Culture(s) and Learning

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Culture(s) and Learning

• Issues of power, cultural identity, and
  educational culture(s), and the impacts of these
  on learners and their learning cross-cultural
  capability developing the learning environment.
• Relates most specifically to learning outcome
  associated with ..the context in which
  professional practice takes place in relation to
  learners, learning environments, and support

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Who External stakeholders

• Government
• Government agencies (QAA, TTA, etc)
• Parents/ sponsors
• Employers
• Prospective students (markets)
• Professional bodies
• Academic leaders discipline gurus
• Publishers

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Who Internal stakeholders

• VC, Deans, HOS,
• Committees/ Regulators (Registry, Secretarys
  Office)
• Academic staff
• Administrative staff
• Learning Support staff
• Financial controllers
• Students
• Technologists
• External Examiners

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Cultural Symbols and Power
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The Importance of Symbols

• The study of organisational cultures suggests
  these symbolic representations and symbolic
  actions some deliberate, some accrued not
  only represent an organisational culture, but in
  doing so, also verify or create with us
  expectations with regard to their values, to how
  we should act in response (if we wish to
  successfully engage), and to how we will be
  judged by those within the organisation.

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Cultural Symbols and Power
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Power

• A faculty member will play many roles in the
  classroom teacher, facilitator, learner, mentor,
  evaluator, to name a few. But there is one thing
  that is common to all these roles power.
• Introduction to a staff development workshop,
  Centre for Teaching Excellence (http//www.cte.tcu
  .edu/ )

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Power

• A faculty member has power in the classroom. How
  can this power be used to encourage student
  learning? How does it impact students from
  different ethnic or cultural backgrounds? How
  does this power influence male students
  differently from female students?
• Introduction to a staff development workshop,
  Centre for Teaching Excellence (http//www.cte.tcu
  .edu/ )

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Styles/Modes

• In hierarchical mode, the teacher takes full
  responsibility for all aspects of the learning
  process, such as setting learning objectivesIn
  co-operative mode, power over the learning
  process is shared by the teacher and the
  learnersIn autonomous mode, the teacher provides
  an environment conducive to learning, but
  students take responsibility for self-directed
  learning
• Summary of J.Heron on the wed site of Centre for
  the Advancement of Teaching Learning at the
  University of Western Australia
  (http//www.catl.uwa.edu/au/NEWSLETTER/issue0600/r
  esponsibility.htm)

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Where do you sit (mostly)
?

• In hierarchical mode
• In co-operative
• In autonomous mode
• And where do your learners want you or need you?

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Culture Identity

• Cultures Subcultures Idiocultures
• Products producers of our culture(s)

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Culture Identity

• Diversity brings variety in identities
• Tutor student roles
• Peer relationships
• Attitudes to personal and institutional authority
  veneration or challenge
• Hierarchies family/ state/ religion/ self

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Values Diversity

• Value systems are an integral part of any
  cultural context and where several cultural
  contexts meet, as they do in pluralistic and
  multi-ethnic societies, questions inevitably
  arise relating to the existence of universal
  values and culture-specific (relativistic)
  values
• Thomas E Researching Values in Cross-cultural
  Contexts in - Gardener R, Cairns J, Lawton D,
  (Eds) Education for Values 2000, London Kogan
  Page (BP LC 370.114 EDU) p260

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Values Diversity

• and how a balance can be achieved between both
  when it comes to developing a values curriculum
  that must have a common appeal.
• Thomas E Researching Values in Cross-cultural
  Contexts in - Gardener R, Cairns J, Lawton D,
  (Eds) Education for Values 2000, London Kogan
  Page (BP LC 370.114 EDU) p260

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Learning Cultural Context

• A social epistemology enables us to consider the
  word learning not as standing alone, but as
  embodying a range of historically constructed
  values, priorities, and dispositions towards how
  one should see and act towards the world.
• Popkewitz T.S. Brennan M. Restructuring of
  Social Political Theory in Education Foucault
  and a Social Epistemology of School Practices P9
  in Popkewitz T.S. Brennan M. (eds) 1998
  Foucaults Challenge Discourse, Knowledge, and
  Power in Education Teachers College Press,
  Colombia University

