The People Around The Tea Table
From Student Experience to International Strategy
Ryan is an international education leader and qualitative researcher with more than fifteen years of experience working across Chinese and Western education systems. He founded The Tea Table Group to help institutions better understand Chinese students, strengthen international student support, and develop recruitment and partnership strategies grounded in students’ actual experiences.
His work spans academic leadership, curriculum development, assessment, student support, and university preparation. He has worked with eight institutions preparing Chinese students for overseas study and has led international education teams of up to twelve people, including a six-person international faculty team at Hebei University of Technology. Across different roles in Beijing, Tianjin, and Ningbo, he has redesigned three curricula and delivered assessment training in two schools.
Ryan’s research focuses on Chinese student success abroad, the transition between educational systems, and how universities can better support international students. His doctoral research examines how instructional approaches in Chinese secondary education influence students’ perceived preparedness for Western universities. Using semi-structured interviews and qualitative thematic analysis, he explores how previous classroom practices, assessment expectations, academic relationships, and institutional structures shape students’ experiences after they enter higher education.
His professional experience gives him a close view of that transition from several different angles. As an IELTS examiner, Ryan has examined more than 6,000 candidates, providing extensive firsthand exposure to students using language qualifications as a gateway to international education. He has also advised approximately a dozen undergraduate students through the research and writing of their bachelor’s theses. These experiences inform one of the central questions in his work: what do conventional measures of readiness reveal about students, and what remains invisible unless institutions listen directly to their experiences?
That emphasis on student experience also shapes his consulting work. Rather than treating international education primarily as a recruitment issue, Ryan examines the full student journey, from preparation and transition through academic support, belonging, and long-term success. His work combines qualitative research with direct institutional experience to help universities identify where assumptions about international students differ from the realities students themselves describe.
Ryan holds two Master of Education degrees, with graduate study in teaching multilingual learners and K–12 academic leadership, and holds a U.S. K–12 school administrator license. He is currently completing an Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership and Administration at Youngstown State University. His professional background also includes teacher education, English for Academic Purposes, international staff coordination, and work as a CELTA tutor.
Through The Tea Table Group, Ryan brings these strands together to support institutions working with Chinese students and partners. His work focuses on international student success, transitional challenges, university support systems, recruitment and retention strategy, program evaluation, and China-facing engagement.
Outside of his professional work, Ryan enjoys cooking, discovering new foods and traditions, and spending time with family and friends. He is particularly fond of Pu’er tea and appreciates the patience and craftsmanship behind its tradition.
Turning Research and Data into Institutional Action
James Stringer is a mixed-methods researcher and data analyst with more than fifteen years across Chinese and Vietnamese international education. He leads the design of The Tea Table Group's research: the instruments, focus groups, interviews, and surveys, and the quantitative analysis that turns them into evidence institutions can act on.
His research speaks directly to the questions universities ask about Chinese students. In a mixed-methods study of ninety Chinese high school students, he examined how they prepare for the TOEFL and whether those scores actually predict readiness for Western universities, using stratified sampling, Pearson correlation, and thematic coding of focus groups and counselor interviews. The finding that mid-band scorers showed essentially no link between TOEFL and GPA fed a curriculum reform he then led, which raised average TOEFL scores from 78 to 93 in two years and was adopted across more than a dozen international schools.
That pattern, rigorous analysis translated into measurable institutional change, runs through his work. At his current school in Hanoi he ran a three-term longitudinal study of student wellbeing, using ANOVA and effect-size analysis to separate real change from noise, and outlier analysis to surface the students that averages hide, all reported to senior leadership through interactive Power BI dashboards. As lead data analyst on a school-wide survey of 220 students, he built the instrument, data model, and dashboards examining AI use, and he designed and led a year-long study of four classroom AI interventions, grounded in the Technology Acceptance Model and self-regulated learning theory, which he presented at the 2026 AP Annual Conference in Las Vegas.
His methodological range is unusually broad. On the qualitative side he draws on graduate training in applied anthropology to design ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, focus groups, and research-ethics protocols. On the quantitative side he works in SPSS, SAS, SQL, Power BI, Tableau, and Python, and is completing a BS in Economics at Oregon State University with a focus on econometrics and statistical modeling. The combination lets the firm move from genuinely listening to Chinese students and institutions through to statistically defensible recommendations.
James holds an MA in Applied Anthropology and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University at Buffalo, an M.Ed and PGCE from the University of Sunderland, and a BS in Economics from Oregon State University (expected December 2026).
Currently, he is working with a Vietnamese university to develop a new anthropology and archaeology program and to bring hands-on, experiential learning to his students in Hanoi, an extension of his conviction that the strongest international education begins with direct, on-the-ground engagement.
More about his research and projects can be found at his portfolio: https://js346170.github.io/James_Stringer_Portfolio.github.io
The Tea Table Group
Phone (CN):+8615822448018
Phone (US) 7343616240
6 Liberty Sq PMB 96262
Boston, MA 02109