ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the processes, influences and outcomes of human learning as they relate to higher education for globally diverse students. It discusses variations in student learning, but emphasise at the outset that the ‘mechanics’ which constitute the learning process are pan-human and theories concerning the internal processes involved relate to any student from any (continent or ethnicity). Schemas are ‘boxes’ into which students categorise the phenomena they encounter. Schemas facilitate their ‘real-time’ mental processing. Schemas provide learners with ready-to-hand pathways to allow them to proceed in the world. A widespread trend across universities in many parts of the world has been the partial or whole adoption of learner-centred approaches, often perhaps regardless of how they might fit with established approaches to learning among students or academics. Globally diverse students, then, have the potential to negatively influence their own learner identities and those of their peers.