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Educational culture

• Outcome driven
• Critical/ Reflexive thinking
• Autonomous learning

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Educational Values

• Democratic
• Egalitarian
• Secular

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Curriculum as Cultural Practice

• Curriculum always entails a selection from
  culture, a privileging of certain values over
  others
• Schaafsma D. Performing the Self Constructing
  Written and Curricular Fictions p261 in Popkewitz
  T.S. Brennan M. (eds) 1998 Foucaults
  Challenge Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in
  Education Teachers College Press, Colombia
  University (pp 55-277)

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Truth (and power and culture)

• Truth is a thing of this world it is produced
  only by virtue a multiple form of constraint. And
  it induces regular effects of power. Each society
  has its regime of truth, its general politics
  of truth
• Foucault M. 1980 Power?Knowledge Selected
  interviews and other writings by Michael
  Foucault, 1972-1977 (C.Gordon, Ed. And
  Translator) New York Pantheon p131

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Truth (and power and culture)

• that is, the type of discourse which it accepts
  and makes function as true the mechanisms and
  instances which enable one to distinguish true
  and false statements, the means by which each is
  sanctioned the techniques and procedures
  accorded value in the acquisition of truth the
  status of those who are charged with saying what
  counts as true.

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Impacts of Cultures on Learning

• Learning styles
• Schema
• Stereotype Threat
• Culture Shock

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Activist
Pragmatist
Reflector
Theorist
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Learning Styles Culture 1

• .As learning style preferences are recognised by
  many to exist within a group, differences are
  also found across cultures..In general thinking
  about differences in learning style suggests that
  culture significantly influences the manner in
  which one learns how to learn.Cushner K. 1994
  (p121)

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Whos Learning Style is Preferred?

• some learning activities are dominated by
  explicit or implicit assumptions about learning
  styles. The activity may be so geared to a
  particular style of learning as to cause a
  mismatch with any participant whose own major
  preferences are different..Generally courses
  are based on the learning styles of course
  runners not learners.Honey P. Mumford A. 1992
  (P21)

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Learning Styles Culture 1

• .As learning style preferences are recognised by
  many to exist within a group, differences are
  also found across cultures..In general thinking
  about differences in learning style suggests that
  culture significantly influences the manner in
  which one learns how to learn.Cushner K. 1994
  (p121)

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Culture Learning Styles 2

• For many students, especially those from
  non-European 'convergent' cultures, the teaching
  and learning traditions in regard to academic
  writing, research and assessment are very
  different from those of the 'divergent' western
  model. Their past training and experience will
  have given them a very different idea of what it
  takes to be a 'good' student for instance they
  may be accustomed to being rewarded for
  'following the master' rather than 'questioning
  the question'. Ryan J. 2000

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Readings

• Book of Rites
• Rig Veda Mantra
• Curriculum in Islamic Centres of Learning

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Prototype Theory
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Prototype Theory
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Schema
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Schema

• Learning theories commonly state that students
  construct meaning by relating new information to
  previous knowledge and personal experience, by
  'hooking' into the student's existing schemata.
  Unless international students are able to use
  their background knowledge and learn how to apply
  it to new situations, they will have difficulty
  building new knowledge.Ryan J. 2000 (p56)

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Types of Schema

• Content-based schemata derive from prior
  experience of the content knowledge that is
  relevant to the original text, whereas
  text-based schemata result from previous
  experience of similar text types or genres. Both
  these types of schemata or background knowledge
  affect the reader's comprehension of a text.
• Winskel H.

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• ..I have not yet learned to see an Indian village
  or a bazaar my eyes arent trained, and I
  couldnt describe one to save my life. I love
  them and am endlessly fascinated but all I can
  make out is a wild surrealist confusion of men
  and animals and many kinds of inanimate objects,
  arranged in completely implausible patterns.
• Edmund Taylor, Richer by Asia

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Cultural Differences
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A HEFCE View

• What emerges clearly from the case studies is
  how adjusting methods of learning, teaching and
  assessment to meet the needs of a very wide range
  of students including mature students and
  disabled students in practice benefits all
  students.
• HEFCE 2002 Successful student diversity Case
  studies of practice in learning and teaching and
  widening participation (Nov 2002/48)
  http//www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2002/02_48.htm

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Power lt gt Education lt gt Cultures