International education is Australia’s largest service export, contributing AU$28 billion to the national economy in 2016-2017. Of the 799,371 international student enrolments in Australia towards the end of 2017, 44% were in higher education and 27% in vocational education and training. Australia’s National Strategy for International Education 2025 sets a target for international enrolment of 990,000 students by 2025.

However, Australian teachers are facing significant professional challenges in addressing the learning needs of international students. Experts in the field including Betty Leask and Jos Beelenand Douglas Proctor noted teachers are a key player in facilitating internationalisation in higher education and are directly impacted by this process. 

Therefore, professional learning and teachers’ ability to negotiate their professional demands in response to internationalisation are crucial to the success of internationalisation and effective learning of international students.

Ly Tran is leading a DECRA (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award) project funded by the Australian Research Council which aims to investigate the professional learning needs and practices of teachers in the changed circumstances of international education. 

It examines how teachers can be equipped to effectively address international students’ learning needs and respond to the demands of internationalisation by interviewing 215 staff in both higher education and vocational education and training. Ninety-eight of these are academics and English language and learning skills advisors from 19 universities in Australia. The research also involves participation in teacher professional learning activities.

Teacher professional learning

Our recently published book Teacher Professional Learning in International Education: Practice and perspectives from the vocational education and training sector and forthcoming papers on teacher professional learning in higher education arising from this project discuss primary areas of professional learning required to enhance teachers’ capacity to respond to international students’ needs and internationalisation-related demands.

Teaching students of varied linguistic, academic and cultural characteristics is a challenge. Teachers in higher education repeatedly ask for more cultural capability development contextualised to their discipline in relation to international students, rather than generic cultural training, which is commonly offered by institutions for their staff professional development. 

Current professional development programmes focused on cultural diversity have not gone far and deep enough to provide teachers with essential knowledge and skills when dealing with the complex culture-related issues facing them in their work with international students.

Good efforts have been made to assist teachers in promoting interaction between international and local students. What remains in demand from teachers in higher education is professional learning targeted at facilitating different groups of international students to work together. 

International students themselves are by no means a homogeneous group. Teachers need targeted professional learning to create and foster a positive, cohesive learning environment for culturally diverse classes.

Teachers also need background information related to the student cohort they will be teaching so as to be able to respond appropriately and tailor course content. They expect to be equipped with the capacity to capitalise on the transnational cultural, linguistic and knowledge repertoire of different sub-cohorts of the student population and use students’ diversity as a resource to enrich learning for all.

In particular, our research indicates the need for teacher training and professional development programmes to include pedagogic strategies to assist international students with enhancing their English language skills and facilitating effective communication with international students from non-English speaking backgrounds. 

This includes pronunciation of international students’ names, simplifying language when delivering courses to international students and facilitating international students’ general communication in English as well as English language capability for curriculum-specific learning.

A much needed area of professional learning is around the collaboration between subject teachers and language and learning advisors in embedding language within disciplinary learning and building on teachers’ own expertise towards a common goal of optimising the learning experiences and outcomes of international students. 

This is a practice that, if teachers are well equipped, could be very powerful in both enhancing English communication skills for international students and contributing significantly to their disciplinary learning.

International students’ employability

The research emphasised the importance of ongoing professional learning to equip teachers with the skills and knowledge to prepare all students for the intercultural labour market. Key areas of professional learning to assist teachers with the development of their capability to help students enhance their employability for an increasingly globalised labour market include:

• Knowledge of local and global work cultures.
   
• Knowledge of local and international market needs.
   
• Knowledge and skills to prepare students for the intercultural and globalised labour market.
   
• Knowledge and skills needed to make explicit global competence embedded in the curriculum and to help students make connections about how it can be relevant in global workplace contexts.
   
• Knowledge and skills in facilitating work-integrated learning for international students.
   
• The arrangement of work placements for international students.
   
• Information on how to face the challenges institutes, teachers and individual students encounter in finding work placements.
   
