The Learner > Evaluation
Addressing the paradox
This section is concerned to take a closer look at the credibility of the prevailing description of a Chinese learner profile. As outlined in the previous section, a motive for doing this is found in the paradox that is inherent in this literature: how can academic success arise from a pattern of learning that is so out of tune with (Western) theories about good learning practice?
Those addressing the side of this paradox that concerns defining the Chinese learner profile have adopted three strategies for resolving the tension. First, it is possible to simply deny one or other of the claims that are made about what Chinese learners actually do. Second, and a more cautious reaction, it is possible to qualify some of those claims – suggesting some learning behaviour documented is real enough but its function needs to be interpreted more carefully. Finally, it is possible to make the second of these moves on a larger scale: that is, to propose a more systemic approach to understanding these learning profiles, which would often make a different sense of how individual activities function for the learner – exploring concealed patterns of adaptive behavioural repertoires.
Denial rejoinders are the least satisfactory attack on the paradox. Yet it is important to acknowledge them. For example, Gieve and Clark (2005) describe a group of Chinese learners blending with a group of European (Erasmus scheme) learners. The Chinese students in this mix revealed a strong awareness of the need to be autonomous in their learning. This seems to offer a challenge to prevailing stereotypes. Similarly, Ho and Crookall (1995) describe an enthusiastic group of Chinese learners who appeared quite willing to take responsibility for their own learning. They also seemed comfortable with a less authoritative teacher-oriented style of class management. Again, the stereotypes are violated.
However, such observations merely reinforce something that is implicit in cross-cultural comparisons in this area: differences may not actually be large and they certainly will be contingent. In other words, there may always be distinctive ways of re-arranging the teaching and learning experience such that apparently robust cultural differences are reduced or removed.
Other approaches to the paradox accept the behavioural observations upon which Chinese learning profiles are constructed, while challenging the interpretations we make of those behaviours. Sometimes such challenges involve the suggestion that a learning disposition that is unpopular to Western instructors is actually adaptive to Chinese learners. That is, it productively complements some other aspect of Chinese cultural character. A good example of this is Kim’s (2002) investigation of the “silent learner” aspect of Chinese classroom participation. In Kim’s studies, it is found that being required to talk aloud (reflectively) about what the learning one is engaged in interferes more with that learning for Asian students than it does for American students. So it is suggested that talking less during learning is consistent with an underlying aspect of Chinese psychological makeup: namely, the fact that internal speech is less central to cognitive processes of learning and reasoning. This is an interesting finding although it is generated from observing speech in a situation of private textual study. The cognitive psychology literature defines such speech as “self-explaining” and does expect it to be valuable for students. However, it is not clear that Kim’s results imply that there is no value for student’s talking in other contexts of learning: for example, on occasions of conversational reasoning in group work (collaborative and exploratory dialogues). It remains to be shown that any reticence in other settings of study is also productive for Chinese learners.
Another example of qualifying a behavioural disposition that is accepted as part of Chinese learning concerns the claim that such learners have a strong memorising orientation. Biggs (1996) interprets this claim in new ways. He points out that repetitive learning is not the same as rote learning. The latter does exclude concern for meaning, whereas the former can be more strategic. It can be quite appropriate as one part of a genuine search for meaning in material being studied. Hess and Azuma (1991) argue for structured memorisation as a legitimate and distinctive route towards mature understanding. Marton, Dall'Alba, and Kun (1996) provide some evidence that suggests the exercise of memory is actually a creative and effective part of the Chinese learner’s underlying search for understanding and meaning –not a substitute in that search. While Huang and Keung (2004) observe that the repetition often characteristic of teachers instructional strategy is actually an organised form of “practice with variation” reflecting a strong concern to present the same material from multiple perspectives.
The situation is summed up by Watkins (2000) who asks why Chinese learners appear to be rote learners when in survey studies they readily report that they are not. He concludes: “The mistake that many Western teachers make when they see a Chinese student memorising is to assume that they are rote learning…many of the [Chinese] teachers and better students do not see memorising and understanding as separate but rather an interlocking processes” (p.165).
The Chinese perception of power-distance relations in classroom interaction is also questioned in terms of its implications for autonomous student functioning. Watkins (2000) argues that the interpersonal relationships of student and teacher in many Chinese classrooms is simply different in structure to Western practices but, nevertheless, achieves similar productive ends, albeit by a different route. He accepts that: “a deep approach to learning is encouraged by a classroom where the students feel involved and believe their teachers to be supportive.” In social interactional terms, however, this may be achieved in a variety of ways. For Chinese learners, it seems more commonly achieved through ordered social relations that foster a sense of warmth and respect for a teacher – a form of relationship that is strived for in many Chinese classrooms.
This discussion has led towards a way of addressing our paradox that starts by accepting East-West differences in classroom disposition, rather than simply denying them. However, it is then argued that the significance of such differences needs careful interpretation. A given form for learner activity may mean different things when that activity is viewed as located within larger systems of activity. Ironically, what is identified by this caution touches on a tendency of Western research that would be predicted from the classic analyses of cultural mindsets. Researcher interpretation of learner action is too often divorced from the wider context of purpose, motive and social practice in which any such action is more properly judged.
Consider this suggestion in relation to some of the commonly made claims about the Chinese learner profile. In terms of social engagement, Chinese learners may indeed be less forthcoming in classroom discourse. However, this may merely reflect a different solution to realising the interpersonal dimension of learning. Lee (1999) reports that her Chinese students acknowledged confidently enough the need for dialogue. However, their conception of ideal classroom structure meant a preference that it should be tutor-led. Moreover, while the social order of classroom may not be readily disturbed by individual students publicly inquiring and challenging, the Chinese student-teacher dialogue is often observed to thrive outside of the classroom (Cortazzi and Jin, 1996; Watkins, 2000). In other words, there is a warmth of relationship created among them that protects experiences of dialogue by repositioning where they can occur.
Related to such observations, one detects that the classroom lesson in China represents a more orchestrated and bounded form of experience – rather than one to be improvised on each occasion it is convened. Its importance as a well-ordered event is suggested in observations made by Lapointe, Mead and Askew (1992). They report that Chinese parents are much more likely to ask about lessons than they are to help with homework – an opposite pattern to that reported for US families.
These are examples that stress how discrete learning preferences must be understood by locating them within larger systems of social understanding. There is a parallel need to see such learning preferences as existing within systems of more cognitive organisation. This may amount to no more than differences in managing the pace and structure of problem solving more generally. For example, it is claimed that a Chinese preference exists for grounding domain understandings on a strong base of skill perfection for that domain. This might mean a more measured approach to learning and one grounded upon early investments in practice and repetition. To Western observers of such approaches, the learning might be harshly judged mechanical and memory-oriented.
Elsewhere, the underlying cognitive organisation into which a learning activity fits may be more a matter of how the individual manages a balance: determining how different aspects of learning are blended, coordinated, or prioritised. For example, effective learning may be most properly viewed not as inherently constructivist but as an organised balance of “telling” and “constructing” (Schwartz and Bransford, 1998) – a blend of more passive and more active engagements. Western and Eastern educational practices may manage this balance differently. Indeed the solutions they achieve may reflect larger underlying social orders. However, the situation of looking in on another system of educational practice may encourage too rushed and negative evaluations of the balances that are different from our own. In this case, the active and constructivist features of Chinese learning may be real enough features of its practice. But the pace and point of their presence may be managed differently.
In addressing the learning paradox we have converged on a view that encourages a more systemic and ecological view of differences that are real enough. Arguably, it is only by adopting a wider lens of viewing on these matters that we can make sense of apparent paradoxes involving practice and outcome.
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