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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- 2020 Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year ("Also Recommended," Cross-Cultural and Missional)In our globalized world, ideas are constantly being exchanged between people of different cultural backgrounds. But educators often struggle to adapt to the contexts of diverse learners. Some focus so much on content delivery that they overlook crosscultural barriers to effective teaching.Educator and missiologist James Plueddemann offers field-tested insights for teaching across cultural differences. He unpacks how different cultural dynamics may inhibit learning and offers a framework for integrating conceptual ideas into practical experience. He provides a model of teaching as pilgrimage, where the aim is not merely the mastery of information but the use of knowledge to foster the development of the pilgrim learner.Plueddemann's crosscultural experience shows how teachers can make connections between content and context, bridging truth and life. Those who teach in educational institutions, mission organizations, churches, and other ministries will find insights here for transformational crosscultural learning.
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Dedicated with gratitude to professors and mentorsnow with the Lord who so patiently encouraged this contrarian learner
DR. MARY LEBARWheaton College
DR. LOIS LEBARWheaton Graduate School
DR. TED WARDMichigan State University
as well as leaders in the ECWA Christian Education Department, Nigeria
REV. DAVID BUREMOHwho first had the vision for Christian Education in ECWA
REV. SAMUILA KUREwho took over from me making the department ever more effective
REV. PHILIP GAMBOpowerful teacher and motivator in Christian Education
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
Duane H. Elmer
FEW PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD have done more traveling, more reading, more reflection, and more careful analysis on culture, education, and the mission of God than Dr. James Plueddemann. In this book he turns his attention to the topic of teaching and culture. In doing so, he challenges the dangerously common assumption that we can teach elsewhere just like we teach in our home culture.
This summary alone should inspire careful attention if not serious dialogue around this book. Jim’s credentials include thirteen years partnering with Nigerian church leaders to build a national Christian education program for the exploding Christian population and to effectively teach the Scriptures. Different cultural values and traditions needed to be understood before launching any program that would be successful. Understanding grew as he studied the home, school, business world, health professions, NGOs, and other nonformal learning situations. Through observing, questioning, listening, and dialogue, insights emerged that became integral in the educational activities of the local church.
As the international director of SIM (Serving in Mission) for ten years, Jim taught in scores of countries with disciplined attention to how people in other cultures learn, grow, and change. Now, in retirement, his many teaching invitations are potent witness to how well received he is and how people want further exposure to his ideas. His lifetime of gathered insights are now available to us as a gift in the form of this book. The reader will be enriched by (1) principles of teaching in another culture, (2) stories of successes and failures from dozens of countries, (3) purposeful attention to the cultural context, and (4) taking the posture of a learner before entering the teacher role.
Most books of this nature tend toward applied how-to books, or they tend toward theoretical “What does the research say?” books. One genius of Teaching Across Cultures is the masterful weaving of both theory and practice. The weave is even more apparent if one reads the footnotes that often supply the theoretical background for a particular principle. But another genius element in the tapestry of this book is the use of Scripture, important to those of us who believe there is truth that guides us. So here you have a wonderful trilogy of good theory and good practice within a biblical framework.
It should be noted that Teaching Across Cultures will be helpful to virtually every audience whether the differences are cultural, generational, ethnic, gender, or regional. We all want to be better teachers. We are all concerned with outcomes as a result of our teaching; this book takes us there as well. Teaching Scripture is always intended to promote obedience to Christ, our Lord. This book helps us achieve that most important goal.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’VE BEEN WORKING on this book all my life. My first teachers were my parents, Edwin and Mary Margret Kirkpatrick Plueddemann. My mother was a trained teacher who consistently integrated principles of learning with parenting, whether it was modeling joyful creativity or setting rules for trombone practice. I learned from my dad as he interacted in intense theological discussions in our living room and at church. His joy of living was evident as he played with neighborhood children at the park, tinkered with his chemistry set at work, or preached his heart out in a rural church.
