CrossCultural Collaboration

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Cross-Cultural Collaboration

• Whose Culture is it Anyway?
• Deborah Bosely

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Our Definition- Lets Collaborate!

• Instructions In two minutes, we are going to
  define, for this class collectively, what
  collaboration means (or could mean). As the sheet
  of paper circulates add some (no more than 6)
  words to what the previous writer says- a
  continuous trend of thought - to help formulate a
  definition for collaboration.

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Definition of Culture

• An established set of values and a way of
• thinking and behaving that is passed from
• generation to generation.
• Alan C. Purves on culture
• -its not limited to our private interactions,
  but
• influences behavior in classroom and workplace
• -impacts how we eat, walk, relate to others

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Definition of Collaboration

• True Collaboration When the success of the
  group is paramount and all individuals must
  contribute to that success, you have true
  collaboration. No group member can be left behind
  and everyone within the group will do whatever it
  takes to reach the common goal. Also, in a truly
  collaborative situation, each individual within a
  group needs to succeed in order for the entire
  group to succeed.

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Bosleys Caveats

• No hierarchy of accepted behavior implied- all
  cultures are ethnocentric
• Cant label a persons behavior by generalizing
  to his/her culture
• Collaborative groups defined groups of 3 or more
  students create one written document and receive
  both a group grade or the product and an
  individual grade for their participation in the
  process
• Terms defined
• - Euro- North American white middle
  class males whose values and cognitive
  frames are those that dominate educational
  paradigms
• - International- collaborators who grew
  up outside of mainstream America.

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Bosley- Her students on collaboration.

• I liked working in my group, but the other
  students expected me to disagree with them. I
  could never do that publicly it would embarrass
  them too much. Japanese student
• I never asked questions because if I did it
  would make the leader seem as if she didnt know
  what she was talking about. Vietnamese student

• Question What implications would comments such
  as these have for us as teachers, technical
  writers, scientists, or whatever your
  designation, when we seek to engage others-
  students, researchers, or other group
  participants- in a collaborative situation?

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Cultural Differences in Behavior-1

• 4 cultural characteristics influencing grp.
  behav.
• Group or Individual Emphasis
• Achievement Responsibility
• Decision-Making Strategies
• Thinking Communication Styles
• Students age 14 working on classroom project in
  a group- Golden Valley, Minnesota, USA.

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Cultural Differences in Behavior- 2

• Euro- North American
• Ideal of the individual
• Emphasis on achieve- ment-competition
• Decision-making- Euro centric solipsism
• Rational
• Problem solved correct answer
• Oral messages Talkative- provide context orally
• Written messages Clarity important.
  Generalgtgtelaborate

• International
• Collective experience
• Emphasis on just being harmony
• More assenting in decision making
• Emotive
• Problem solved overcome difficulty
• Oral messages Quiet- rely on context for meaning
• Written messages Creative expression. Beauty,
  surprise, flow.

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Whats problematic?

• Successful collaboration is often stymied by
  culture-bound behaviors and the expectations
  placed upon achievement and responsibility as
  appropriate group behavior
• Euro-North American criteria for success and
  standards of achievement are not universal.
• We tend to evaluate students in a collaborative
  endeavor by the quality of the groups product
  and individual participation. Yet, we want our
  ENA students to show group allegiance, but reward
  individual behavior and we expect our
  International students to embrace individualism
  because thats how part of the project is graded.
  This dichotomy is problematic for some students.
• When individual achievement is emphasized that
  persons relationship within the group is
  undermined.

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Bosleys Response

• I had to change the premises that grounded
• everything I taught about collaborative work.
• She
• gtrewrote individual evaluation forms
• gtre-evaluated choices for grouping students
• gtredesigned her assessment of final products.

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Questions We Might Ask??

• Given that the means by which we design and
  evaluate collaborative groups are culture-bound,
  what implications does this have for how we
  design collaborative groups?
• How can we dissolve inherent hierarchical
  structures that are sometimes evident in some
  collaborative interactions?
• How might gender impact collaboration within
  mixed groups?

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Making the Collaborative Project More Responsive
to Cognitive Needs of non-Westerners.

• Pedagogical Strategies
• ?Discuss communication style differences.
• ?Develop role-playing depicting various cultures
  responses to group situations
• ? Keep record of and discuss a variety of
  culture-bound behaviors
• ?Have students interact with international
  employees at local companies and discuss
  differences.
• ?Allow students to voice their own sanctioned,
  cultural behavior in discussion groups
• ?Assign values clarification exercises to give
  students opportunity to see that differences do
  not mean judgments
• ?Be prepared to deal with resistance to cultural
  integration.

