International Nursing Students' Professional Expertise and Classroom Interaction

The thinking in international student education has in recent years been shifting from a deficit view of international students to one which values what they bring with them to the educational setting. This shift has important implications for engaging international students, in particular those doing English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses. In this chapter, we look closely at how the professional expertise of a group of international students undertaking an English for Nursing (EFN) course at an Australian university was drawn upon by the students themselves and by their EFN instructors in the teaching and learning process. Data included classroom observations, interviews with students and their instructors, and the programme documents. The data were analysed to identify IRF patterns (teacher-initiated questions, student responses and teacher feedback). The results are discussed in relation to theories including Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998), Activity Theory (Engeström, 1999) and the framework for situating intercultural learning (Ogden, Streitwieser & Crawford, 2014). The study highlights the importance of raising awareness of international students' expertise and promoting reciprocity in international student education.