Most of all I am grateful beyond words for my wife, Carol Savage Plueddemann. I could not have written this book without her kind, persistent encouragement and her skillful editing. Her crosscultural experiences growing up in Ecuador, serving for thirteen years together in Nigeria, traveling with me to over sixty countries, and then serving as minister of congregational life in our church in Illinois equip her in a unique way as my valued adviser for this book.
Others have been kind and helpful in reading early drafts of the book and making valuable recommendations, including Harold Myra, Charlie Davis, Duane Elmer, Shari Plueddemann, and Tabitha Plueddemann. Thanks also to Lisa Anderson Umaña for soliciting examples of teaching across cultures from the Latin American perspective.
Many thanks to Rob Ribbe and HoneyRock Camp, the “Northwoods campus” of Wheaton College, for providing an idyllic place for concentrated writing.
INTRODUCTION
Go and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
I ONCE CHAUFFEURED an American professor around Nigeria. This man was one of the most sought-after teachers in the United States, yet his teaching was almost incomprehensible to rural Nigerian audiences. I stepped in to interpret his American slang into Nigerian English. He began, “Now what I’m going to tell you will rot your socks!” I translated to an audience wearing sandals, “Pay attention! What this man is about to tell you is very important.” Then, “This lesson will shoot you out of the saddle!” I assured our shocked listeners, “Don’t worry—he wants you to pay close attention to an important point. He doesn’t want to shoot you.”
TEACHERS FROM EVERYWHERE TO EVERYWHERE
We live in a dizzyingly connected world where teachers come from everywhere and go everywhere. The trend is both exhilarating and bewildering. Guatemalans teach in India, Koreans in Zambia, Americans in China, Canadians in Cuba, Indians in South Sudan, and Nigerians in the United States. Their qualifications for teaching are usually academic credentials from their home country based on the mastery of subject matter, often overlooking the importance of understanding the host culture. The desire to teach around the world is heartening, but the potential dangers of irrelevance, misunderstandings, wasted resources, and other unintended consequences are real.
Effective crosscultural teachers possess three competencies: (1) they’ve mastered the content to be taught, (2) they appreciate the cultural values, needs, and context of the host learners, and (3) they foster connections between the content and the context of the learners. Without these three competencies many crosscultural teachers have limited effectiveness.
Teachers often seem to assume that knowledge alone will in some mysterious way lead to better living. In Scripture, the examples of Israel and the early church suggest that knowledge is necessary but far from sufficient for godly living.
I taught a course at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School called “Teaching the Bible in Intercultural Settings.” At the end of the course one student observed, “This course isn’t just about teaching the Bible and it isn’t just about other cultures; it’s about how to teach anything to anybody, anywhere.” If we understand only our own culture, we can teach some things to some people. When we learn to teach effectively across cultures, we can teach almost anything to anybody, anywhere.
THEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS
What is Christian education? Is it Sunday school? Christian primary or secondary schools? Christian colleges? My belief is that Christian education is all of these and much more. Teaching that is pleasing to God builds on all of God’s truth and fosters the development of learners into all God intended them to become. Much of so-called Christian education does not meet this standard. There are three potential pitfalls for teachers: ignoring God’s truth, disregarding the development of the learner, and not connecting truth with life.
Philosopher Arthur Holmes popularized the concept that “all truth is God’s truth wherever it is found.”1 He argued that there is no difference between true secular and sacred knowledge.2 Of course our understanding of God’s truth in this life will never be complete, so we must cultivate a deep sense of humility along with curiosity. The other danger is that we are not always capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, which again requires humility and honest investigation. God’s truth is found in his Word and in his world. All of the academic disciplines, then, can take nourishment from God’s truth.
Bodies of knowledge, whether rules for playing soccer, advanced trigonometry, skills in brewing coffee, or themes in the Pentateuch, are not ends in themselves but have the potential for promoting the development of persons into all God intended.
Human development is multifaceted. We are reminded that “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people” (Lk 2:52 NLT). Similarly, Samuel, living in a dark era of Israel’s history, “continued to grow in stature and in favor with the LORD and with people” (1 Sam 2:26). Holistic human development is mental, physical, spiritual, and social. The intended outcome then of teaching in any culture is to build on important bodies of knowledge in the pursuit of integrated human development.
