Cultural differences in teaching and learning

Teacher and student are an archetypal role pair in virtually any society. When teacher and student come from different cultures, such as in the context of economic development programmes, many perplexities can arise. These can be due to different social positions of teachers and students in the two societies, to differences in the relevance of the curriculum for the two societies, to differences in profiles of cognitive abilities between the populations of the two societies, or to differences in expected teacher/student and student/student interaction. This paper focuses in particular on these interaction differences. It relates them to the author’s 4-D model of cultural differences among societies, based on research on work-related values in over 50 countries. Differences in expected teacher/student and student/student interaction are listed with reference to the four dimensions of Individualism versus Collectivism, large versus small Power Distance, strong versus weak Uncertainty Avoidance, and Masculinity versus Femininity. Some effects of language differences between teacher and student are also discussed. The burden of adaptation in cross-cultural learning situations should be primarily on the teachers.