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Synchronizing Todays Readings
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Theories

• Fish Bartholomae 1980s knowledge as an
  individual construction gtgt knowledge is a
  function of the linguistic norm of a discourse
  community writing as a social process
• Alexis de Toqueville French aristocratic who
  came to US in 1831, and later wrote Democracy in
  America - In his analysis of the American
  character, uses the term individualism- a calm
  and considered feeling that disposes a citizen to
  isolate himself . . . he gladly leaves the
  greater society to looks after itself. His
  solution- a strong tradition of community and
  public discourse.
• John Dewey 1889, School and Society-
  interactionist and
• constructivist approach to learning and
  knowledge.

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Theories Contd

• Dewey contd
• Deweys progressive education ideas that
  learning occurs in interaction, that social
  context is of utmost importance in the classroom,
  and that we should reform our traditional model
  (which privileges the individual) by enhancing
  the moving spirit of the whole group . . . held
  together by participation in common activities.
  Supported seeing the education of each individual
  in a social and communal context.
• Paolo Friere 1968 Pedagogy of the Oppressed-
  Challenges the traditional teaching of writing
  calls for a commitment to social and political
  contextualizing of all learning and a
  renegotiation of power and authority in all
  classroom. Much work on literacy.

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Theories Contd

• Peter Elbow 1973/1998 Writing Without Teachers-
  Encouraged writers to work in groups and read
  aloud for oral responses. In spite of this
  however, his work rests on assumptions about
  individualism and individual creativity that fail
  to problematize traditional conceptions of the
  author and deny the social nature of writing.
• Kenneth Bruffee 1984 Collaborative Learning and
  the Conversations of Mankind Social construction
  and collaborative learning- Who we are and what
  we write and know are functions of interaction
  and community. Thus writing and reading are
  essentially and naturally collaborative, social
  acts
• Others Ede Lunsford mentioned- James Berlin,
  John Trimbur, Robert Slavin.

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Challenges to the Pedagogy of Collaboration and
Cultural Barriers to Communication.

• Ede Lunsford
• Collaborative learning theories failed to
  challenge traditional concepts of individualism
  the way knowledge is constructed among members of
  a community- single authorship, social nature of
  learning.
• Historical, social, theoretical and pedagogical
  forces all centered on a destabilized
  author/writer and on context, community and the
  social nature of knowledge/learning- present
  challenges to higher education in general, and
  teaching of composition in particular
• These challenges power authority in the
  classroom (organization, evaluation), classroom
  design/setting, curriculum design, examination
  system, time constraints (on group cohesion,
  content coverage, learning)

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Challenges- Contd

• Ede Lunsford- contd
• Inclusiveness recognizing, valuing and
  incorporating individual diversity into the
  whole.
• Horton
• Communication challenges across barriers of
  language and culture- in international markets,
  but even within a single country

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Challenges Contd

• Horton contd
• 2. Graphics as a universal language- What we
  should and shouldnt do when designing documents
  for international use.
• Bosley
• Mentioned- by Ede Lunsford (p.118)-focused on
  building
• collaborative writing in classroom contexts
  (emphasizing cultural
• constraints)- touched on the socio-cultural
  contexts more so
• than theoretical standpoints highlighted by Ede
  Lunsford, but
• both have implications for the pedagogy of
  collaboration and its
• effectiveness in higher education. Bosley and
  Horton intersect at
• the point of cultural differences impacting
  communication.

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Questions?- from Ede/Lunsford

• It is important to address issues not only of
  gender,
• but class, race and power about collaborative
  writing in
• institutional settings. What are the
  consequences of a
• goal-oriented view of collaboration for women
  and
• students of color in our classrooms? How about
  in the
• workplace?
• If in a Bakhtinian sense all writing, whether
  drafted by an individual working alone or by a
  group of persons working together, is
  collaborative, how can we best help students
  recognize and build upon this heteroglossic
  understanding of language?
• diversity of voices, styles of discourse, points
  of view distinct varieties within a single
  linguistic
• code.

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Questions?

• Which is a better collaborative writing
  assignment- one that strives to enable students
  to confront language in all its heteroglossic
  richness or one that helps students learn how
  practically and efficiently to get the job of
  writing together done?
• What are some cultural implications for designing
  graphics for international documents considering
  the trend of communicators using this tool as a
  universal language?
• diversity of voices, styles of discourse, points
  of view distinct varieties within a single
  linguistic
• code.

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Presented by

• Carol Manget- Johnson
• Dr. Baotong Gu
• ENGL 8115- Technical Writing
• 8 October, 2007