Del retrato

Indeed, as identified in the previous chapter, students come to UK education with certain abilities and ambitions. Yet they do find academic support (Li & Campbell, 2006), which Lin (2008) calls facilitation, an important component for adjusting to a new learning environment. In particular such adjustment, as data analysis reveals, is

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crucial for students to adapt the skills to learn independently in the UK. Importantly facilitation, as a support factor, is also seen by sample students to kick-start the learning process of IL which somehow contrasts with previous claims, i.e. UKCOSA (2006) and David et al., (2009) stressed providing initial cultural support to international students, and Hall (2007) stated that pre-teaching materials help students to successfully adjust to the new learning environment. Smith (2008) suggests the notion of providing students with opportunities of partial tutor support to ease the learning process; however students in the current sample have strong feelings for coordinated interaction with teachers to transform the learning approaches into IL. Meanwhile, the case for academic support is seen by students, differently from the literature, as essential to ‗kick-starting the process of IL‘.

To overcome and enhance the socio-cultural adjustment challenge (Coles & Swami, 2012), the results for learning (Munro, 2006) and IL are encouraging (see Bernier et al., 2005) in transitional arrangements, however such outcomes are not only based on students perceptions, that a successful transition is possible with a multi-ethnic (language) communication approach - where students accept and communicate with those from different nationalities, instead of using mono-ethnic communication - limiting themselves to people from the same ethnic background to communicate (refer to Kuiper & Tan, 2007) but also on essentialist beliefs – which means “that there is a common core of knowledge that needs to be transmitted to students in a systematic, disciplined way” (Cohen, 1999) - where the core principles are taught to them in order to facilitate the adjustment journey of foreign students. Essentialist views are important to consider because, in a sense, by similar ways ethnic tension in a learning environment can be voided where some students may lag behind in learning than those who have lingual competence.

The current study has not observed any issues of ethnic tension among sample students adapting to UK higher education, however there exists a shadowing influence of matching adjustment issues among all of them; all which may explain why they inherit similar prior learning patterns in contrast to what is found in the literature, i.e. Chinese as Confucian heritage culture (CHC) and Indian and Pakistan as non-CHC students.

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Similarly, the findings of Forland (2008) and Xie‘s (2009) studies, suggesting an increase in divisions among Asian and Western students in the West, are not relevant in case of the current students‘ adaptation process as they are no more significant in influencing students‘ development of IL practices. Even if there were different influencing factors that could lead further to academic achievement gaps, they could not simply jeopardise the learning process; instead they could enhance the element of greater diversity, as revealed by Lee and Anderson (2009). Huang (2012) also suggests that a support system could address some influencing factors of students‘ learning, at some level, and benefit all international students (p.144), leaving a knowledge gap for researching students in an alien learning environment with its inherent culture shock. Addressing these gaps is what applies to the current study regarding academic and cultural challenges of the UK‘s diverse international student population.

Framing the literature, in the last decade, learning-approach studies tried to reinterpret the perceptions of Chinese (Wu, 2008; Tian, 2008) and other East Asian students (Nield, 2007) separately; meanwhile, the current study has tried to challenge their narrow focus by involving Chinese, Indian and Pakistani students perceptions who may vary in terms of culture but share many academic similarities (Mukhtar et al., 2011). Therefore, this study has led to new findings that somewhat negate previously held beliefs about Asian students on a much wider scale.

The discussion of how learning happens best is not simply about the individual‘s learning abilities itself; this study is comprised of multiple academic and cultural aspects which influence the learning process - often practiced as IL in the UK. Understanding a complex relationship among different learning aspects that have transformation effects over the process of learning, student‘ perceptions were essentially helpful to gain their cognitivists understandings. For example, the notion of a teacher assisting process of learning with actively-involved students might be helpful for the purpose of elaborated discussions. I argue that the cognitivist‘ relations are more likely to play a major role in the learner‘s education because students, in the current sample, are both teaching-tended (reclined to the role of active teaching) and learner-centred (motivated to learn independently). This study, using a larger and more varied sample

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than previous studies, chose selected nationalities with important and varied learning experiences which include memorisation, rote, self- and teacher-centred learning. Upon deducing the results from a variety of data collection techniques, the current study identified specific issues to develop a theory of ―learning approaches‖ to discuss how students develop the IL skills. Therefore, before reflecting on the theory of ―learning approaches‖, it is essential to present its theoretical conclusions with regard to ―academic‖ and ―cultural‖ perspectives as detailed below.