Challenge me! Communicating in multicultural classrooms

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Social Psychology of EducationAn International Journal ISSN 1381-2890Volume 15Number 1 Soc Psychol Educ (2012) 15:59-76DOI 10.1007/s11218-011-9169-8

Challenge me! Communicating inmulticultural classrooms

Ulrich Kühnen, Marieke C. van Egmond,Frank Haber, Stefanie Kuschel, AminaÖzelsel, Alexis L. Rossi & Youlia Spivak

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Soc Psychol Educ (2012) 15:59–76DOI 10.1007/s11218-011-9169-8

Challenge me! Communicating in multiculturalclassrooms

Ulrich Kühnen · Marieke C. van Egmond ·Frank Haber · Stefanie Kuschel · Amina Özelsel ·Alexis L. Rossi · Youlia Spivak

Received: 2 July 2010 / Accepted: 11 July 2011 / Published online: 27 July 2011© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The current study investigated the value of Socratic classroom commu-nication (e.g., critical debate and challenging each other on content matters) amongstudents from various cultures (clustered into Western Europeans, Eastern Europeansand Non-Europeans) and from members of faculty at an international university inGermany. Students from Western cultures where Socratic communication had beenvalued in the school systems reported a greater ease of engaging in the respectivecommunication style than did Eastern European and Non-European students. Further-more, we assessed how strongly the faculty valued the respective kinds of behavior.The results show that overall students underestimated the extent to which Socraticcommunication behavior was esteemed by members of faculty. In addition, facultymembers perceived themselves to be more explicit about their pedagogical principlesthan they were perceived by students. Finally, the easier it was for students to showSocratic classroom communication, the more academically satisfied they were and thebetter their grades. The results are discussed with regard to practical implications andthe internationalization of universities.

Keywords Culture · Learning beliefs · Socratic versus confucian tradition ·Classroom interaction · Pedagogical styles

Internationalization and globalization affect all aspects of everyday life, including theacademic sphere. Over the last decades it has become more and more common to spendat least part of one’s academic education abroad. From an institutional perspective,border-crossing communication and border-crossing reputation have become termsthat are often equated with the ‘quality’ of universities (Cooper 2007; Teichler 2004),

U. Kühnen (B) · M. C. van Egmond · F. Haber · S. Kuschel · A.Özelsel · A. L. Rossi · Y. SpivakJacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germanye-mail: [email protected]

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turning many of them into multicultural educational settings. On the one hand thisgrowing cultural diversity can be considered an extremely important learning resourceover and above the contents of the academic curricula. Yet, it is hardly surprising thatthis diversity also fundamentally challenges both students and their faculty. Unfortu-nately, the core problems faced by (international) students due to cultural differencesstill regularly go unacknowledged or, possibly worse, mis-acknowledged. Therefore,uncovering existing differences in basic assumptions about learning that may existbetween the members of various cultures and their consequences for in-class com-munication and interaction is crucial (Fryberg and Markus 2007; Gabb 2006). Thecontext of an international university, where the student body represents nearly 100nationalities, forms an ideal environment in which to analyze these differences. More-over, if cultural differences emerge in such a highly internationalized environment,this provides reason to assume similar, if not more pronounced, cultural differencesin samples of exchange students who participate in a new academic context.

In this paper we therefore address the following questions: What expectations do(Western) faculty members hold about how their students should communicate withthem in class? How explicit are they being about their expectations? How do studentsfrom various cultural regions perceive what their faculty value in communication?How easy or difficult do students find it to engage in those kinds of communicationactivities that the faculty value? And what does all this imply for students’ perfor-mance and their academic satisfaction? We will first review the current literature thatrelates to these questions, after which we will answer these questions on the basis ofsurvey data obtained from a highly diverse student body at an international university.

1 Learning and classroom interaction: Socratic versus Confucian traditions

The study of classroom behavior and interaction is by no means new. Most of theavailable empirical studies investigated differences between Western and East Asianscholars, in issues such as achievement motivation (Hau and Ho 2008), self-concept(Markus and Kitayama 1991), verbalization (Kim 2002, 2008), classroom participa-tion (Paulhus et al. 2002; Van Petegem et al. 2007), learning strategies (Kember 2000;Matthews et al. 2007; Kingston and Forland 2008; Helmke and Tuyet 1999; Joy andKolb 2009) and thinking patterns (Nisbett et al. 2001).

At the core of Western learning and teaching tradition is the development of mentalskills, critical thinking, and debate. Communication is an essential part of the learningprocesses itself, which is to say that students learn by communicating (and do notengage in communication only after they have achieved mastery over the learningmaterial). Critical discussions and debates are hence emphasized and valued. As astudent, one is taught that the information one receives must be treated critically, todetermine whether or not it is verifiable (Garrison 1991). To become a critical thinker,a person must have certain attitudes, dispositions, habits of mind, and character traits,which together may be labeled the “critical attitude” or “critical spirit” (Siegel 1988cited in Garrison 1991). A great part of Western education, starting at a very early age,is therefore, concerned with teaching children how to generate arguments and count-erarguments concerning any given position (Peng and Nisbett 1999). Some scholars

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regard critical thinking even as ‘a necessary condition’ for education (McPeck 1981,cited in Garrison 1991). This emphasis includes that doubt is not only always anoption, but rather that it is often seen as a valuable starting point in the pursuit ofknowledge. From this perspective, it is seen as appropriate to raise questions aboutan issue, even before one has fully grasped it. Skepticism has been described as themost notable characteristic of critical thought (McPeck 1981, cited in Garrison 1991).To this day, debating is therefore, one of the core skills for any academic to master,and students are even encouraged to challenge their professors with different viewson content matters in class, regardless of academic discipline. In the higher educationliterature, the question of whether classroom discussions are associated with improvedstudent learning has even reached a consensus (Askell-Williams and Lawson 2005).The value that is placed on discussions is also supported empirically, by a study ofover 1,100 college students (Facione 2009). In this study, a significant correlation wasfound between critical thinking skills and college GPA.