Practically any teaching method has the potential of promoting human development. Lectures, sermons, demonstrations, group discussions, online courses, mentoring, and many more methods might be used to grow and develop the learner. Of course, all these pedagogies also have the potential of ignoring God’s truth and disregarding the development of the student. The key for effective teaching is forging that never-before-seen connection between content and the life of the learner.
I’m convinced that this overarching principle of communicating information in a way that promotes human development is universally effective. With crosscultural adaptations, it is the key to teaching effectively in every situation anywhere.
Many humanistic educators hold values in common with Christian educators: that individuals possess dignity, that cultivating human development is a worthy endeavor, that individuals thrive only in community, and that loving one’s neighbor is an admirable rule of life. I hope this book will be helpful to those who don’t claim to be Christian, as well as those who embrace a Christian worldview.
I trust the book will be beneficial for teaching in informal settings such as parenting and in formal school settings. I hope it will be useful for nonformal educators such as youth pastors, camp counselors, home Bible study leaders, and also for those in missions and development organizations around the world teaching literacy, health, business, or agriculture.
CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS
The focus of the book is how to teach people who are different from oneself. In a sense all human beings are unique, so all education is crosscultural. My wife declares that every marriage is crosscultural even if husband and wife have the same racial and cultural background.
Age differences magnify cultural differences. I teach a high school Sunday school class in our church. Understanding the world of a fifteen-year-old girl or a seventeen-year-old boy is a crosscultural challenge for this older professor who taught for thirteen years in Africa and in graduate schools for twenty-five years. Whether I teach a doctoral seminar in South Korea, a workshop in Panama, a masters-level class in Ethiopia, or a children’s Sunday school class in Nigeria, I face unexpected cultural challenges about teaching and learning. The only way to teach effectively in all these settings is to seek an understanding of the learners’ culture. So I cautiously propose that this book is about how to teach almost anything to anyone, anywhere.
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
Theological assumptions have profound educational implications. I write from the viewpoint of a Christian, seeking to align my educational philosophy with Scripture. Readers who do not hold these assumptions will still find this book useful since many of the educational principles in it are commonly accepted by the broader educational community.
I’m a developmentalist.3 This means that the central aim of education is to foster the lifelong holistic development of the individual in community. My desire in teaching is that individuals will develop into all God intended them to become.
The following list describes educational implications that flow from my theological assumptions. Each of these assumptions carries significant implications for the content, aims, and methods of teaching.
THEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS ANDIMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION
God exists eternally and created humans to know, love, and glorify him. The ultimate purpose of education is to help learners to know, love, and glorify God.
The Bible is the true Word of God given to human beings so that we can know and love him. Mastery and application of the Bible is the core curriculum.
God created the world and everything in it. All of creation is open to study, and each academic discipline has the potential of promoting human development.
All human beings are created in the image of God. Every individual has great worth and dignity, no matter their gender, ethnic background, or academic giftedness.
Human beings will live forever. The purpose of education must not only equip students to be successful in this world but also to prepare them for eternity.
All humans are fallen, with a natural tendency toward evil, so a radical child-centered education is not appropriate.
Christ died for our sins to reconcile us to God and to our fellow human beings. While people apart from Christ can have many honorable qualities, they cannot fully develop into all God created them to become without forgiveness of sins through Christ.
The Holy Spirit is the ultimate teacher and illuminates God’s truth to students through his gifting of the teacher. It is important for teachers to pray that the Holy Spirit will work through their teaching. Skillful teaching is important yet still insufficient to promote godly growth.
God established a community of believers, the church, for our nurture and for good in the world. Education must be both individual and communal, personal and corporate. The church is a means of God’s grace to promote human development and love for God and others.
These are not radical theological assumptions: each is consistent with historic orthodox Christianity. In one sense, the teaching approach in this book challenges some present-day assumptions about schooling. But in a deeper sense, it is quite traditional, building on the observations of early Greek philosophers, the wisdom of the ancient Hebrews, the teaching of Jesus, and the insights of modern developmental educators. I’m convinced that effective innovation must be firmly rooted in traditional wisdom.
