CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN TEACHING AND

LEARNING

GEERT HOFSTEDE

Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation, Arnhem,

The Netherlands

ABSTRACT Teacher and student are an archetypal role pair in virtually any
society. When teacher and student come from different cultures, such as in the
context of economic development programmes, many perplexities can arise.
These can be due to different social positions of teachers and students in the two
societies, to differences in the relevance of the curriculum for the two societies, to
differences in profiles of cognitive abilities between the populations of the two
societies, or to differences in expected teacher/student and student/student inter-
action. This paper focuses in particular on these interaction differences. It relates
them to the author’s 4-D model of cultural differences among societies, based on
research on work-related values in over 50 countries. Differences in expected
teacher/student and student/student interaction are listed with reference to the
four dimensions of Individualism versus Collectivism, large versus small Power
Distance, strong versus weak Uncertainty Avoidance, and Masculinity versus
Femininity. Some effects of language differences between teacher and student are
also discussed. The burden of adaptation in cross-cultural learning situations
should be primarily on the teachers.

INTRODUCTION

An American teacher at the foreign language institute in Beijing ex-

claimed in class, “You lovely girls, I love you.” Her students were terri-
fied. An Italian professor teaching in the United States complained bit-
terly about the fact that students were asked to formally evaluate his
course. An Indian professor at an African university saw a student arrive
six weeks late for the curriculum, but had to admit him because he was
from the same village as the dean. This paper deals with the differences
among societies that lead to this type of perplexity.

TEACHER AND STUDENT AS AN

ARCHETYPAL ROLE PAIR

The family, the school, the job and the community are four fundamen-
tal institutions, present in some way in virtually all human societies. Each
of the four has its pair of unequal but complementary basic roles (except

Reprint requests should be directed to Geert Hofstede, Institute for Research on Intercultur-
al Cooperation, Jansbuitensingel 7, 6811 AA Arnhem, The Netherlands
301
302 Geert Hofstede

the family, which has two role pairs) - as listed in Table 1. Many societies
refine role systems still further (such as, older vs. younger brother, senior
vs. junior student, line vs. staff at the job), but the role pairs of Table 1
are the archetypes of interaction between human unequals. In different
societies, these archetypal roles are played in different ways. These ways
are part and parcel of the culture of the particular society, which I de-
fined elsewhere (Hofstede, 1980) by a convenience definition as “the
collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the menbers of
one human group from another” (p. 25). Role patterns in the four types
of institutions interact, so that, for example, patterns of parent/child
interaction in a society are carried over into teacher/student and boss/
subordinate relationships.
Not only are these role patterns the products of a society’s culture, they
are also the device par excellence by which that culture itself is transferred
from one generation to the next, according for the remarkable stability of
certain culture patterns even in the face of sweeping environmental
changes (e.g., Inkeles, 1977).

PERPLEXITIES OF CULTURALLY MIXED

TEACHER/STUDENT PAIRS

As long as human societies have been in contact with each other,

voluntarily or involuntarily, there have been cross-cultural learning situa-
tions: teacher/student pairs in which the partners were born, raised and
mentally programmed in different cultures prior to their interaction in
school. The first type of situation that comes to mind is that of migrant
or refugee students-a situation responsible for a major part of the inter-
est in intercultural communication in the United States. But all pro-
grammes for economic development of low-income nations use cross-
cultural learning situations (at home and abroad), in which members of
the richer nations play the teacher role and those of the poorer nations
the student role. There are and have been many other exchanges between