The Western way of learning and teaching is attributed by some scholars to intel-lectual traditions that relate back to ancient times. Tweed and Lehman (2002), forexample, traced this tradition back to the Athenian schools of thought, led by philoso-phers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates (469–399 B.C.) in particular is oftenseen as one of the fathers of Western thought and the founder of critical thinking as arespected path towards knowledge. His fame originates from his displays of publiclyquestioning the knowledge of Athens’ authority figures in the city’s market squares.Socrates believed that it was only a critical debate, with both parties obeying the rulesof formal logic that could determine what was true and what was not. It did not matterto him if his opponent was an aristocrat or a merchant. Status or ascribed authoritywere not accepted as reasons to be excused from being questioned. Socrates taughtin the form of dialogues, an element of learning which is reflected in the modernfinding that communication is an essential component of the learning process in theWest. In his dialogues, Socrates often merely asked questions that led his counterpartsinto making contradictions. In response to this, his scholars themselves were the onesto identify the limitations of their previous beliefs and assumptions and as a resultachieved higher levels of insight. Therefore, the acquired knowledge was self-gener-ated to some extent. Accordingly, Tweed and Lehman (2002) summarized the coreelements of Western, ‘Socratic’ education as including (1) the tendency to question(even recognizing one‘s own ignorance), (2) the focus on error to evoke doubt, (3) theesteem for self-generated knowledge and (4) the search for true knowledge, not justtrue belief.

Even today this Socratic tradition is evident in the learning beliefs and communi-cation tendencies of Western students. Several studies support the high value that isplaced on communication in the Western classroom (Kim 2002). Brown and Campi-one (1996, as cited in Askell-Williams and Lawson 2005), for example, identified thedialogic base as one of the first principles of learning, which provides the format fornovices to adopt the discourse structure, goals, values and belief system of scientificpractice. Furthermore, as Rivard and Straw (2000) point out, it is often thought thatwe come to an understanding in the course of communicating it. Furthermore Askell-Williams and Lawson (2005) found that students report that classroom discussionincreases their motivation. These findings are in line with the research by Kim (2008),

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who found support for the proposition that the act of speech is less psychologicallyburdensome for people from European American cultural contexts than for peoplefrom East Asian contexts. In conclusion, the Western perspective on learning focuseson critical thinking and active verbal expression of one’s own thoughts and ideas thatgo beyond the given. The core learning attitude is that of skepticism and a preferencefor challenging each other with opposing views on content matters—irrespective ofone’s social status (e.g., being a student vs. a faculty member).

The studies cited so far typically contrast the Western way of learning with the EastAsian tradition that is often traced back to Confucius (551—479 B.C.). Accordingto Tweed and Lehman (2002) the principles of the Confucian learning tradition mostimportantly include respectful learning: Authorities must be treated with a great dealof respect in order to maintain a harmonious relationship with them. Learning is seenas an effortful process which requires that learners develop the virtues of diligenceand endurance of hardship. The processes by which one acquires new knowledge isprimarily internal and one can only engage in communication about, or potentiallytake a critical stand towards the learning material after one has achieved mastery overit. Memorization and repetition are valued as ways to show the effort that is requiredof students to be considered a ‘good student’ (Li 2005). Memorizing and understand-ing are therefore conceptualized as processes that complement each other rather thanbeing mutually exclusive, as is the predominant belief in the West (Purdie and Hattie2002).

As such, the application of dialogue is not absent from Confucius’ legacy, but thedifference with the Socratic tradition lies in the fact that in the latter tradition one wouldtypically ask students rhetorical questions, which challenge them to think hard abouttheir taken-for-granted ideas and subsequently engage them in truth-finding debates.Confucius is also reported to have asked students questions, but his questions directedstudents to examine themselves, their own moral conduct, their desire to seek moralself-perfection, and their actual practices. Therefore, objective truth-finding was muchless the aim of these discussions. This legacy is visible in the expectation of Chinesestudents today that the function of questions from teachers is to share knowledge,which students can then work hard to acquire and use in order to guide their lives(Scollon 1999). Learning is also much more pragmatic in the sense that one centralgoal of learning is the development of skills by which one is able to make a contri-bution to society and improve the lives of others. An equally important learning goalis thus to develop oneself morally and socially and to become a more virtuous personby dedicating oneself to the process of learning (see also Li 2003, 2005).

As this brief review reveals, the Western Socratic way of teaching and learningshould not be taken for granted since it is found to be less common in a cultures suchas those in East Asia. Little is known about other parts of the world. Therefore, oneof the central goals of this paper was to investigate the ease with which students fromvarious cultural backgrounds can engage in such Socratic ways of in-class commu-nication. How do students from cultures with or without the Socratic-based traditiondiffer in how much emphasis was placed during their high school education on suchactivities as formulating own ideas, active class participation and challenging facultyin class with opposing views on content matters? How easy is it for them to engage inthese kinds of activities?

