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Schools need to put focus back on learning
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CANADIAN school boards portray the tuition fees paid by international high school students as fair, but their concomitant responsibilities are rarely mentioned.
Zhenmin Wang from Department of Education and Children’s Services in Australia hit the dollar on the head: “It is very dangerous for the continued growth or maintenance of programs that international education is more profit driven than education focused. Governments must show to the world that they not only welcome, but provide superior services to overseas students.”
Reductions in funding by provincial governments, partially a result of the decline in the number of Canadian high school students, have pushed school boards onto a crowded band wagon. Their desire for a range of high school options, reduced class sizes, co-curricular activities, and special needs support are part of the push. Choosing not to recruit foreign students is seen as decreasing the quality of high school programs while increasing the already substantial number of unemployed Canadian teachers.
Wang got it right. Announcements from Canadian public school superintendents have, with few exceptions, focused on budgetary considerations rather than the educational benefits and challenges.
In Canada, Annie Pilote and Asmaa Benabdeljalil, in a study of difficulties encountered by international students at Laval University, bolster Wang’s comments: “While orientation services are indispensable, there seems to be little corresponding pedagogical support.”
Improvement opportunity
School districts spend money on international students: home stay coordinators, recruiting websites, general supervisors, but much less on academic needs. Incidental/sporadic tutoring support is often the only response. Many international students, however, require one-on-one assistance from a qualified teacher over a prolonged period of time.
Our experience at SUIS’ BC High School in Shanghai using Joyce McDonald’s Later Literacy reading/writing program is that it can be highly successful; in some cases, an improvement from Grade 5 reading to Grade 11 in two months. Another improvement opportunity, as Eli Hinkel argues in her book, “Teaching Academic ESL Writing,” is recognizing that the current writing-as-process program followed across North America is ineffective because it treats the final product as secondary. She contends that because no foundation for self-editing has been laid, every essay is filled with repeated mistakes. This writing process approach is questionable even for students whose first language is English; for second language learners it is, as Professor Hinkel’s research confirms, untenable. We know store-bought grammar exercises don’t work. At the same time, teaching writing with no explicit grammar instruction is equally ineffective. The obvious solution is a blend of student expression modified by mini-lessons, specific, prompt feedback, and principles of teaching for retention.
A major problem undercutting the motivation to provide the “superior services” advocated by Wang is the assumption that simply mixing Chinese and other international students with Canadians will result in improved English skills: it won’t. Decent writing (or speaking) is not the result of rubbing shoulders together. What does make sense is structuring interactions through peer tutoring/study relationships, writing/reading clubs, and cooperative speaking and writing presentations.
J. F. Orchard is former principal of SUIS BC High School (2010-2013), while Hedy Li is an MEd student at UBC in Canada.
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