Engaging Students in Academic Readings at Australian Higher Education: Experience Learned from Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) Education

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Transforming Pedagogies Through Engagement with Learners, Teachers and Communities

Part of the book series: Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects ((EDAP,volume 57))

Abstract

Students’ engagement in academic readings has become a concern in Australian classrooms. There has been a strong call for innovative strategies to better engage students in academic readings and improve their understanding of this area. This study deployed a self-study methodology to examine what was offered by international academics and international students to help Australian universities overcome this crisis. Data were collected from the self-reflection of two international academics who have been studying and working in Australia for many years, journals of two international students, and emails of students sent to the first researcher. The findings revealed that the overemphasis on develo** ‘active learning’ in Australian education contributed to demotivating students to undertake academic readings and current pedagogical practices do not help students understand texts deeply. The study found that reading strategies offered from non-Western education such as ‘Hoc nhom’ (team reading) and ‘Doc so sanh’ (reading to find similarities and differences of the text) could be effective alternatives. It is worthwhile for future research to further pursue this research agenda by empirically examining how these non-Western strategies work in Australian classrooms. More research should be conducted to seek other non-Western reading strategies.

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Pham, T., Pham, L.H. (2021). Engaging Students in Academic Readings at Australian Higher Education: Experience Learned from Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) Education. In: Bao, D., Pham, T. (eds) Transforming Pedagogies Through Engagement with Learners, Teachers and Communities. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 57. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0057-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0057-9_1

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