ABSTRACT
On a day-to-day basis, educators design learning environments based on images of learners and imaginings of their worlds. Such imagining constructs a tacit model of the learner. It also informs the selection of curricular content, the design of pedagogy, and modes of evaluation (Bernstein, 1990; Singh, 2002). In Australian higher education settings, approximately 23% of the total student population is now full-fee-paying international students, typically of Chinese heritage from Southeast Asia (Department of Education Science and Training, 2003, 2005; Nesdale et al. 1995). Th us, the international student is widely imagined and known under an “institutional abstraction” (Apple, 2004, p.126) or category of “the Asian learner.” Th is category invokes essentialized attributes (rote learning style, passive learner) understood to require pedagogic intervention and amelioration. Michael Apple (2004) argues that such ingrained “commonsense categories” need to be interrogated in terms of their eff ect on the ultimate distribution of knowledge, the historical and social circumstances that initially produced the categories, and the conditions that sustain and reify the category in educational practices over time. He also highlights how any label works to essentialize the individuals it is applied to and reduces how they can be known, even by themselves:
Th e label and all that goes with it is likely to be used by the individual’s peers and his or her custodians (e.g., teachers and administrators) to defi ne him or her. It governs nearly all of the conduct toward the person, and, more importantly, the defi nition ultimately governs the student’s conduct toward these others, thereby acting to support a self-fulfi lling prophecy (p. 129).
