Centring students' bilingual capabilities in quality university teaching : bringing "knowledge detours" and "zigzag learning" in from the margins

As a result of the internationalisation of education, Australian universities increasingly recruit students from diverse cultural and language backgrounds. This raises the question of whether academic leaders are giving adequate attention to their bilingual capabilities in the debate over quality university teaching. This chapter draws on a Chinese student's experiential learning to explore the place of bilingual capabilities as an attribute of quality teaching in the context of the internationalisation of Australian university education. Specifically, it develops the concepts of "knowledge detour" and "zigzag learning" to name the learning that occurs as the student makes use of, and extends, his bilingual capabilities. The ideas of "knowledge tangents, shuttles and layering" are also introduced in the chapter. The case for changing the conception of quality of university teaching is contextualised in relation to the internationalisating of Australian higher education locally.