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2 The current study

The data that we report here were collected as part of a larger study on interculturalissues, which was conducted with students and members of faculty at Jacobs Univer-sity Bremen. Located in northern Germany, Jacobs University is a private, interna-tional university with students from over 90 nations, most of whom live in residentialcolleges on campus, with Germans making up only about 25% of the student body.Hence teaching and learning at this university necessarily take place in multiculturalsettings. The language of instruction is English. The university is modeled on theAmerican system, thereby also expected to endorse Western academic standards. Inthis paper we will therefore focus on the question about what the standards for class-room communication, as indicated by the faculty, actually are at this university, andhow easily students from different cultural regions perform according to them. Theresearch questions of the larger research project included the satisfaction with variousaspects of academic life at Jacobs of the different status groups (including under-graduate students, graduate students, administration, faculty members, and alumni),as well as other potentially predicting factors such as classroom culture, interculturalcompetence and acculturation stress. We focus here on the data from undergraduatestudents and their faculty only, because many of the graduate students from JacobsUniversity already did their undergraduate studies at this university before and mayhave acquired the Socratic communication style through this experience. These grad-uate student samples are therefore, quite selective, because only those undergraduateswho are well-adjusted to the class-room culture at Jacobs University decide to applyfor one of our graduate programs.

The current study exceeds previous investigations in several ways. First, as outlinedabove, most previous studies simply contrasted aspects of in-class communication ofboth Western and Asian students. Globalization, however, brings about much morediverse student bodies everywhere. Given the great diversity of Jacobs University stu-dents, we had the chance to include samples from various parts of the world. In order tocreate meaningfully sized cultural clusters, we made use of the classification schemedeveloped within the framework of the World Value Survey (Inlgehart and Welzel2005). We asked students to indicate how much various kinds of Socratic communi-cation behavior had been valued in the school system that they had attended beforecoming to Jacobs University, and how easy it now is for them to engage in these kindsof behavior.

Secondly, of particular interest for us are students from Eastern Europe. Little isknown about their learning tradition and communication style. On the one hand onemay argue that they share the Socratic tradition with other European cultures whichwould suggest that they do not differ from Western Europeans in their classroombehavior. On the other, the educational system in Eastern Europe may still be influ-enced by the former communist political system, in which independence of thoughtand debate may have been less emphasized (Whitmarsh and Ritter 2007). For example,in a study on basic values among Western and Eastern European teachers, Schwartzet al. (2000) showed that “Eastern European nations attributed greater importance toembeddedness and hierarchy values and lower importance to egalitarianism, intellec-tual and affective autonomy values, when compared with West European samples”

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(p. 233). As a consequence, one may for example expect that Eastern European stu-dents (relative to Western European ones) may find it more difficult to challenge theirprofessors with opposing views on content matters. The question is thus whether therecent macro-level political system of Communism in these countries has affectedthe historical intellectual (Socratic) tradition in this region. In order to examine thisquestion, we looked at differences in the reported communication patterns of threegroups (1) students from Western cultures with a clear Socratic tradition, (2) studentsfrom non-European cultures that do not share the Socratic tradition and (3) EasternEuropeans. We predicted that students from cultures with a Socratic background (i.e.,Western Europeans and Ex-British Overseas) would report that Socratic communica-tion was valued more in the school systems they had previously attended than wouldstudents from historically non-Socratic cultures (i.e., students from the Islamic zone,Sub-Saharan Africa and India). No specific prediction was made for students from(both Catholic and Orthodox) Eastern Europe, because the literature is inconclusiveabout the expected directionality of the hypothesis. Lastly, students from Socratic cul-tures should find it easier to engage in Socratic in-class behavior than non-Socraticones (again no specific hypothesis was proposed for Eastern Europeans).

A third extension of the current data over many previous studies stems from the factthat previous investigations were often restricted to student samples only. Our studyalso included members of faculty. Professors were asked to indicate how stronglythey value Socratic communication in the classes they teach. Doing so allowed us tolook at the discrepancy between the values of the faculty members and the perceptionof these values by students. The faculty at Jacobs University come primarily from aWestern cultural background and those who come from elsewhere have spent at leastpart of their own education in Western settings. Therefore, we predicted that membersof faculty would value Socratic classroom behavior strongly. As a matter of fact iteven makes sense to predict that students overall would underestimate the extent towhich the faculty would value Socratic communication in class. Note that one of theindicators of Socratic communication that we looked at was challenging professors inclass with opposing views.

A final extension of our study over many previous ones is that we included two“output variables”: Students rated their academic life satisfaction and were asked toindicate their GPA. As mentioned above, Facione (2009) has provided one of the fewstudies in which this has been done before. If our assumption is confirmed that thefaculty strongly value Socratic classroom behavior, it should follow that the easier itis for students to engage in this kind of behavior, the more academically satisfied theyshould be and also the better their grades can be expected to be.

3 Method

3.1 Participants

The study was conducted online within the framework of a university-wide studyon a variety of intercultural topics. All status groups on campus were invited to par-ticipate. Since this study was strongly supported by the university’s leadership and

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several advertisement initiatives were taken, the participation rate turned out to berather high (n = 360 for undergraduate students which is about 53 % of all enrolledundergraduate students at that time and n = 84 (88 %) for the members of faculty).German students at Jacobs University only make up around 25% of the total studentbody, the rest stemming from 90 different nations. Several other countries are how-ever, represented by only a few students on campus. Therefore, cultural clusters werecreated for the analysis. This was done by adopting the classification from the WorldValues Survey (Inlgehart and Welzel 2005), a regularly conducted worldwide surveywith representative samples from around the world. Students indicated their culturalbackground by checking one of the following options: Ex-British Overseas (n = 26),Western European (n = 109), Catholic Eastern European (n = 18), Orthodox EasternEuropean (n = 121), Islamic Zone (n = 27), Sub-Saharan Africa (n = 28), and India(n = 31).

