I’ve just read an incredibly interesting article.
Hofstede G (1986). Cultural differences in teaching and learning. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 10 (3) 301-320
The article considers key attributes of different societies and how these relate to the expectation of teachers and learners. Unfortunately it’s not an open access article, so I can’t link to it here, but I have found a summary of the important tables of attributes within the article.
It’s a start, but the original article also stated which countries had which attributes, and without this information, the tables are of limited use. Is anyone aware of a source of this information?
I think these are invaluable considerations for anyone who deals regularly with students from other countries. If I had more time on my hands I’d take on the project of summarising the findings of the article into an open-source format.
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August 16, 2007 at 4:21 am
Yvonne
Hi David
The article is fascinating and one thing that strikes me is the positioning of New Zealand in the two diagrams. In a previous paper on this course we discussed how different cultures have differing learning needs/perspectives – for example Maori learners approach learning from the collective perspective of the whanau whereas the European approach is more individualistic. So does Hofstede’s analysis suggest a country only consists of one dominant culture or is his method of analysis a little flawed? Mmmmm….lots to ponder…
Yvonne
August 16, 2007 at 4:25 am
David McQuillan
I think Hofstede’s looking at the overall picture of people within a culture. So although we can probably consider the average student to have the profile that he has described, there are obviously going to be some who have different profiles. Variety, the spice of life & all of that.