Teaching Cross-Culturally

An Incarnational Model for Learning and Teaching

Judith E. Lingenfelter, Sherwood G. Lingenfelter

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780801026201
• eBook ISBN: 9781585583089
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Teaching Cross-Culturally is a challenging consideration of what it means to be a Christian educator in a culture other than your own. Chapters include discussions about how to uncover cultural biases, how to address intelligence and learning styles, and teaching for biblical transformation.

Teaching Cross-Culturally is ideal for the western-trained educator or missionary who plans to work in a non-western setting, as well as for those who teach in an increasingly multicultural North America.

one

Teaching Cross-Culturally

I come from a family of teachers, and I grew up knowing I would follow in the family tradition. I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and a secondary teaching credential. My first teaching job, in a predominantly Anglo, middle-class school, while not easy, confirmed my enthusiasm for the profession. I had been well trained in college, and daily teaching reinforced my pedagogical prowess.

It was during my second teaching job that everything started to fall apart. My husband, Sherwood, had been accepted to study cultural anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, and I landed a teaching job at a junior high school in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a steel city south of Pittsburgh. Most of my students were African Americans or the children of second-generation Euro-American steel worker families on relief. The middle-class whites were moving out of McKeesport as quickly as they could change jobs and find a “better” school for their children. Since my student teaching had been in junior high, as had my first position, I felt that this school would be a good fit. How wrong I was! The students did not respond as I had anticipated, they did not take tests well, some were several years below their grade level, and they challenged me at every turn. I was miserable! After two years I became pregnant with our first child and thereafter only substituted until Sherwood finished his doctoral course work. I survived the experience, but I did not understand what had happened to me until several years later.

Sherwood chose the small island of Yap, in the western Pacific islands near the Philippines, to do his dissertation fieldwork. My first year there was spent learning the language and the culture, but in the second year, the American principal of the elementary school in the district center asked me if I would teach. It was November, and this particular class of twenty-four students from six different cultures had already gone through four teachers since September. The teachers had been wives of Americans based on Yap for varying lengths of time. They had not been formally trained, but they could speak English. Because the class was taught in English, it was assumed that they could handle a class of first, second, and third graders. When the assumption proved false, the principal recruited me. I had never taught elementary school, but I was at least a teacher. Maybe I would have better luck.

That experience completely changed my understanding of teaching. While I was using American textbooks and the classroom format was familiar, nothing progressed as I thought it should. Students helped one another with everything and almost never worked alone. They were personally self-sufficient, yet they tended to answer my questions as a group. The five American students in the class were routinely frustrated because things were not done “right.” On the playground, the island students picked lice out of one another’s hair, which the American students considered “gross.” In the classroom, the American students raised their hands to answer questions, which the Yapese students thought was silly.

Nothing, however, revealed the differences between an American classroom and this Yapese one more than the incident that occurred during the final week of school. On Monday I had gone to school not feeling well but had listed on the board all the things we had to do as a class to get ready to close the school for the year (there were no janitors or other staff; the teachers were responsible for their own rooms). On Tuesday I decided I just could not make it to school. Because there were no phones and thus there was no way to contact the principal, I hoped he would notice that my students were locked out of their classroom and would send them home (substitute teachers were also an unknown commodity). About 9:00 A.M. he unlocked the classroom so that they could wait inside just in case I had been delayed by the bad roads or unreliable transportation. He then promptly forgot about them until 10:30. He went over to lock the classroom only to find the entire class diligently cleaning up and checking off the tasks on the board. Stunned, he said to the class, “You can all go home because obviously Mrs. Judy isn’t going to be here today.” Their response? “We can’t go; we’re not finished yet!” When I heard this story the next morning, I was dumbfounded by the comparison between this class and those I had previously taught. I had prided myself on teaching them independent thinking, but they taught me about interdependence! While only first, second, and third graders, they had already accepted more responsibility and group accountability than most American high school students. Sadly, I knew I hadn’t taught that!

