Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to describe, in detail, cultural values as they can impact learning in higher education, describe cultural markers found within the classroom, and provide readers with a collection of exercises that can be utilized to discover the larger cultural values present within their learners. Research regarding cultural values and their differences among various international students will be described within general cultural values. Readers will be provided with a table of cultural markers, activities to discover their presence in the classroom, and questions to ask of learners to accommodate those cultural values. Implications for the higher education classroom and directions for future research are included.
TopComponents Of Classroom Culture
Culture has many meanings and is likened to the proverbial elephant described by the five wise men, each with his own perspective. Barker defines culture as “. . . shared social meanings, that is, the various ways we make sense of the world” (2004, p. 45). Kluckhohn writes “Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups . . .” (1951, p. 86). Hofstede, a strong researcher in business culture, describes culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group . . . from another” (2001, p. 9). Three frameworks to study cultural values are presented by Geert Hofstede (2001), the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Study (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004), and Edward T. Hall (1959). Hofstede’s work has focused on the impact of a society’s culture on its members and their behaviors in the workplace. He examined cultural values across more than 70 countries on the following dimensions: Power Distance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Time Orientation, and most recently, Indulgence. Hofstede developed surveys to assess the presence and degree of these cultural values and their impact on the workplace. Using factor analysis, he was able to show how society impacts employee behaviors within an organization. Taking a similar approach, the GLOBE study examined the impact culture has on management behaviors for 951 organizations in 62 countries. The nine dimensions include Future Orientation, Gender Egalitarianism, Assertiveness, Humane Orientation, In-Group Collectivism, Institutional Collectivism, Performance Orientation, Power Concentration/Decentralization, and Uncertainty Avoidance. Hall (1959) wrote about communication within various cultures across ten dimensions: Interaction, Association, Subsistence, Bisexuality, Territoriality, Temporality, Learning, Play, Defense and Exploitation. These three groundbreaking manuscripts have highlighted the importance of understanding culture and its impact on the workplace and society. However, similar approaches have rarely been undertaken for the higher education classroom.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Cultural Marker: An indicator, present within the behavior of a student, which indicates the presence of larger cultural values.
Epistemology: One’s personal view of knowledge and how it is created.
Future Time Orientation: One’s perspective of the future and whether time is considered fluid or linear.
Time Perspective: How one perceives the past, present, or future and how goal-oriented one is. The past and future can be viewed as positive or negative while the present perspective focuses on enjoyment.
Cultural Load: The degree of difference faced by students as they try to learn in classrooms from other cultures.
Surface Learning: Engaging with material to be learned just enough to complete a task such as pass an exam or complete a problem; typically relies on rote memorization strategies.
Strategic Learning: Steps or processes one takes to learn material; strategies one uses to acquire new material. Both deep and surface learning can rely on strategic learning approaches.
Deep Learning: Engaging the material to be learned for the purpose of understanding and mastering it. Finding multiple resources, seeking experts, exploring different concepts, and using active learning approaches are examples of deep learning.