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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 403
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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
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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.
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 405
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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
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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
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 407
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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
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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.
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 409
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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.
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