A group of human beings whose members identify with each other, on the basis of distinctiveness measured by combinations of cultural, linguistic, religious, behavioral and/or biological traits. This definition borrows from the UNESCO (2005) philosophy, that reaffirmed their famous ’15 points’, namely: “National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connexion [sic] with racial traits.” (UNESCO, 1950, p. 6)
Published in Chapter:
Multicultural e-Education: Student Learning Style, Culture and Performance
Kenneth David Strang (Central Queensland University, Australia)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-782-9.ch024
Abstract
Academic performance of international university students was predicted using an interdisciplinary model, built by integrating theories from educational psychology and cultural anthropology. Approximately 2,500 online undergraduate business degree students from 21 countries were sampled from an Australian university. An a priori learning style instrument was used to assess their study strategies, which was integrated to a global culture taxonomy using ethnic demographic data. Multi-method statistical techniques for multivariate data were triangulated (confirmatory ordinal factor analysis, multiple regression and structural equation modeling) to analyze empirical evidence. The instrument was validated (eigenvalues> 1; cumulative factor variance captured >60%; GF, LR, factor loadings acceptable; p