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February 24, 2018

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The impact and influence of culture on education

By Dahvida Falanitule | 00:00 UTC+8 February 24, 2018 | Print Edition

AS a result of globalization, many people are becoming interested in ranking systems which show how their own countries compare with others on a variety of measures. For the purposes of this report, I will consider the impact of culture on education. Let’s begin with an awareness of the term “culture.”

Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist and Professor Emeritus at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, is widely recognized as the one who did the most fundamental research on cultural differences. He defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes members of one group of people from others.” He identified five value clusters (dimensions) as a fundamental platform in understanding and explaining the dominant values of countries and the way in which they influence behavior in organizations and learning institutions.

Power distance index

Power distance is the extent to which less powerful members of a society accept that power is distributed unequally. In high power-distance cultures, everybody has his/her rightful place in society. Old age is respected, and status is important. In low power-distance cultures, powerful people try to look less powerful.

People in countries like the US, Canada, the UK, all Scandinavian countries score low on the power distance index and are more likely to accept ideas like empowerment, matrix management and flat organizations. Business schools around the world tend to base their teachings on low power-distance values.

Masculinity vs femininity

In masculine cultures like the US, the UK, Germany and Italy, the dominant values are achievement and success. In feminine cultures, the dominant values are consensus seeking, caring for others and quality of life. People try to avoid situations distinguishing clear winners and losers. In masculine cultures, performance and achievement are important.

Feminine cultures like the Scandinavian countries have a people orientation. Small is beautiful and status is not so important.

Uncertainty avoidance index

Uncertainty avoidance stands for the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity. In cultures with strong uncertainty avoidance, people have a strong emotional need for rules and formality to structure life.

In high UAI countries like Germany, Russia, France, Iran and Brazil, the need is to know about what people in the past and present already said about a certain subject. This results in the high status of experts, as opposed to weak uncertainty-avoidance cultures, like the UK, the USA and Denmark in which the views of practitioners are more highly respected.

Individualism vs collectivism

In individualistic cultures, like almost all the wealthy Western countries, people look after themselves and their immediate families only; in collectivist cultures like Asia and Africa, people belong to “in-groups” who look after them in exchange for loyalty. In individualist cultures, values are in the person, whereas in collectivist cultures, identity is based on the social network to which one belongs. In individualist cultures there is more explicit, verbal communication. In collectivist cultures, communication is more implicit.

Long-term orientation

It is the extent to which a society exhibits a future-orientated perspective rather than a near-term point of view. Low-scoring countries like the US and Western European countries are usually those under the influence of monotheistic religious systems. People in these countries believe there is an absolute and indivisible truth. In high-scoring countries such as China, people believe truth depends on time, context and situation.

So can we learn from another culture? The answer is that cultural values are deeply rooted and are very consistent over time. It begins from the moment children are born. They learn from their parents to obey absolutely or to speak up. This programming continues at school as was described above how the five dimensions apply to learning situations.

Two issues were globally recognized as the core of understanding educational quality: a supportive culture for education and the need for a high status of teachers.

Researchers conclude that there is no systematic way to describe how the differences in the teaching/learning process transform inputs into outputs. What happens between them is very much a local issue. This brings us to conclude that:

• An international approach to ranking countries on education should take cultural differences into account before “benchmarking” and describing the characteristics of good school systems and good teachers.

• We can and should learn from each other. But we should also understand that to make a “best practice” work requires translation to a different culture/value system.

• The quality of teachers is related to how cultures are defining the role of teachers in the education process. It is a matter of effectiveness to accept this.

Art and Culture


 

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