Additionally, 150 students were female, and 195 were male. Their mean age was20.1 years. Jacobs University consists of two schools: The School of Engineering andScience (SES, where 201 of our participants were enrolled) and the School of Human-ities and Social Sciences (SHSS; n = 134; 25 students did not indicate their school).The faculty members at Jacobs University are predominantly Western. Fifty-three outof the 84 participating faculty members were male, seven female and 24 did not indi-cate their sex. On average they were 45.6 years old. There were 15 faculty membersfrom SHSS, and 37 from SES; those remaining did not indicate their school affiliation.

3.2 Materials and procedure

The data were collected as part of a larger online survey on various aspects of intercul-tural issues, such as the perceived amount of intercultural conflicts, the need for train-ing, and the degree of acculturation stress experienced. All subjects were approachedvia an individualized email on their university mail account. This email contained aunique link to the survey, which only allowed a single response by each email user.Given the high participation rate, possible influences of a self-selection bias in theresponses are unlikely. At the start of the survey, participants were asked to identifytheir own status group. Depending on which group they indicated, they received aslightly different version of the questionnaire (see below).

3.2.1 In-class communication

One set of questions pertained to classroom culture. Students were asked about fourcritical kinds of classroom communication which were provided to them in the follow-ing words: (1) “active participation in class”, (2) “displaying critical thinking abilities(e.g., questioning and challenging assumptions presented in the readings)”, (3) “for-mulating your own ideas that go beyond reproducing ideas of other scholars”, and(4) “challenging my professor in class with opposing views on content matters”. Foreach of these kinds of behavior, participants were asked to make three ratings. Firstly,they were asked how much this behavior had been valued in the school systems theyhad attended before coming to Jacobs University (the scale ranging from 1—“not at

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all valued” to 7 “very valued”). Secondly, participants rated on the same scale howmuch each respective activity is valued by their faculty at Jacobs University. Thirdly,students were asked how easy it is for them to perform this activity (1—“not at alleasy”; 7—“very easy”).

The members of faculty were provided with the same kinds of communicationbehavior (with only the last item being reworded to: “challenging me as an instructorin class with opposing views on content matters”). They indicated for each kind ofbehavior how much they valued students displaying it (on the same 7-point ratingscale as students).

3.2.2 Explicitness

In order to assess the perceived explicitness of expectations, students were asked toindicate the extent to which the following statement reflected their personal experi-ence: “My professors are very explicit about the pedagogy of their teaching methods(e.g., they tell me why they see value in active participation, formulating critical ques-tions about the readings etc.)”. The rating scale again included again seven points(1—“not at all true” to 7—“very true”). For the courses that they teach, the facultywere asked to rate the importance of being very explicit about the pedagogy of theirteaching methods on a scale from 1 “not at all important” to 7 “very important”.

3.2.3 Academic satisfaction and GPA

Students and faculty members were asked to answer the question: “Overall, how sat-isfied are you with your academic life at Jacobs University?” (1—“not at all satisfied;7—“very satisfied”). Finally, students were asked whether they would be willing toindicate their current Grade Point Average, and if they agreed, they reported the GPA.The Jacobs University grading scheme includes the grades from 1.00, 1.33, 1.67, 2.00,2.33, 2.67, etc to 5.00, where 1.00 is the best grade.

4 Results

We analyzed the data according to the following stages. First, one purpose of this paperis to explore cultural differences within in-class communication styles between thevarious cultural zones identified by the World Values Survey. Hence, this classificationscheme was used as an independent variable in the analyses below. Next, the concretehypotheses that we tested predict differences in Socratic classroom communicationbetween cultures with a Socratic tradition (i.e., Western cultures) and non-Socraticcultures. Students from both the Ex-British Overseas cluster and Western Europewere therefore, collapsed into one group and treated as Socratic culture members.Non-European students from the Islamic zone, Sub-Saharan Africa and India wereclassified as Non-Socratic. Our predictions concern differences between Socratic andNon-Socratic students; however, we abstained from making concrete predictions for(both Catholic and Orthodox) Eastern Europeans (who were therefore, collapsed asthe third group). In order to test our predictions, we looked in a second stage of

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analysis at differences in the communication styles of Socratic, Eastern European andNon-Socratic culture members.

4.1 Values in pre-university education

This strategy was first applied in order to characterize the educational backgroundof students from various cultural zones as being reported by our participants. Inorder to do so, we submitted their ratings of how much each of the four criti-cal kinds of behavior had been valued in the school systems they attended priorto Jacobs University to an analysis of variance with the culture cluster (Ex-BritishOverseas, Western European, Catholic Eastern European, Orthodox Eastern Euro-pean, Islamic Zone, Sub-Saharan Africa, and India) being the only independent var-iable. These ANOVAs revealed significant cultural differences for all four kinds ofbehavior (active class participation: F(6, 353)= 5.38; p < .001; eta2 = .08; display-ing critical thinking: F(6, 352)= 3.78; p < .01; eta2 = .06; formulating own ideas:F(6, 353)= 3.57, p < .01; eta2 = .06; challenging the professor with opposing viewson content matters: F(6, 353)= 5.34; p < .001; eta2 = .08). The means and standarddeviations for each culture cluster are presented in Table 1.

