Rethinking silence in the classroom: Chinese students’ experiences of sharing indigenous knowledge

Abstract

Recent research has documented silence/reticence among East‐Asian international students, including Chinese students, in Western/English classrooms. Students’ communication competence and cultural differences from the mainstream Euro‐American society have been identified as two primary barriers to participation. Placing emphasis on individual characteristics of Chinese students, however, without considering aspects of the educational context with which those characteristics interact, may over‐simplify and distort the mechanism underlying their silence in the classroom. Based on a qualitative study of Chinese students’ experience of sharing indigenous knowledge in classroom settings of Canadian academic institutions, it is argued that the pursuit of diversity in the classroom may be compromised by classroom interactions, through which, for instance, the dynamics and quality of the knowledge exchange of students from different socio‐cultural backgrounds may be adversely affected. Within this conceptual framework, the concepts ‘silence’, ‘culture difference’ and ‘indigenous knowledge’ are re‐examined; the concepts ‘reciprocal cultural familiarity’ and ‘inclusive knowledge sharing’ are advocated.

… [W]hen I did participate, mostly because I was required to. … Students took turns to present something and that is your topic. You have to say something but even then I didn’t feel that good because it seems … they didn’t feel that interested, … like they couldn’t follow my ideas, follow my perspective. And so it seems difficult to communicate. I think that is not just because of the language, it seems we see the same thing in different ways.

  (Chinese student in this study)

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Chinese students who generously shared their time and experiences. They also appreciate the anonymous reviewers for providing insightful revising suggestions. Earlier drafts of the paper were presented at the Excellence through Equity – Confronting the Tensions in Universities Conference, Toronto, Canada, 21–22 March 2003, and at the 36th World Congress of International Institute of Sociology, Beijing, China, 7–11 July 2004.

Notes

1. Students from Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) refer to students from cultures such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and Japan (Watkins & Biggs, 2001).

2. We use the term ‘international students’ to refer to those students from other countries and whose primary aim of coming to North America (in our case, Canada) is to study, including both visa students and students with permanent residence.

3. A phenomenological approach was desirable for this study for three primary reasons. First, the phenomenological approach attempts to understand an empirical matter or phenomenon (e.g. students’ classroom experiences) from the perspective of those who experienced them. Second, the approach aims to explore the subjective meaning of the lived experiences. Third, the approach provides an approach to examining experience in a way not constrained by researcher preconceptions. Understanding the lived experiences of knowledge sharing of Chinese students is expected to increase an understanding of the processes that impede open exchanges and may guide the selection of strategies to foster inclusive knowledge sharing. For more information about phenomenology, see Boyd (1993), Bruyn (1966), Creswell (1998), Moustakas (1994) and Van Manen (1997).

4. In the present study, ‘participation’ is conceptualized as voluntarily sharing within the context of the class. Participation may include voluntarily responding to questions posed to the class, asking questions in class, initiating or contributing to class discussion.