• Support mechanisms for students in the workplace and approaches to negotiating work placements as well as bringing real life knowledge to the classroom.

Barriers to professional learning in international education

Our research identifies seven major barriers to professional learning provision and participation in international education. 

These are financial and time constraints, casualisation of staff, lack of a coherent institutional support mechanism and leadership targeted at internationalisation, a current workload arrangement which does not prioritise internationalisation-related activities, the fact that the value of internationalisation is often not made explicit to teachers, and the mismatch between the professional development offered and that needed for internationalisation.

The research indicates that teachers in higher education mediate professional demands and engage in professional learning by:

• Drawing on their own experience and resources to address the new challenges arising from working with international students. Prior experience and exposure to different cultures through travelling, personal connections, volunteer activities and networks are essential resources. Such kinds of capital are not always available though.
   
• Seeking advice or support from senior colleagues and peers through informal or formal mentoring.
   
• Proactively mobilising different resources and seeking learning opportunities in workplaces, including formal training and professional development activities from colleagues and international students.
   
• Building relationships and obtaining input from international students, especially through casual conversations outside classrooms and engagement in social events.

To perform their increasingly diversified and expanded professional roles, teachers are engaged in self-directed research and reflection activities to gain deep understanding of and keep themselves abreast of the different issues associated with international students. 

Teachers’ personal drive for research and reflective practices allows them to accumulate and enhance their experience and expertise in responding to international students’ demands.

However, it is often left to individual teachers to negotiate their professional demands in relation to international students. A lot of teachers’ informal professional learning engagement happens in an ad hoc manner, in segregation and with little recognition.

Implications for professional development provision

Our research points out a need for professional development focusing on supporting teachers to develop the capabilities to not only deal with the challenges in teaching an increasingly diverse student population but, importantly, to enhance their employability for global labour markets and build productive interactive relationships with international students. 

Interactive relationships are centred around building on cultural differences and positioning international students as more equal partners in the construction of transnational knowledge, skills and competencies.

Institutional support and leadership targeted at internationalisation along with the provision of on-site workplace professional learning for teachers to facilitate their effective response to international students’ needs and negotiate the competing demands of internationalisation are crucial to ensure the expected outcomes and impact of internationalisation. 

A streamlined and coherent institutional approach is needed to promote genuine, meaningful and sustainable professional learning and to maximise its benefits. 

It is essential for universities to work closely with professional organisations, for instance, in Australia the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA), which specialises in providing professional development for staff in international education. 

Through its comprehensive networks, the IEAA offers a wide range of professional development programmes to support staff in enhancing the welfare and learning experiences of international students, internationalising teaching and learning and learning abroad.

Our research highlights the importance of building and sustaining a workplace environment that supports reciprocal learning from immediate colleagues as well as self-directed learning. Informal learning activities are often initiated and nurtured not just through peer collaboration but importantly through teacher agency and motivation. 

These kinds of informal professional learning are personalised and participatory in nature, construct teachers as active agents in their own professional landscape, and are more responsive to teachers’ immediate professional needs.

Within an increasingly competitive education export market, information on how teachers are provided with professional learning that enables them to effectively address the learning needs of international students has become an important asset that universities need to enhance. 

Universities can strengthen teacher professional development provision and participation by working closely with teachers themselves and in partnership with professional organisations in international education like the IEAA.

Ly Tran is an associate professor at Deakin University, Australia and Australian Research Council Future Fellow. As a recognised scholar in the field of international education, she has published widely on the subject and has won numerous fellowships, prizes and awards for her research, including the International Education Association of Australia Excellence Award for Best Practice/Innovation. Ly’s research and publications can be found here. Truc Le is a research fellow at Deakin University, Australia. Her research interests include transnational academic mobility, faculty development, and curriculum and pedagogy. She is the co-author of the book entitled Higher Education in Vietnam: Flexibility, mobility and practicality in the global knowledge economy, published by Palgrave Macmillan.