Next, students’ ratings for all four critical kinds of behavior were collapsed intoone single score (alpha = .81) which of course varied significantly between the cul-ture clusters as well (see Table 1, bottom row; F(6, 354) = 6.76; p < .001; eta2 =.10). In order to test the hypothesized predictions, we then looked at whether thisscore differed significantly between students with a Socratic cultural background (i.e.,Ex-British Overseas and Western Europeans), Eastern Europeans (i.e., Catholic East-ern Europeans and Orthodox Europeans) and Non-Socratic students (i.e., studentsfrom the Islamic Zone, Sub-Saharan Africa and India). As predicted, Socratic stu-dents reported that the Socratic communication style had been more strongly valuedin their school system (M = 5.28; SD = 1.37) than students from Non-Socratic cul-tures did (M = 4.44; SD = 1.29; t (219) = 4.53; p < .001). Interestingly, EasternEuropean students indicated that in their school system the Socratic communicationstyle had been valued less (M = 4.38; SD = 1.35) than the Socratic students did,t (273) = 5.48; p < .001, while the difference between Eastern Europeans and Non-Socratic students was not significant, t < 1. This latter finding, though not directlypredicted, is in line with the finding by Schwartz et al. (2000) that Eastern Euro-pean teachers put greater importance on hierarchy values and lower importance onegalitarianism and intellectual autonomy values, when compared with West Europeanteachers.

4.2 Perception of the faculty’s value of Socratic communication behavior

Next we analyzed the perception of how strongly Socratic classroom communicationis valued at Jacobs University. Here we were able to contrast the students’ percep-tion of how strongly each kind of behavior is valued by the faculty with the actualvalue that faculty themselves indicated. The only difference that we predicted herewas that (the Western trained) faculty would value Socratic communication even more

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Tabl

e1

Val

uepl

aced

onSo

crat

icco

mm

unic

atio

nbe

havi

orin

the

scho

olsy

stem

sby

stud

ents

’cu

lture

zone

Cul

ture

zone

Var

iabl

eE

x-B

ritis

hO

vers

eas

Wes

tern

Eur

ope

Cat

holic

Eas

tern

Eur

ope

Ort

hodo

xE

aste

rnE

urop

e

Isla

mic

Zon

eSu

b-Sa

hara

nA

fric

aIn

dia

Act

ive

part

icip

atio

nM

=5.

58M

=5.

98M

=4.

72M

=4.

91M

=5.

11M

=4.

89M

=4.

9

incl

ass

(SD

=1.8

1)(S

D=1

.5)

(SD

=1.6

4)(S

D=1

.72)

(SD

=1.7

4)(S

D=1

.66)

(SD

=1.6

2)

Dis

play

ing

criti

cal

M=

5.11

M=

5.47

M=

4.89

M=

4.42

M=

5.11

M=

4.68

M=

4.48

thin

king

(SD

=2.1

6)(S

D=1

.64)

(SD

=1.7

8)(S

D=1

.87)

(SD

=1.5

8)(S

D=1

.96)

(SD

= 1.5

7)

Form

ulat

ing

your

M=

5.23

M=

5.25

M=

4.78

M=

4.55

M=

4.44

M=

4.39

M=

3.87

own

idea

s(S

D=1

.94)

(SD

=1.7

4)(S

D=1

.89)

(SD

=1.7

3)(S

D=1

.99)

(SD

=1.9

9)(S

D=1

.45)

Cha

lleng

ing

my

M=

4.15

M=

4.68

M=

4.22

M=

3.5

M=

4.31

M=

3.57

M=

3.65

prof

.in

clas

s(S

D=2

.01)

(SD

=1.5

8)(S

D=1

.89)

(SD

=1.7

3)(S

D=1

.72)

(SD

=1.8

3)(S

D=1

.49)

Ove

rall

M=

5.02

M=

5.35

M=

4.65

M=

4.34

M=

4.76

M=

4.38

M=

4.23

(SD

=1.5

1)(S

D=1

.34)

(SD

=1.4

1)(S

D=1

.35)

(SD

=1.3

5)(S

D=1

.39)

(SD

=1.1

1)

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Communicating in multicultural classrooms 69

strongly than it was perceived by students. Nevertheless, for exploratory reasons, wealso analyzed the data by looking at cultural zone differences in the student sampleof how much they think that faculty members value Socratic classroom behavior. Asa matter of fact, we found significant cultural differences (see Table 2) for all fourkinds of behavior (active class participation: F(6, 353)= 3.27; p < .01; eta2 = .05;displaying critical thinking: F(6, 352)= 2.8; p < .01; eta2 = .05; formulating ownideas: F(6, 352)= 3.31, p < .01; eta2 = .05; challenging the professor with oppos-ing views on content matters: F(6, 348)= 3.43; p < .01; eta2 = .06). Since all fourratings were sufficiently reliable (alpha = .76) they were computed into one singlescore which also differed significantly between cultural zones (see Table 2 bottomrow, F(6, 354)= 4.19; p < .001, eta2 = .07). In line with our expectation, facultymembers indicated that they valued all kinds of Socratic communication style amongstudents more (M = 5.75, SD = 1.1) than this is perceived to be the case by students(M = 5.08; SD = 1.16; t (499)= −4.91; p < .001). The difference between the largercultural groups (Socratics, Eastern Europeans, Non-Socratics) proved to be significantas well, F(2, 358)= 7.19, p < .01; eta2 = .04. Interestingly, students from Socraticcultures underestimated the extent to which the Socratic communication style is valuedby the faculty even more strongly (M = 4.77; SD = 1.15) than both Eastern Europeans(M = 5.19; SD = 1.08; t (273)= −3.19; p < .01) and Non-Socratic culture members(M = 5.27, SD = 1.14; t (219)= − 3.2; p < .01), while Eastern Europeans and Non-Socratics did not differ from one another in their perception of the values of the faculty,t < 1.

