How to Teach Cross-Culturally

My culture is the framework I live within. In some ways it is the skeleton that supports my life; it provides a necessary support for my daily activities. In other ways, my culture is a prison cell inside which I am trapped. Successful cross-cultural training is dependent upon the learner and the facilitator understanding these opposing roles of culture. Lingenfelter and Lingenfelter stated the dual nature of culture well in their 2003 book: "…students learn best when they can do so within the familiar context of their own culture. Yet…cultures are prisons and…all people are in bondage to their culture. These prisons are often dysfunctional places and sometimes trap us in sinful and destructive patterns of behavior." (88)

When I go to teach in a cross-cultural setting, I need to realize that my students approach the learning environment from their unique cultural perspective. From this perspective, they are able to see truths that I-with my different cultural background-have not yet seen. But from their cultural perspective, they are also unaware of certain truths to which my culture has exposed me. Therefore, the best attitude I can have towards my students is a two-fold attitude. On one hand, I must take the role of a learner; I must respect the dignity of my students and have an active respect for and interest in the knowledge and life experience they bring to the classroom. On the other hand, I must take the role of a mentor and advisor, encouraging my students to think critically about their culturally-held assumptions, challenging them to explore new ways of thinking and new possibilities about truth.

First, as I face any cross-cultural teaching situation, I need to have the right mindset about the people I am going to train. Every human being is intrinsically noble; every person is crowned with the ability to think and reason. This means that any person, no matter what culture he is in, deserves my respect and appreciation.

I need to respect my students and value the things they have learned through their life experience. In the learning context, I must give them opportunity to share their knowledge and perspective. I should help them appreciate and recognize the contribution that each of them makes to the learning of everyone else. Maslow, in his "hierarchy of needs," describes the need every person has for love and esteem. If I esteem my students and value their perspectives, they will feel safe and be more enthusiastic, active learners.

Second, as I train cross-culturally, I must challenge weak points in the worldview of my students. As Brookfield says in his book Understanding and facilitating adult learning, "Effective facilitation means that learners will be challenged to examine their previously held values, beliefs, and behaviors and will be confronted with ones that they may not want to consider. Such challenges and confrontations need not be done in an adversarial, combative, or threatening manner; indeed the most effective facilitator is one who can encourage adults to consider rationally and carefully perspectives and interpretations of the world that diverge from those they already hold, without making these adults feel they are being cajoled or threatened." (1986:286)

In a cross-cultural teaching situation, I may have a variety of titles: I may be called "teacher," "facilitator," "advisor," "mentor," "instructor," or any number of different names. The people who come to learn with me may have different expectations from me; they may expect me to simply point them in the right direction, or they may expect me to be a source of unlimited information on the subject matter they have come to learn. No matter the expectations with which the learners come, my goal as a trainer will include these two important points: respecting and valuing students and their cultures, and challenging students to think critically and explore new ways of thinking and looking at the world in which we all live.