Committed, face‐value, hybrid or mutual adaptation? The experiences of international students in Australian higher education

This paper explores the adaptation patterns of international Chinese and Vietnamese students in relation to academic writing practices in a higher education context. The study utilises a trans‐disciplinary framework for interpreting students’ and lecturers’ practices within institutional structures. This framework has been developed by infusing a modified version of Lillis’ heuristic for exploring students’ meaning making with positioning theory. A prominent finding of the study indicates the emergence of three main forms of adaptation, committed adaptation, face‐value adaptation and hybrid adaptation, that the students employed to gain access to their disciplinary practices. The findings of the study give insights into ways that a dialogical pedagogic model for mutual adaptation can be developed between international students and academics. The aim is to enhance the education of international students in this increasingly internationalised environment

Turning the spotlight to international students’ internal negotiations: critical thinking in academic writing

The case study reported in this chapter explores how four Chinese and Vietnamese&nbsp;international students from two disciplines, Economics and Education, mediated&nbsp;their ways of displaying critical thinking in disciplinary writing at an Australian&nbsp;university. It draws on a modified version of Lillis&rsquo;s (2001) heuristic and positioning&nbsp;theory (Harre&acute; &amp; van Langenhove, 1999) for the interpretation of students&rsquo; writing&nbsp;practices within an institutional context. The study includes four talks around texts,&nbsp;which engage the students in an exploration of their practices in demonstrating their&nbsp;critical thinking in their first texts at the university, and four in-depth interviews six&nbsp;months later, which aim to examine how students negotiated their writing practices&nbsp;as they progressed through their course.</span