4.3 Ease of engaging in Socratic communication behavior

So far, we showed that Socratic communication behavior had been valued differentlywithin the school systems that students from various cultures had attended beforecoming to Jacobs University and that, overall, students underestimate the extent towhich this kind of behavior is valued by the university’s faculty. Next, we ana-lyzed the reported ease of engaging in the respective communication style activi-ties. Following the same stages of analysis as before, we first conducted separateanalyses of variance over all four critical communication behavior questions withculture zones being the independent variable. The means and standard deviationsare reported in Table 3. For two out of the three kinds of Socratic communicationbehavior these analyses revealed significant cultural differences (active class partici-pation: F(6, 353) = 3.23; p < .01; eta2 = .05; formulating own ideas: F(6, 352) =2.28, p < .05; eta2 = .04). For the two remaining activities the overall differencebetween cultural zones was only marginally significant (displaying critical thinking:F(6, 352) = 1.8; p = .09; eta2 = .03; challenging the professor with opposingviews on content matters: F(6, 347) = 2.03; p = .06; eta2 = .03). An inspection ofthe means shows that students from all cultural zones find displaying critical thinkingto be relatively easy, but challenging the professor with opposing views on contentmatters to be relatively difficult. This variability between the questions is also reflectedin a lower reliability (alpha = .55) of the four ease ratings. Nevertheless, we collapsedthem into one single score which varied significantly between the cultural zones (see

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70 U. Kühnen et al.

Tabl

e2

Val

uepl

aced

onSo

crat

icco

mm

unic

atio

nbe

havi

orat

Jaco

bsU

nive

rsity

(per

ceiv

edby

stud

ents

from

diff

eren

tcul

tura

lzon

esan

dex

pres

sed

bym

embe

rsof

facu

lty)

Cul

ture

/gro

upV

aria

ble

Ex-

Bri

tish

Ove

rsea

sW

este

rnE

urop

eC

atho

licE

aste

rnE

urop

eO

rtho

dox

Eas

tern

Eur

ope

Isla

mic

Zon

eSu

b-Sa

hara

nA

fric

aIn

dia

Facu

lty

Act

ive

part

icip

atio

nM

=4.

46M

=4.

42M

=5.

39M

=5.

09M

=4.

96M

=5.

5M

=5.

1M

=5.

1

incl

ass

(SD

=1.6

1)(S

D=1

.61)

(SD

=1.2

9)(S

D=1

.66)

(SD

=1.6

7)(S

D=1

.62)

(SD

=1.3

2)(S

D=1

.61)

Dis

play

ing

criti

cal

M=

5.08

M=

5.19

M=

6.0

M=

5.7

M=

5.3

M=

6.04

M=

5.55

M=

6.01

thin

king

(SD

= 1.7

2)(S

D=1

.45)

(SD

=.91

)(S

D=1

.43)

(SD

=1.6

6)(S

D=.

96)

(SD

=1.

15)

(SD

=1.2

7)

Form

ula-

ting

your

M=

4.61

M=

5.06

M=

5.78

M=

5.48

M=

4.96

M=

6.0

M=

5.23

M=

6.03

own

idea

s(S

D=1

.83)

(SD

=1.4

8)(S

D=.

94)

(SD

=1.4

9)(S

D=1

.87)

(SD

=.94

)(S

D=

1.38

)(S

D=

1.31

)

Cha

lleng

ing

my

M=

3.92

M=

4.63

M=

5.0

M=

4.37

M=

4.8

M=

5.39

M=

4.37

M=

5.46

prof

.in

clas

s(S

D=1

.44)

(SD

=1.4

5)(S

D=1

.14)

(SD

=1.5

1)(S

D=1

.29)

(SD

=.78

)(S

D=

1.4)

(SD

=1.4

9)

Ove

rall

M=

4.53

M=

4.83

M=

5.45

M=

5.15

M=

5.03

M=

5.73

M=

5.07

M=

5.75

(SD

=1.2

)(S

D=1

.13)

(SD

=.80

)(S

D=1

.11)

(SD

=1.3

9)(S

D=.

72)

(SD

=1.

1)(S

D=1

.1)

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Communicating in multicultural classrooms 71

Tabl

e3

Rep

orte

dea

seof

enga

ging

inSo

crat

icco

mm

unic

atio

nbe

havi

orby

stud

ents

’cu

ltura

lzon

e

Cul

ture

/gro

upV

aria

ble

Ex-

Bri

tish

Ove

rsea

sW

este

rnE

urop

eC

atho

licE

aste

rnE

urop

eO

rtho

dox

Eas

tern

Eur

ope

Isla

mic

Zon

eSu

b-Sa

hara

nA

fric

aIn

dia

Act

ive

part

icip

atio

nM

=4.

5M

=4.

94M

=4.

22M

=3.

92M

=4.

52M

=4.

11M

=3.

