Teaching and Learning > PROJECTS
Cultural diversity as a hindrance to learning
Lindsay Allason-Jones
Teaching students from a range of ethnic groups requires a detailed awareness of the students' cultural backgrounds over and above an awareness of their linguistic ability.
Although I have taught archaeology at undergraduate and postgraduate level for some years it is only recently that I have been involved in the delivery of an MA in Museum Studies. This has involved interaction with students from cultures which, traditionally, have not sent students to British universities to read archaeology. As a consequence, I have been able to compare my new experiences with my previous experience and have observed some marked differences. In particular, I have become aware that a foreign student's English language capability may not be the only barrier to their learning effectively whilst at a British university. Indeed, their earlier learning tradition and cultural background may seriously affect their ability to learn in a new environment. One example of this the number of students from the Far East who have not been encouraged to question their schoolteachers or admit that they don't understand what is being explained to them. Often they have been brought up to believe that asking questions or seeking clarification belittles the lecturer and thus the lecturer loses face. It can be several weeks in a small group, or never in the case of a large group, before the lecturer spots this, by which time the student is hopelessly behind the rest of the class. A second example is the need to be aware of which cultures are traditionally at odds with each other. The personalities of the individual students may render this an irrelevance but can lead to friction in the class if the students have been brought up in a very traditional or politically constrained environment. Finally, I have become aware through teaching archaeological curation as part of the MA in Museum Studies that people from different cultures see artefacts in different ways. An Islamic student, for example, will find it difficult to draw an object in plan as well as three-dimensionally while a Japanese student will draw all the irrelevant inclusions in great detail. Both these attitudes to objects are considered 'wrong' by Western criteria but are perfectly normal by the traditions of the students' culture. If a lecturer is not aware of this much time can be wasted in trying to teach the student to draw the objects 'correctly' or even result in the student being given a low mark. There are also questions of polite behaviour, which can be a mine-field. For example, to a person from Jordan or Saudi Arabia being shown the sole of someone's shoe can be considered an insult, yet many lecturers when conducting seminars often sit with their legs crossed and the soles of their feet pointing towards the class. I suggest that universities prepare packs for each culture which could be given to lecturers when they first take on a student from another culture. These packs could include guidance on the history, religion and politics of the culture as well as all the idiosyncrasies which makes that culture different to others. These packs could be updated as lecturers encounter new problems. We are all given guidance as to the level of English a foreign student needs to have before being accepted on a course but their cultural backgrounds may contain factors which are even more likely to hinder effective learning and here we are usually on our own to learn by our own experience with potentially disastrous consequences for individual students.
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
