced members about Others and their

intellectual heritage. This early career researcher has to struggle with these positions

as she transforms herself so as to be a more informed participant in the Australian

context in which she works. Her efforts in doing so may provide a role model,

indicating as she does ways of engaging with the Australian education research

community.

The development of this early career researcher’s skills for making a research

argument and reporting her scholarship are central to the advanced literacy that

needs to be developed by research higher degree students. She began with a simple

proposition, namely that she could make a useful intervention in Australian

education research by drawing on ideas from her Chinese intellectual heritage.

Then through the analysis of the different perspectives offered by Australian

education researchers on this intervention, she expanded and deepened the content

of her argument, and finally synthesised it all into a well-knit whole. The exploration

of contradictions was central to her dialogical reasoning, ‘the internal contradictions

in a viewpoint, the contradictions between the viewpoints and supporting materials,

the contradictions in the supporting materials’ (Liu, 2005, p. 11).

Conclusion

The internationalisation of research education invites consideration of what knowl-

edge is being marginalised in multicultural Australia and explorations of the limits

and limited ways in which knowledge from the world’s peripheral nations is being

engaged. The construction and perpetuation of Europe and North America as

preferred sources for knowledge for theorising education is being interrupted by

possibilities presented by the world’s other intellectual traditions. This paper has

explored the proposition that viewing China’s education culture as a source of

theoretical resources which can inform Australian education research is preferable to

seeing it merely as a marginal target for data analysis. It has suggested possibilities

for exploring Chinese intellectual concepts as tools for reconceptualising education

and education research in Australia. Further, it opens up possibilities for

reconsidering alternatives to prevailing principles of education by paying due regard

to the multi-competences international students-come-migrant workers bring to

Australia.

The engagement with chengyu discussed in this paper points to the potentially

important intellectual contribution international HDR students from Asia, Africa

and Latin America might make to education research in Australia given their rich

educational culture and bilingual competence. This former HDR student-now-

lecturer is bringing small dimensions of her Chinese intellectual heritage into

research and education in Australia, with the approval of some of her Australian

peers. The study reported here offers no warrant for generalisations. Yet, insofar as it

resonates with the experience of supervisors of HDR students from China and

perhaps elsewhere in Asia, it points to ways of advancing new ways of configuring

connections between the intellectual projects of peripheral nations in the light of the

trans-national academic mobility manifested in international HDR students.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Acknowledgements

This research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s ‘Discovery Projects’funding scheme (Project DP0988108). The rigorous critiques from anonymous peer reviewersprovided a valuable basis for strengthening this research report.

References

Bingham, N. (2003). Writing reflexively. In M. Pryke, G. Rose & S. Whatmore (Eds.), Usingsocial theory (pp. 145�162). London: Sage.

Canagarajah, A. (1999). Interrogating the ‘native speaker fallacy’: Non-linguistic roots,non-pedagogical results. In G. Braine (Ed.), Non-native educators in English languageteaching (pp. 77�92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Clark, R., & Gieve, S. (2006). On the discursive construction of ‘the Chinese learner’.Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(1), 54�73.

Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. CrowsNest, Australia: Allen & Unwin.

Cooper, B. (2004). The enigma of the Chinese learner. Accounting Education, 13, 289�310.Ellis, E. (2004). The invisible multilingual teacher: The contribution of language background

to Australian ESL teachers’ professional knowledge and beliefs. The International Journal ofMultilingualism, 1(2), 90�108.

Grimshaw, T. (2007). Problematizing the construct of ‘the Chinese learner’: insights fromethnographic research. Education Studies, 33, 299�311.

Han, J. (2004). Teacher shortages, bilingual teachers and the mobility of trans-nationalknowledge workers. Melbourne Studies in Education, 45(2), 99�112.

Han, J. (2006). The retention of ‘world English speaking’ student-teachers: A cultural studiesperspective on teacher shortages in the context of the mobility of trans-national knowledgeworkers. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Western Sydney.

Han, J., & Singh, M. (2007). Getting world English speaking student teachers to the Top of theClass: Making hope for ethno-cultural diversity in teacher education robust. Asia-PacificJournal of Teacher Education, 35, 291�309.

Heron, J., & Reason, P. (2006). The practice of co-operative inquiry: Research ‘with’ ratherthan ‘on’ people. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research (pp.144�154). London: Sage.

Liu, L. (2005). Rhetorical education through writing instruction across cultures:A comparative analysis of select online instructional materials on argumentative writing.Journal of Second Language Writing, 14, 1�18.

Mah, A. (2002). One written word is worth a thousand pieces of gold. London: Harper.Medgyes, P. (1994). The non-native teacher (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan.Miike, Y. (2006). Non-western theory in Western research? An Asiacentric agenda for Asian

communication studies. Review of Communication, 6(1�2), 4�31.Moussu, L., & Llurda, E. (2008). Non-native English-speaking English language teachers:

History and research. Language Teaching, 41, 315�348.Paltridge, B., & Starfield, S. (2007). Thesis and dissertation writing in a second language.

London: Routledge.Peterson, W. (1979). The grounds of Mencius’ argument. Philosophy East & West, 29, 307�321.Sen, A. (2005). The argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian history, culture and identity.

London: Penguin.Singh, M. (2009). Using Chinese knowledge in internationalising research education: Jacques

Ranciere, an ignorant supervisor and doctoral students from China. Globalisation, Societiesand Education, 7(2), 185�201.

Singh, M., & Han, J. (2008a). The commoditization of English and the Bologna Process:Global products and services, exchange mechanisms and trans-national labour. In P. Tan &R. Rubdy (Eds.), Language as commodity: Global structures, local marketplaces (pp.204�224). London: Continuum.

Singh, M., & Han, J. (2008b). Trans-national mobility, World Englishes and student-teachers:Bologna’s interruption of absences in teacher education. In A. Phelan & J. Sumsion (Eds.),


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Critical readings in teacher education: Provoking absences (pp. 115�137). Rotterdam, TheNetherlands: Sense.

Skyrme, G. (2007). Entering the university: The differentiated experience of two Chineseinternational students in a New Zealand university. Studies in Higher Education, 32,357�372.

Woodward-Kron, R. (2007). Negotiating meanings and scaffolding learning: Writing supportfor non-English speaking background postgraduate students. Higher Education Researchand Development, 26, 253�268.

Wright, H. (1998). Dare we de-centre Birmingham? Troubling the origin and trajectories ofcultural studies. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 1, 33�56.

Wright, H. (2003). Cultural studies as praxis: (Making) an autobiographical case. CulturalStudies, 17, 805�822.

Wu, S., & Rubin, D. (2000). Evaluating the impact of collectivism and individualism onargumentative writing by Chinese and North American college students. Research in theTeaching of English, 35(2), 148�178.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

1:27

02

Nov

embe

r 20

14

engaging chinese ideas through australian education research: using chéngyŭ ...

Documents