TABLE 1

Human Institutions and

Corresponding Role Pairs

Institution Role Pair

Family Parent-Child
Man-Woman
School Teacher-Student
Job Boss-Subordinate
Community Authority-Member
 Cultural Differences 303

societies in which teachers go abroad to teach or students go abroad to

learn, motivated not only by a desire for economic development, but by a
desire for wisdom, beauty, strength or status, or by sheer necessity, on the
side of the students, and motivated by religious zeal, charity, intolerance
or imperialism on the side of the teachers or their sponsors. Nor have the
militarily or economically strong always been the teachers and the weak
the learners: history presents famous examples in which the conquerors
went to school to learn from the societies they had conquered: the Ro-
mans from the Greeks, the Turks from the Persians and later from the
Arabs, the Norsemen from the French. Today, rich Europeans and Amer-
icans go to poor India and Thailand to learn meditation.
As teacher/student interaction is such an archetypal human phenome-
non, and so deeply rooted in the culture of a society, cross-cultural learn-
ing situations are fundamentally problematic for both parties. The prob-
lems can lie in the following areas:

1. differences in the social positions of teachers and students in the two

societies;
2. differences in the relevance of the curriculum (training content) for
the two societies;
3. differences in profiles of cognitive abilities between the populations
from which teacher and student are drawn;
4. differences in expected patterns of teacher/student and student/stu-
dent interaction.

Some examples of each of the four problem areas will follow.

Differences in Social Positions of Teachers

and Students in Society
Societies differ in the way the school, as an institution, is related to the
other institutions. From what types of families are students, and teach-
ers, recruited? Are educational systems elitist or anti-elitist? A visiting
U.S. professor in a Latin American country may only contribute to the
continuation of elite privileges rather than, as he believes, to the econom-
ic development of the country (Cullinan, 1970). What is the role of
employers in education? Traineeships in industry are an effective and
respected alternative to a university education in Germany and Switzer-
land, allowing people to reach the highest positions, but this is not the
case in most other countries. What is the role of the state or the church?
Is there a private next to a public educational sector and what are their
respective statuses? Does the government prescribe the curriculum in
schools (France, USSR), or are teachers free to define their own? (Archer,
1979). Who pays for what education? The students, their parents, the
304 Geert Ho$hxit~

state? How well are teachers paid and how is their social status? In the
Chinese Confucian tradition, “teacher” is the most respected profession;
but a British lord is supposed to have said about his son’s private tutor “I
cannot understand why lvlr Jones cannot get along with Charlie-all the
other servants can.” Such differences sometimes make it exceedingly dif-
ficult for a teacher-or a student - from one nation’s system to function
well in another’s.

A Zairese friend, studying in Brussels, recalled how at primary school

in Lubumbashi her teacher, a Belgian nun, made her recite in her history
lesson “Nos ancetres, les Gaulois” (our ancestors, the Gauls). However,
much of what for example management students from poor countries
learn at universities abroad is hardly more relevant in their home country
situation. What is the usefulness for a future manager in an Indian
company of mathematical modelling of the U.S. stock market? Or of a
British Organizational Behaviour course literally replicated by a visiting
Lecturer to the People’s Republic of China? The know-how supposed to
have led to wealth in an industrial country is not necessarily the same that
will bring wealth to a presently poor one. This point has long been made
by people involved in development processes (e.g., ILO, 1966; Hofstede,
1983a), but there are strong forces that perpetuate the transfer of irrele-
vant knowledge.

There is often an unfortunate connivance between the ‘foreign’ management

teacher . . . and the local professor, student or employee. The western ‘ex-
pert’ . . . is convinced he knows how to apply (his) rationality to local prob-
lem solving. . His partner . . . in the learning situation is convinced that man-
agement coming from the developed countries of the West brings ‘modernity’ and
must be somewhat ‘scientific’ (de Bettignies, 1980: 302-303).

But even between developed countries, irrelevant curricula are exported.

Berry (197 1) warned already that Europeans were adopting the American
Business School at a time when it went downhill in the United States
itself, a theme recently echoed in a U.S. bestseller by Peters and Water-
man (1982).

