Cultural Differences in Learning and Instruction
by Ruth Clark
Here are two introductions to a botany game. Which introduction do you think would be more effective for learning:
A. This program is about what types of plants survive on different planets. For each planet, a plant will be designed…..
B. You are about to start a journey where you will be visiting different planets. For each planet, you will need to design a plant….
The first introduction uses a formal style of writing while the second version uses a more conversational style mostly by adding first and second person pronouns to the script. According to Mayer’s personalization principle, a more conversational style will lead to better learning. Experiments comparing learning from formal and conversational styles are the basis for this principle. As you can see in Figure 1, learning was better in the personalized version. Similar results were found when comparing a lesson on lightning narrated in a conversational style with the same lesson using a more formal style. These versions were tested with American college students. Do you think the personalization principle would apply equally in different cultures?
The answer is Maybe Not! One recent experiment compared learning from an informal to a formal version of the lightning lesson among Czech college students. Brom et al (2017) found that the Czech students preferred the more formal version and that learning was not improved by the conversational version. The research team suggests that Czech students are more accustomed to a formal style in educational settings and violating this norm was a distraction for them.
This research report sounds a cautionary note about extrapolating evidence-based methods found in one context to different contexts. Most research supporting the multimedia principles has been conducted in laboratory studies in the US or Europe using college age populations. We will need additional evidence showing how these principles may need to be modified for different populations and naturalistic settings. For example, we might anticipate a different motivational context among learners in a real class setting compared to a laboratory setting. A real class setting may have relevance to their work and/or may have consequences such as scores and grades leading to higher intrinsic or extrinsic motivation compared to participants in a laboratory setting.
I recall a class I conducted years ago in a Northern European country. As in my American classes, I interspersed my explanations with group collaborative exercises. This did not go over well with this audience. They wanted mostly lecture since I was the expert. In this setting cultural expectations were clearly different from US preferences.
What has been your experience regarding contextualizing your instruction for different cultures? Do cultural differences imply fundamentally different learning processes or different expectations that in turn shape those learning processes?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Brom, C., Hannemann, T., Starkova, T. Bromova, E & Dechterenko, F. (2017). The role of cultural background in the personalization principle: Five experiments with Czech learners. Computers & Education, 112, 37-68.
Fiorella, L & Mayer, R.E. (2022) Principles based on social cues in multimedia learning Personalization, voice, image and embodiment principles. In R. E. Mayer & L. Fiorella (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (3rd ed; pp. 277-285). New York: Cambridge University Press.