STILL LEARNING
In the complex arena of education and culture, I write as a learner, not as an expert. I could have titled the book “My 101 Greatest Mistakes in Teaching Across Cultures.” I spent thirteen years serving under the leadership of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Nigeria, where I wrote curriculum and conducted seminars around the country.4I was continually humbled by my limited ability to teach and write effectively in Africa. Later, I became the administrator for ECWA theological schools and again realized my need for a better understanding of Nigerian educational cultural values. My doctoral studies grew out of this sense of needing to understand culture and cognition more deeply.
Even after years of experience, I still feel my inadequacy every time I walk into a classroom of multicultural students. But I also teach and write as a curious learner who is growing from my mistakes, reflecting with deep joy when students take steps toward becoming all God intends them to be. No matter how many times I am privileged to facilitate this process, it still amazes me and renews my love for a life of teaching. Nothing could be more fulfilling.
MY LEARNING JOURNEY
Earlier I mentioned that effective teachers are intentionally mastering three things: the content to be taught, the culture of the learner, and the ability to encourage bridges between the content and the culture.
During my youth I never really understood the connection between academic studies and life. I played the education game. At church I won most of the Bible memory contests, but my motivation was to beat other kids in the youth group, not to grow in godliness.
In college my goal was to get the best grades possible with the least amount of effort. Like Mark Twain, I didn’t want schooling to interfere with my education. I remember approaching my primary professor, Dr. Lois LeBar, and asking her only half-jokingly what I needed to do in the class in order to get a C. She almost wept. Again I didn’t make a connection between the content of the course and my need to learn.
I failed the first quiz in an Old Testament survey course. For the second quiz I used a technique to memorize long lists by learning related acronyms. I also taught my roommate the technique. I got 100 percent on the second quiz and then promptly forgot the acronym five minutes after class. My roommate forgot the acronym five minutes before the quiz and got an F. So the difference between an A and an F was five minutes of memory.
All this changed when I arrived in Nigeria to serve as head of the Christian education department for the Evangelical Churches of West Africa, working with about one thousand churches at the time. I realized that much of my previous education did little to help me solve the challenges of education in Nigerian churches and schools. Most of the deficiency was mine in not making the connection between content and the practical needs of the church. Now I was desperate to understand how culture influenced the way people learned.
As a new missionary in Nigeria, I decided to observe a typical Sunday school class. I slipped into the back of a roomful of noisy children. At the end of the lesson, an elderly teacher stepped forward and announced, “Now it’s time for a contest. Let us see who learned the lesson. The first question is, How many wives did Solomon have?” “Three hundred!” they shouted in unison. “Correct!” bellowed the teacher. “How many concubines did he have?” “Seven hundred!” they yelled. “Well done, children. You have learned your lesson. Class is dismissed.” I was stunned. Polygamy was still a relevant dilemma in the churches, and no one, not the teacher, not the curriculum writer, and not the children saw any connection between the Bible and the concerns of Nigerian life. I doubt if any of the children had the slightest idea of the meaning of concubine. The irrelevance of the class pushed me to seek ways to help Nigerian learners see the connection between the Bible and life.
When we returned to the United States for a year, I decided to continue graduate education. At Wheaton Graduate School, Marvin Mayers opened my eyes to a powerful new world of basic cultural values. At Michigan State University, Ted Ward introduced me to research about the effects of culture on cognition. For the first time in my life, I felt genuinely excited about significant bodies of knowledge because they connected relevantly with my felt needs as an educator in Nigeria.
WHO NEEDS THIS BOOK?
The world is experiencing massive population shifts that affect us all. Millions of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, and Middle Easterners have left their countries in search of safety, freedom, or economic survival. People with significant cultural differences are no longer hidden in far off, exotic countries but are at our doorstep in every continent. Many of our neighbors, friends, or work colleagues were born in another country. While such enormous population shifts trigger political challenges, they also provide an astounding opportunity for the growth of God’s kingdom. To benefit from this opportunity, we must learn to engage people from many cultures.