97

incl

ass

(SD

=1.8

2)(S

D=1

.84)

(SD

=2.1

3)(S

D=1

.97)

(SD

=1.4

2)(S

D=1

.79)

(SD

=1.8

7)

Dis

play

ing

criti

cal

M=

5.23

M=

5.26

M=

5.0

M=

4.82

M=

4.93

M=

4.96

M=

4.52

thin

king

(SD

=1.3

4)(S

D=1

.28)

(SD

=1.2

8)(S

D=1

.54)

(SD

=1.0

3)(S

D=1

.17)

(SD

= 1.3

1)

Form

ulat

ing

your

M=

5.00

M=

5.07

M=

4.94

M=

4.94

M=

4.44

M=

5.04

M=

4.19

own

idea

s(S

D=1

.36)

(SD

=1.2

7)(S

D=1

.0)

(SD

=1.4

6)(S

D=1

.28)

(SD

=1.

48)

(SD

=1.3

5)

Cha

lleng

ing

my

M=

3.85

M=

4.48

M=

4.28

M=

3.9

M=

4.11

M=

4.04

M=

3.45

prof

.in

clas

s(S

D=1

.64)

(SD

=1.6

3)(S

D=

1.56

)(S

D=1

.74)

(SD

=1.5

6)(S

D=

1.73

)(S

D=1

.74)

Ove

rall

M=

4.64

M=

4.95

M=

4.61

M=

4.37

M=

4.51

M=

4.54

M=

4.04

(SD

=1.1

)(S

D=1

.16)

(SD

=1.1

)(S

D=1

.35)

(SD

=.94

)(S

D=1

.31)

(SD

=1.2

4)

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72 U. Kühnen et al.

Table 3, bottom row; F(6, 354)= 3.27; p < .01; eta2 = .05). Testing our hypothe-sis, we submitted the overall easiness scores to an ANOVA with the classification ofSocratic, Eastern European and Non-Socratic students as the only between subjectsfactor, which turned out to be significant, F(2, 358)= 7.31; p < .001; eta2 = .04.Engaging in Socratic communication behavior was reported to be easier bystudents from Socratic cultures (M = 4.89; SD = 1.16) than by Eastern Europe-ans (M = 4.4; SD = 1.32; t (273)= 3.26; p < .001), as well as by Non-Socratics(M = 4.35; SD = 1.19; t (219)= 3.37; p < .001) with the latter two groups again notdiffering significantly from each other, t < 1.

4.4 Explicitness

As the above reported analyses revealed, the Western trained faculty members valuedSocratic in-class communication more than this was perceived by students in general.This discrepancy raised the issue of how explicit professors are about their pedagogyand how this explicitness is perceived by students. To address this issue, we comparedthe mean explicitness of the professors about their pedagogy as rated by students to theself-ratings by the faculty. It turned out that faculty members rated their own explic-itness significantly higher (M = 5.24, SD = 1.65) than this was perceived to be thecase by students (M = 4.25, SD = 1.69; t (448)= −4.53; p < .001). This differenceis in line with the discrepancy in the perceived versus expressed value that the facultyplaced on the Socratic communication style, as reported above.

4.5 Effects on satisfaction and performance

Finally, if members of faculty value Socratic communication more than studentsperceive them to do, and if students at the same time report having difficulties inengaging in exactly those kinds of behavior that are well regarded by the faculty,one may expect that students have better grades and are more academically satis-fied when it is easier for them to show the valued kinds of behavior. Furthermore,since explicitness of professors is a prerequisite for students to fulfill the expectations,one may also expect that students are more satisfied when they rate the explicit-ness of their professors about pedagogical principles more highly. Both hypotheseswere confirmed: students’ satisfaction with their academic life correlated significantlywith both the overall ease of engaging in Socratic communication behavior (i.e., themean score displayed in Table 3, bottom row, (r(360) = .21; p < .001), as well aswith the students’ assessment of faculty’s explicitness with regard to their pedagogy(r(354)= .29; p < .001). Although only 199 students reported their GPA, this scoresignificantly correlated with the experienced ease of engaging in Socratic communi-cation (r(199)= −.18; p = .01). The easier it is for students to communicate in theways that are highly valued by faculty members, the better (i.e., lower) their gradesare (see also Facione 2009)

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5 Discussion

Overall, the data confirmed our hypotheses. As predicted, depending on their culturalbackground students reported substantial differences in the extent to which Socraticclassroom communication was valued in the school systems they had attended beforetheir university education. Students from Socratic cultures indicated that all four kindsof Socratic in-class communication were valued higher in their previous school sys-tems than did students from Non-Socratic cultures. Interestingly, Eastern Europeans’reports differed also in the same way from Socratic students as did the Non-Socraticstudents’ ones, despite the fact that Eastern Europeans share the Socratic cultural heri-tage. This finding is in line with the results from Schwartz et al. (2000) who showed thatEastern European teachers value hierarchy more and intellectual autonomy less thanWest European teachers. This finding shows that current political systems can overrulelong-standing intellectual traditions, since Eastern European cultures also originatedfrom ancient Greece. The same pattern was reflected in how easy or difficult it is forstudents to engage in Socratic communication activities in the classroom. Studentsfrom Socratic cultures reported a greater ease in doing so than Non-Socratic ones,with the latter again not differing significantly from Eastern European students. Fur-thermore, students overall underestimated the extent to which the respective Socraticcommunication behavior was valued by the faculty. Faculty members perceived them-selves to be more explicit about their pedagogical principles than they were perceivedas being by students. Finally, the easier it is for students to show Socratic classroomcommunication, the more they were academically satisfied and the better were theirgrades.

