The Learner > Background
Research Controversy
There is no doubt that psychological contrasts between Western and East Asian communities have become a central theme within cultural and cross-cultural psychology (Lehman, Chiu and Schaller, 2004). However, claims concerning psychological or behavioural characteristics associated with cultural identity are claims that are likely to be surrounded by controversy. Value judgments are invariably close to the surface. This is particularly the case for what has been said regarding the nature of learning practices typical of Chinese learners.
Because research activity is always (and properly) fueled by debate and controversy, it is quite typical of researchers to adopt an adversarial attitude towards the claims of others. There is no exception to this in the literature of Chinese learners. Yet the rhetoric of the arguments that arise in such debates do need to be identified and filtered by newcomers – at least if they are to make good use of the underlying research. In this section, we note the issues that readily stimulate some of the controversy that is evident in the Chinese learner research literature.
A good deal of the frustration and confrontation that can arise in this literature stems from perceived inconsistencies between what research reports claim and what individual practitioners may feel they have experienced. This is not unusual in circumstances where researchers are endeavouring to trade in generalities, while practitioners inevitably are struck by their personal experience of particulars.
Other forms of tension arise between and among researchers themselves. Often this is nothing more than a familiar tradition of researchers raising up straw persons. A little exaggeration of someone else’s published position can furnish a useful inspiration for a lively empirical rejoinder. On the other hand, robust challenges are quite proper if the targets for such rejoinders have not been cautious in qualifying the scope and significance of their original claims. It will be useful to notice the areas where authors need to be especially cautious in exercising their claims – if the topic is characterising Chinese learning.
Some of the core controversies and tensions active in the domain of Chinese learner research surface in the following remark. It is made by a language teaching professional and concerns how Chinese learners are typically characterised: “A homogeneous body of Asian students who represent these stereotypes [that is, deferential, uncritical, silent learners] seems to exist more in the imagination of Western academia than in the actual classrooms of Asian societies” (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 709).
This comment anticipates some of the frictions likely to be encountered in this debate. We can usefully notice them, before going on to look more closely at research findings.
- “Academia” is a firm target in this quote. We can surely anticipate tensions based on familiar worries about the reach and the authenticity of researcher-led observation with learners. Researchers are seen as engaging with a world somehow different from “actual classrooms”. This may be ungenerous. But it is also a warning that critical readers should reflect on the depth and breadth that a research observation of learners can claim - in relation to what that research documents. It is a warning to consider the possible scope of any resulting generalisation.
- “Western Academia” reminds us of the dangers of cultural imperialism in this area. Often, research with Chinese learners will have been conducted and interpreted by Western researchers. The existence and significance of value judgments in this situation need to be monitored and carefully appraised.
- “Stereotypes” are often detected where looser categories were intended. An inclination of learners to act in a certain way could be all that has been documented: a modest statistical trend perhaps. Researchers (or their readers) can easily inflate such “tendencies” into “stereotypes”.
- “Homogenous” bodies of students represent another sort of generalising that is easily perceived in this area. “Asian” as a descriptor captures a wide range of cultural differences: any generalisations based around this term should depend upon sampling that variety. Even “Chinese” is culturally complex – particularly where much research on Chinese learning has been carried out in the narrow context of Hong Kong.
Tweed and Lehman (2002) provide a useful set of qualifiers to their review of the Chinese philosophical tradition – as it relates to contemporary learner characteristics. These authors urge recognition of continua where, often, discussion is conducted around polar distinctions. It is worth rehearsing some of their contrasts here as they have general relevance to the interpretation of any research in this area.
- “Heterogeneity not homogeneity”: While we may desire that research furnishes elegant generalisations, most findings will be tendencies and trends. This merely acknowledges the useful variety of practice that may be found in most educational systems. It is therefore important not to overstate the description of learner characteristics.
- “Culture not genetics”: Learner characteristics that co-relate with cultural membership are easily interpreted to be more robust and resilient than might be the case. Perhaps this is because there is a tendency to associate people’s common cultural membership with some underlying shared biological heritage. Any such shift of interpretation is going to be important when we come to consider the plasticity of individual learning practices. Locating consistency of action with culture does not presume the kind of resilience that a biological or genetic interpretation of culture might demand.
- “Orientation not ability”: findings about approaches to learning may be observations about general ways of approaching educational challenges, rather than observations about deeply rooted differences in ability.
- “Independent not bi-polar”: Some debate in this area is coordinated around apparently strong contrasts (e.g., the Confucian/Socratic contrast discussed in the next section). This is misleading as the items contrasted may be complementary (even orthogonal), rather than opposing anchors to some dimension of psychological difference.
- “Comparison not evaluation”: there is a recurring danger of ethnocentrism in these debates. The point is to document variation in practices rather than to endorse or deny culturally preferred modes of action.
We have identified these matters as “controversies” within the Chinese learner literature. There are other forms of warning that are useful to issue before navigating that literature. We finish this section on a list of those that seem significant to us. They are more focused on the particulars of research design in this area – and the constraints on interpretation that some such designs must impose.
(1) Be warned of theses in which there is a failure to unpack the worldview of a distinct cultural history in terms of more precise and contemporary social practices. Chinese literature and philosophy may well be dominated by themes that are distinctively different from those represented in comparable Western traditions. While there may be a resonance between these and apparent learning practices in the present, such an observation is intriguing rather than explanatory. We must seek to understand how certain philosophical traditions are actually acted out in modern social practices – for example, practices of childcare, teaching, labour, or casual interpersonal interaction.
(2) Be warned of research that leans heavily on the self-report of learners. In expressing the nature of Chinese learning preferences, it would be always be best to capture an account of the relevant dispositions by direct observation of what learners actually do. In fact, this is rather rarely what happens. Much research in this area is based around questionnaire or interview accounting: that is, records of what people say they do.
(3) Be warned that claims about low-level psychological processes observed among Chinese learners are often based upon people acting in highly structured task settings. This is a warning familiar to psychologists: their research is typically decoupled from settings of authentic action and situated in laboratory-like contexts where action can be closely observed and, to some extent, constrained – in the interests of empirical exactness. Often this may lead to compelling findings. But the lack of authenticity can sometimes represent a warning as to the scope of those findings.
(4) Be warned that both research design and the interpretation of findings from research tends to focus on the learner rather than the learning. In other words, many researchers theorise what they have observed in terms of inherent characteristics of learners rather than characteristics of the settings in which learners find themselves. In the vocabulary of Psychology, this tendency has a label. It is the “fundamental attribution error”. Interestingly, it is one of the psychological characteristics that is associated with Chinese learning patterns. However, in the present context, it warns us that the research literature is rather disappointing in its capacity to document the Chinese teaching and learning setting itself. There is only a small literature documenting what actually happens between people in classrooms or what forms of resource are fostered and provided there. Accordingly, culturally distinct learning dispositions are more often explained in terms of learner characteristics. They are less often explained in terms of how a certain set of designs-for-learning (“classrooms”) afford or constrain certain modes of intellectual interaction and reflection.
With these warnings in place, we move in the following section to consider an historical dimension to claims about the Chinese learner. Recognition of a distinctive Chinese philosophical tradition is a natural context to start theorising the nature and extent of East-West differences in educational contexts.
References
Kumaravadivelu B. (2003). Problematizing cultural stereotypes in TESOL TESOL Quarterly, 37, 709-719.
Lehman, D. R., Chiu, C., & Schaller, M. (2004). Psychology and culture. Annual Review of Psychology, 689-714.
Tweed, R. G., & Lehman, D. R. (2002). Learning considered within a cultural context: Confucian and Socratic approaches. American Psychologist, 57, 89-99.