“Our African engineers do not “think” like engineers, they tend to

tackle symptoms, rather than view the equipment as a system” (British
training manager, unconscious of his own ethnocentrism). Part of the
“mental programming” that represents a culture is a way to acquire,
order, and use concepts. Fundamental studies by Michael Cole and asso-
ciates in Liberia (Cole et al., 1971; Cole and Bruner, 1971; Scribner and
 Cultural Differences 305

Cole, 1981) have shown that our cognitive development is determined by

the demands of the environment in which we grew up: a person will be
good at doing the things that are important to him/her and that (s)he has
occasion to do often. Cognitive abilities are rooted in the total pattern of
a society. Differences in memory development can also be explained in
this way (Wagner, 1981). In China, the nature of the script develops
children’s ability at pattern recognition; it also imposes a need for rote
learning (Redding, 1980: 212).
Experiments have shown significant differences in the degree to which
people from different societies process information and complement it
with guesswork (Schkade et al., 1978). Academic learning in different
industrial countries appeals to different intellectual abilities. “German
students are brought up in the belief that anything that is easy enough for
them to understand is dubious and probably unscientific” (Stroebe,
1976). Teaching to a student or student body with a cognitive ability
profile different from what the teacher is accustomed to is evidently
problematic; it demands a different didactic approach, for which the
teacher may lack the proper cognitive abilities. At the ‘same time, the
surrounding environment usually reinforces people in their traditional
cognitive ways and makes learning more difficult. There is no other
solution to bridging this gap than increasing awareness, sustained effort
on both sides, focussing on new abilities demanded by societal changes of
the moment and patience.

Differences in Processes of Teacher/Student and

Student/Student Interaction
Differences in mutual role expectations between teacher and student,
affecting the training process rather than its content, are probably the
least obvious of the four problem areas listed above and it is to these that
the remainder of this paper will be devoted. They are determined by the
way the archetypal roles of teacher and student tend to be played in the
actors’ (sub)cultures, and they are guided by values rooted in these cul-
tures. Values are “broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over
others” (Hofstede, 1980: 19); they lead to feelings of good and evil, right
and wrong, rational and irrational, proper and improper; feelings of
which we seldom recognize the cultural relativity. Which means that
cross-cultural learning situations are rife with premature judgements.
Scanning the literature for information and advice for culturally mixed
teacher/student pairs, I found amazingly little, in view of the frequency
of cross-cultural learning situations and of the perplexities they generate.
These perplexities do not only exist between teachers from rich and stu-
dents from poor countries, but they are equally possible between pairs
from nations at similar development levels.
Below, some guidance on mutual teacher/student and student/student
306 Geert Hofstede

role expectations is presented, based on three sources of information: the

author’s earlier research on differences in work-related values across over
50 countries (Hofstede, 1980, 1983b), leading to a four-dimensional (4-D)
model of cultural differences; personal experiences by the author and
others in teaching and in trying to learn in different cross-cultural situa-
tions; and the author’s experiences as a parent of school-age children
attending local schools abroad. The relevance of the author’s research,
conducted in work settings, is based on the assumption that role patterns
and value systems in a society are carried forward from the school to the
job and back. Much of the personal experience was collected at IMEDE
and INSEAD, both international management training institutes in Swit-
zerland and France respectively, and at the ITP (International Teachers
Programme), a summer course for management teachers conducted each
year by an international consortium of business schools. Participants in
the ITP, coming from many different countries, are a rich source of
information on teachers’ values and some of them have themselves taught
in cross-cultural situations.

THE 4-D MODEL OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

The empirical base of the four-dimensional model of cultural differ-

ences has been described in earlier publications (Hofstede, 1980; 1983b).
Using paper-and-pencil answers on 32 values questions by matched sam-
ples of employees of subsidiaries of the same multinational business
corporation in 40 different countries, I studied the relationship between
nationality and mean values scores. The total number of questionnaires
available for analysis was over 116,000, from employees at all levels,
managers and non-managers alike; most groups were surveyed twice over
a four-year interval, so that the stability of differences found and trends
over time could also be tested. Focussing on the relationship between
nationality and mean values scores meant that the country (n = 40), not
the individual respondent (n = 116,000) became the unit of analysis. Fac-
tor analysis of the 32 mean values scores for each of the 40 countries (an
ecological factor analysis), showed that three factors together explained
49% of the variance in means (Hofstede, 1980: 83). Afterwards, for
reasons to be explained below, one of these factors was split into two
parts, so that four dimensions were created. Each country could be given
an index score on each of these four dimensions. There is nothing magic
about the number of four dimensions; the choice of the number of
factors one wants to be drawn from a factor analysis is always rather
arbitrary, and it also depends on the nature of the values questions that
were used. The latter were a condensation of a larger list, composed from
two sources: open-ended interviews with samples of employees in six
countries, and interviews with experienced headquarters travellers about
 Cultural Differences 307