My year of teaching on Yap stirred something deep within me and began to change the way I thought about the teaching process. These students introduced me to a new paradigm of classroom interaction with different expectations for relationships, both between students and their teachers and among students. Out of these experiences I developed a keen interest and commitment to research teaching and learning in differing cultural contexts. After a period of graduate study at the University of Pittsburgh, I returned to Yap in 1979 to spend a year examining in greater depth the culture of teaching and learning in Yap High School. At about the same time, Sherwood and I began serving with SIL International and other mission organizations as researchers and consultants on issues concerning cultural systems, learning styles, and cultural communication. In the years since I taught on Yap, I have taken opportunities to teach and observe in classes around the world. It has been an exciting journey: Every time I think I understand what is happening, I am surprised by something new. Perhaps one of the hallmarks of an abiding passion is that it always provokes new thinking and learning.

Cultural Context of Schooling

Looking back from this perspective in my life, the tension and frustration I experienced in my second teaching job in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, was due to my misunderstanding of the cultural context of schooling. I had grown up in a middle-class neighborhood in northeastern Philadelphia, and my schooling experience from first grade through college was predominantly in a middle-class social context. My first teaching job in Lombard, Illinois, was in a middle-class junior high school. Teaching in that context was easy for me. My cultural background and the culture of the school were a natural fit, and I was very successful in that classroom context.

Junior high school in McKeesport was a different story. While the teachers and the principal in McKeesport Junior High School had middle-class backgrounds and education, the students came from inner-city neighborhoods and welfare or working-class black or immigrant families. I failed to understand that the students brought their cultural habits and expectations with them to my classroom. These cultural differences had a dramatic effect on our interaction in a classroom context. I learned from this experience that schooling in the urban centers of the United States is a multicultural challenge. To be effective in the city, I had to learn to teach cross-culturally.

Instead of adapting my teaching to meet the students in their culture, I responded in McKeesport by trying to teach them the “proper” culture of school. This is a common practice in American schooling. I saw this most graphically when I taught in the Head Start program on the island of Yap. The primary purpose of the program was to teach Yapese children the American culture of schooling. We introduced them to classroom routines, the role of the teacher, and a particular style of teaching that uses questions and responses. We even introduced them to our culture of food. Head Start was about what Philip Jackson (1968) calls the “hidden curriculum.”

My Yap elementary school experience, teaching grades 1 through 3 in a single classroom, pushed me to rethink my role and practice as a teacher. Early on I realized that I could not teach the curriculum for three grades on my own. As I interacted with the students, I discovered that they were willing partners with me. The older children were eager assistants in helping the younger children to learn. The students also helped me to understand their cultural differences and patterns of working together. I learned as much as I taught in that elementary school classroom.

Since 1977, Sherwood and I have been conducting adult workshops in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The participants, who are missionaries and national church leaders, come from diverse cultural contexts. The lessons I learned in the Yap elementary school classroom have proven to be extremely valuable as I work in these multicultural contexts of adult learners.

Every training or educational situation has a cultural context of teaching and learning. Usually the organization that plans and funds the school or workshop establishes the context. The definition of curriculum, the scheduling of time, and the organization of learning are structured around a set of cultural expectations that belong to the sponsoring organization. While teaching from a single cultural perspective can work, teachers will be more effective if they recognize the importance of cultural context.

One of the first steps in teaching cross-culturally is to clarify and value the cultural distinctives of the participants. In our West Africa workshop on partnership, we divided the participants into two groups, missionaries and Africans. We asked each group to arrive at a definition of partnership and to write their understandings on the blackboard. From these reports, participants saw immediately how different their ideas were about partnership. Merely clarifying and valuing these differences led to much more effective learning for all participants in the workshop.

The teacher’s role is to create the most appropriate context within which students can learn. As we worked with these adults, we found it important to help them focus on both their differences and their common ground of spiritual commitment for ministry. By helping them focus on their common commitments, we played the role of facilitator, creating situations in which they and we could learn together.

As you can see from these illustrations, the cultural context of schooling is important for teachers at every level of education. Whether working with elementary or secondary students in cities in the United States or in Bible schools in Africa or Latin America, teachers face many cultural issues. Students will always bring their culture to the classroom. As teachers we may be tempted to impose our culture of school on those students and push them to adhere to our hidden curriculum. Throughout the pages of this book, we will try to help you gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of the cultural beings we call students and of the diverse opportunities you have as a teacher to create a context in which they can learn and grow.

