Teachers’ stances towards Chinese international students: An Australian case study

The international marketing of school education has gathered momentum in the Asia Pacific region, where an English medium education is prized by many parents. This paper investigates the responses of a group of teachers in Australia to the needs of international students in their school. The analysis of a 1 h professional discussion between four teachers in one school context shows a range of diverse opinions and attitudes. In particular, an APPRAISAL analysis [Martin, J. R. (1995). Reading positions/positioning readers: Judgement in English. Prospect, 10(2), 27–37] of this discussion points to the ways in which the teachers across the key discipline areas to which international students are attracted, position themselves in relation to their roles and responsibilities towards these international students. The analysis reveals that the subject specialist teachers, while concerned about the educational needs of these international students and aware they have particular linguistic and learning needs, do not accept responsibility for teaching language in their specialist subjects. Furthermore, across the phases of the discussion, there is little shift in the stances of some of the specialist teachers as they engage with each other and with the ESL teacher, suggesting the need for more productive conversational strategies. We conclude by identifying a number of factors that need to be accounted for in such professional discussions if ESL teachers are to effectively assist specialist teachers in supporting international students in meeting the language, as well as academic demands of their specialist areas.