One unexpected finding was the fact that Non-Socratic and Eastern Europeanstudents perceived Socratic communication to be more positively esteemed by thefaculty than Socratic students did. This finding, although not expected, may be inter-preted in line with the general conclusions that the reported findings suggest. If it istrue that Socratic communication is more uncommon for Non-Socratic and EasternEuropean students, one can assume that they also expect their professors to valueSocratic communication less than students with Socratic cultural backgrounds. As aconsequence, a given faculty member’s regard for Socratic communication is judgedagainst a lower standard by Non-Socratic and Eastern European students, resulting inhigher perceived esteem than is the case for Socratic students.

In conclusion, we believe that these findings have important implications for thefuture development of universities. These cultural differences emerged in a sample ofstudents who chose to study in an international context. It could, therefore, be hypo-thesized that they would already be more aware of the international standards thanmight be expected for exchange students who are pursuing their studies at an insti-tute of higher education within their country of origin. The fact that these differencesemerged may thus be called remarkable. Moreover, it could be argued that the learningenvironment at a university is inherently different in and of itself from that of second-ary school and is likely to contain more Socratic influences, everywhere. Nevertheless,students from different cultural backgrounds indicated that they experienced varyinglevels of difficulty of dealing with these expectations, which indicates that culturaldifferences exist in the familiarity with these types of communicative behavior. Thus

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faculty members should be aware of the fact that students from different cultures maydiffer in how easily they can engage in exactly those kinds of activities that they wantthem to engage in. Of course, this raises the issue of culture fair grading. At least oneimplication of the current findings is very straightforward: Faculty members should bemore explicit about their pedagogical principles. They need to clearly identify whichkinds of classroom interaction they expect from their students and why they do so.Secondly, faculty members should consider these cultural differences when judgingtheir students. For example, professors may be prone to interpret the low level of activeclass participation or of formulating own ideas shown by a given individual studentas shyness, or a lack of study motivation or interest, when in fact this behavior simplyreflects his or her culturally-based socialization. Therefore, the current findings couldbe included in interventions to increase the intercultural competence and awarenesslevels of faculty members, in particular at highly internationalized universities (for arecent overview see Cushner and Mahon 2009).

Another practical implication could be that (international) students are betterprepared or trained for studying in multi-cultural classroom settings. One could thinkof obligatory intercultural interventions such as training sessions or workshops, duringwhich knowledge about the expectations of faculty and also about existing culturaldifferences are taught. Furthermore, these interventions could help students to developand practice the very skills that the professors expect them to already have.

Of course, one has to be very careful with such straightforward conclusions. First,our data sets are certainly limited because the samples from some of the culture clusterswere relatively small. Second, presenting data about cultural differences always raisesthe danger of creating stereotypes. Such stereotypes can guide the interaction betweenstudents and faculty members and ultimately lead to self-fulfilling prophecies (seeJussim and Harber 2005). Another limitation of the current study stems from the factthat we looked at Socratic behavior only. As we outlined in the beginning, many pre-vious investigations contrasted the Socratic tradition with the Confucian one which ismore prevalent in East Asian scholars (e.g., Tweed and Lehman 2002). Li (2003, 2005)described the Asian system of learning beliefs as being more virtue oriented than themind oriented Western conceptualization. At the core of learning with the virtue orien-tation is the striving for moral and social development. This orientation has importantimplications for in-class communication as well. For example, one may expect thatstudents who strongly endorse the virtue orientation will try to remain humble afterhaving succeeded on an exam, instead of expressing their pride. Many more examplesof potential differences in communication patterns, depending on whether studentsare more mind or virtue oriented, can easily be construed. Therefore, a more parsimo-nious picture of in-class communication patterns could be described if reflections ofboth mind and virtue orientation are studied across various cultures. The theoreticalfoundation of the mind and virtue orientations has great potential for this endeavorand may be explored in future studies. The current study is therefore only a first step,but we believe that it is exemplary in several respects: It exceeds the well-studiedEast-West comparison by looking at samples from various cultural zones, in partic-ular from Eastern Europe, while also including faculty members’ views suggestingthat the discrepancy of students’ and professors’ values has consequences for outputvariables such as academic satisfaction and performance (GPA). Future studies of this

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kind may hopefully help both students and members of faculty to fully tap the greatpotentials of multicultural learning environments in an ever more globalized academicworld.

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Author Biographies

Ulrich Kühnen is Associate Professor of Psychology at Jacobs University Bremen. His research interestinclude the self-concept, cultural differences in cognition and judgmental heuristics.

Marieke C. van Egmond is a Ph.D. fellow at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences(at Jacobs University). She studies cultural differences in learning beliefs.

Frank Haber is affiliated to Jacobs University Bremen as Psychological Counselor and Interculturalist.

Stefanie Kuschel received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Jacobs University Bremen and works primarilyon the cognitive consequences of different self-regulatory foci.

Amina Özelsel is a work and organizational psychologist at the HANZA (Hanseatic Center for Work Med-icine) and did her Ph.D. at Jacobs University Bremen on determinants of creative versus analytic thinking.At the time this research was done, she was the head of the counseling center at Jacobs University.

Alexis L. Rossi did her M.A. degree in Intercultural Humanities at Jacobs University and worked there asDiversity Manager and Interculturalist.

Youlia Spivak is a health psychologist and studying cultural and age differences in health related behavior.She got her Ph.D. from Free University of Berlin.

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