A Teacher Is a Person with Power

If you have ever failed an exam or gotten a grade lower than you thought you deserved, you understand that a teacher is a person with power. It is extremely important to recognize that a teacher has power in relation to students. This power is derived from a teacher’s authority, which has two dimensions: skill authority and role authority.

Teachers have skill authority by virtue of the special education and preparation they have to serve as teachers in the classroom. Most teachers have a significantly higher level of education than their students, and most specialized in a particular subject area, making them experts in an aspect of the curriculum. In addition, over a period of years, teachers develop their professional skills through the experience of teaching and through continuing education. Teachers, therefore, bring to their classrooms a particular authority that comes from their education and skill.

Teachers also have a special authority derived from the role. A person in a teaching role controls the subject matter taught in the class, defines the schedule within which that subject matter is taught, plans the lessons for each day, and defines the evaluation framework for assessing students. A particular concern to students is the fact that teachers control the positive or negative assessment of their performance. But a teacher controls much more. A teacher can make students stand in a line, wait to go to the bathroom, or insist that they be quiet. By the time students become young or mature adults, they have so internalized these rules and regulations that they obey them without direction from the teacher. For experienced students, the controlled order of classroom behavior is automatic. Adult students bring notebooks and paper, expect exams, sit through a class regardless of whether they are suffering physiological discomfort, and often follow the directions of the teacher without question.

The power that a teacher has lies in the control a teacher exercises over things that are of value to students. Usually this control is focused on outcomes such as grades, advancement, credit toward a degree, or certification of qualification for employment. The structure of control encompasses most aspects of classroom life.

Both teachers and students bring their independent wills to the classroom. It is in the contests of will that students and teachers struggle for power in their relationships with one another. A teacher may will to affirm, rebuke, encourage, destroy, build up, or tear down students. Students may will to obey, disobey, contradict, comply, harass, or submit to the authority of the teacher.

Through the engagement of will, teachers and students create an emotional climate that defines the characteristics of teacher-student relationships and student-student relationships in the classroom.

When cultural differences are added to these power issues, there is a potential for misunderstanding and conflict. As we think about teaching cross-culturally, we recognize that Christian teachers have a great responsibility as they seek to honor Christ and be filled with the Spirit in their teaching relationships. A power struggle may become a critical factor in one’s effectiveness as a Christian teacher.

Culture as Palace and Prison

As I already related, my first teaching assignment was in a middle-class community where students shared with me a common cultural heritage. It was a wonderful year that affirmed my gifts as a teacher and rewarded me for my investment in the development of these young people. In that context, my culture served me well. I understood what to expect from the students, they understood what to expect from me, and our mutual relationship was rewarding and fulfilling.

My second teaching assignment was much more difficult. The students did not like me, I did not understand them, and we struggled daily with power issues in the classroom. I insisted that they conform to my schedule and respond according to my direction. They resisted, harassed me, and generally worked to make my life miserable. Neither I nor my students understood that we were prisoners of our cultures. I assumed that the only proper way to run a classroom was the way I had experienced it growing up and the way I had achieved success in my first teaching job. They in turn saw no reason to conform to my routines and patterns of relating that from their perspective were oppressive, boring, and unhelpful.

Our struggles soon became a contest of power. I sent those who refused to conform to my demands to the principal’s office. On occasion the principal dismissed them from school. Others, recognizing my will and my commitment to force them to conform, submitted grudgingly to my demands and expectations. A few at times harassed me to such an extent that I went home weeping in frustration. I am sure there were times when students went home deeply frustrated and crying to their parents about their experience with me.

What was the problem? The basic argument in this book is that our culture serves us well when it is the only culture in focus. In fact, it is a palace when there are n...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• 1: TEACHING CROSS-CULTURALLY
• 2: THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM
• 3: UNDERSTANDING TRADITIONAL LEARNING STRATEGIES
• 4: FORMAL SCHOOLING AND TRADITIONAL LEARNING
• 5: INTELLIGENCE AND LEARNING STYLES
• 6: THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER
• 7: TEACHING FOR CHANGE
• 8: FALSE EXPECTATIONS
• 9: LEARNING TO TEACH CROSS-CULTURALLY
• REFERENCES