I would be delighted if this book helped a Brazilian youth group leader serving in Miami, Koreans teaching in Bolivia, Ecuadorians coaching in India, pastors from Canada preaching in Vietnam, or Kenyans teaching in London.
I also hope the book will be helpful for professors who teach in classrooms of diverse students, both in their local cultures and globally. I trust it will be helpful for public school teachers, homeschoolers, and pastors, as well as camp counselors, mentors, parents, and grandparents, who, in an important sense, are teaching across cultures.
I earnestly pray that the ideas in this book will be used of the Lord for more effective teaching in making obedient disciples in all nations.
RELATIONAL TEACHING
By Giovani Pineda from Guatemala, teaching in Ethiopia, India, and the United States
As a Latino, my tendency in teaching is relational rather than a purely informational method. I like to walk through experiences with those I teach and then observe their reactions so that I can use those in further teaching.
In Ethiopia I took a team of seminary and university students to an unreached people group. I placed myself with the group in the village situation and watched them react. The Ethiopians reacted in different ways. Interestingly, those who were older and had been exposed to seminary teaching were having the most problems. Those who had not been exposed to Western styles of learning were more flexible and had less difficulty.
It is so much easier to teach when life is real. I find it difficult to teach theory in a classroom and much prefer to live the process with those who are learning with me. When teaching in other cultures, we have to be aware of our own learning and teaching styles as well as theirs. It also requires an understanding of Western influence in that culture.
In India, I partnered with a church-planting effort where there were many believers from Muslim backgrounds. I learned that Asians do their teaching through storytelling. Stories that reflected the realities of village life were the best. Of course, the Bible is full of really good stories, so focusing on those instead of dealing with the Bible as a textbook was important. In this case also, my Latin background pushed me to relational teaching, and it became important for me to experience village life firsthand.
Teaching Western-culture people is probably one of my most difficult tasks as a Latin because it requires a great deal of verbal precision and impressive use of facts. If it were not for the grace of the Spirit of God, it is almost impossible to calm myself and be able to teach in English with Western people. In my culture, words don’t carry the same amount of weight as they do in English because we speak indirectly and almost in a circular style. So to become direct and fact-oriented is nerve-racking! I do it for the glory of God and by his grace.
1
METAPHORS OF TEACHING
Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise,like a person who builds a house on solid rock.
If you are planning for a year, sow rice: if you are planning fora decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, teach people.
TED WARD WAS A POPULAR and successful classroom teacher at Michigan State University, but his most significant teaching probably took place outside the classroom. He often invited his doctoral students to his home for integrative discussions. On one occasion he invited me to travel with him, where I observed him teaching a faculty workshop at another university. On the long drive home, we debriefed what happened at the workshop. Ted taught me important concepts formally and informally, always concerned about my personal and intellectual development.
What makes a teacher effective? What kind of teaching promotes human development? In this chapter we’ll look at metaphors for understanding our subconscious cultural expectations about teaching. Ted Ward often spoke of the power of metaphors in our teaching. He complained that the most common metaphors in teaching were those of filling a container or education as a manufacturing process.1 He argued that learners are neither blank slates nor raw material. He observes,
Teachers who think of education in terms of filling a container are rarely concerned with individual differences of the background, interest or aspiration. The content is the thing. Most learning can be reduced to questions and answers; recall of information is the evidence of becoming educated; tests are good indicators of “success” or “failure”; grading can be objective. The more the teacher knows, the better the teacher is. Learning is essentially painful, but it is such good discipline! Such thinking leads to teaching that is little more than cognitive dumping.2
Ted Ward also built on the metaphors of Herbert M. Kliebard, the distinguished professor of education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who developed the educational metaphors of production, growth, and travel.3 His metaphors have become classic examples of a mindset regarding what we value in teaching. As I’ve written previously, “Metaphors are often unconscious, or at least not clearly defined in our minds. Yet these hidden pictures predispose us to be attracted to certain methods of Christian education and to be suspicious of others. Metaphors are an indication of inner values.”4 Metaphors about teaching are often below the level of our awareness and are sometimes accepted uncritically as the normal way to teach.
