Chinese-background Students' Learning Approaches

Chinese students first started to venture into overseas education in the late nineteenth century. Since then, thousands have launched their journeys abroad in the pursuit of western knowledge. Statistics from IDP Education Australia Limited (IDP) say that in 2005 64% of international students in Australia were of Chinese nationalities or ethnicities, or from countries that share a common Confucian culture. Although numerous studies have examined Chinese background student approaches to learning or learning experience in western educational settings, very few comparative studies have shed light on the identification of differences in learning approaches between Chinese background students with different nationalities or ethnicities, i.e. from mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The vast majority of research carried out on the learning approaches of students with Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC). However, there is a tendency to treat them as a homogeneous group and to disregard the different ethnicities that are present among them. This paper discusses a research framework dealing with Chinese-background students' learning approaches in tertiary education discourse.