Production: The teacher as technician. In this metaphor, “the curriculum is the means of production, and the student is the raw material which will be transformed into a finished and useful product under the control of a highly skilled technician.”5 The educational objective for teachers who see themselves as highly skilled technicians is uniformity, efficiency, and predictability.
Growth: The teacher as gardener. In the growth metaphor, “the curriculum is the greenhouse where students will grow and develop to their fullest potential under the care of a wise and patient gardener. The plants that grow in the greenhouse are of every variety, but the gardener treats each according to its needs so that each plant comes to flower.”6 The educational aim of the gardener is opposite to that of the highly skilled technician. The goal of the gardener is for students to blossom in whatever way their nature inclines them to grow. This process is not uniform, efficient, or predictable.
Travel: The teacher as tour guide. In this metaphor, “the curriculum is a route over which students will travel under the leadership of an experienced guide and companion. Each traveler will be affected differently by the journey since its effect is at least as much a function of the predilections, intelligence, interests and intent of the traveler as it is of the contours of the route.”7 The aim of the tour guide is to provide “a journey as rich, as fascinating, and as memorable as possible”8 for student travelers.
All three metaphors have an educational following, and all three have strengths and weaknesses. The metaphor of production ignores the context of the learner. The growth metaphor focuses almost exclusively on the context of the learner. The travel metaphor considers both the information to be learned and the context of the learner, but lacks a clear sense of destination.
In his classic book The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler argues that during the Industrial Revolution the production model was dominant. The purpose of school was to prepare children to work in factories.9 The explicit curriculum was reading, writing, and arithmetic, but the hidden curriculum was to prepare children for the assembly line by teaching them to be punctual, obedient, and able to do repetitive work.10 Schooling was seen as an assembly line. Factory workers needed to come to work on time and take orders from management without questioning. The school became an ideal means for preparing humans to do repetitious operations, much like robots.
The three metaphors reflect cultural values. According to the highly regarded anthropologist Edward T. Hall, most cultures of the world are more attuned to the environment or the context, whereas words carry more meaning than the context in my northern European cultural heritage.11 We often assume that schooling is made up of decontextualized ideas and abstract theories. We may assume context is extraneous, but for most cultures the context communicates even more than verbal content. In these cultures, nonverbal signals embedded in the environment—the expressiveness of the teacher, the body language of students, and classroom seating arrangement are loaded with meaning and can communicate even more information than mere words.
It’s ironic that because of globalization, schooling around the world now frequently follows the production or factory model even in cultures that traditionally emphasized the context of the learners or the growth metaphor. The combination of the production model of teaching carried out in cultures with a value of high power distance between the teacher and the student is a challenge for real learning.
It’s interesting to note that much educational research assumes a factory model and seeks to improve efficiency of the transfer of content rather than exploring the implications of education in the context of the student. No wonder the clash of global cultural values puts schooling in high demand while devaluing the importance of actual learning.
Understanding one’s own teaching metaphor as well as that of the learner is imperative for the crosscultural teacher. Otherwise, disappointment and maybe even chaos will take place. One of my American friends taught for many years at a theological seminary in Africa. When students asked him a question, he gave them ideas for how they could look up the information for themselves. He wanted to help them learn how to learn, while the students assumed his role was to give them answers. The teacher decided that the students were immature, and the students thought the teacher was not very competent. This is a classic case of the conflict of expectations. The students expected a production professor, and the professor taught from a gardener metaphor.
A PILGRIM TEACHING PILGRIMS
As I’ve taught around the world, I’ve struggled to find a metaphor that would be somewhat familiar in a variety of cultures and yet incorporate my convictions about the importance of integrating God-given bodies of knowledge with the existential needs of learners. The metaphor I’ve come to develop over several decades, inspired by Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, is that of pilgrimage.