inter-country value differences they had observed. All were more or less
work-related, so it could be said that within the total field of values
people could be supposed to hold, they have an action bias; purely intel-
lectual or esthetical values were unlikely to be included. On the other
hand, work is a very fundamental human activity, so that most human
values will be somehow related to it. A main criterion for the choice of
the four dimensions was that they should make theoretical sense, being
related to fundamental problems of human societies, but problems to
which different societies can be shown to have chosen different answers.
The four dimensions defined below meet this theoretical criterion; all
four were, in fact, fairly closely predicted in a review of the anthropologi-
cal literature by Inkeles and Levinson (1969), originally from 1954, long
before the data for the present study were collected. The second phase of
my own research was devoted to the validation of the four dimensions on
other data collected from other populations so as to show their meaning-
fulness outside the subsidiaries of this multinational corporation. I found
about 40 other studies comparing conceptually related data from a vari-
ety of sources for between 5 and 40 of the countries involved, which
produced quantitative outcomes that correlated significantly with one or
more of the four dimension scores (op. cit.: 325ff). In a third phase, the
data base was extended with subsidiaries in another ten countries and
three multi-country regions; their scores fitted well into the existing di-
mensions; this brought the total number countries covered up to 50, plus
the three regions (Hofstede, 1983b).
The labels chosen for the four dimensions, and their interpretation, are
as follows:

1. Individualism as a characteristic of a culture opposes Collectivism

(the word is used here in an anthropological, not a political sense).
Individualist cultures assume that any person looks primarily after
his/her own interest and the interest of his/her immediate family
(husband, wife and children). Collectivist cultures assume that any
person through birth and possible later events belongs to one or more
tight “in-groups,” from which he/she cannot detach him/herself. The
“in-group” (whether extended family, clan, or organization) protects
the interest of its members, but in turn expects their permanent loyal-
ty. A collectivist society is tightly integrated; an individualist society
is loosely integrated.

2. Power Distance as a characteristic of a culture defines the extent to

which the less powerful persons in a society accept inequality in
power and consider it as normal. Inequality exists within any culture,
but the degree of it that is tolerated varies between one culture and
another (“All societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than
others”-Hofstede, 1980: 136).
 3. Uncertainty Avoidance as a characteristic of a culture defines the
extent to which people within a culture are made nervous by situa-
tions which they perceive as unstructured, unclear, or unpredictabie,
situations which they therefore try to avoid by maintaining strict
codes of behaviour and a belief in absolute truths. Cultures with a
strong uncertainty avoidance are active, aggressive, emotional, com-
pulsive, security-seeking, and intolerant; cultures with a weak uncer-
tainty avoidance are contemplative, less aggressive, unemotional, re-
laxed, accepting personal risks, and relativeiy tolerant.

4. Masculinity as a characteristic of a culture opposes Femininity. The

two differ in the social roles associated with the biological fact of the
existence of two sexes, and in particular in the social roles attributed
to men. My data show that the values associated with this dimension
vary considerably less across countries for women than for men. I
attribute this to the fact that the social roles of women vary less, as
women in all societies are the ones who give birth to children and take
care of them when they are small. The men’s social role allows for
more variation across countries than the women’s role and this is
what the data on their values confirm. The cultures which I fabelled
as ~us~u~~~~ strive for maximaf distinction between what men are
expected to do and what women are expected to do. They expect men
to be assertive, ambitious and competitive, to strive for material suc-
cess, and to respect whatever is big, strong, and fast. They expect
women to serve and to care for the non-material quality of life, for
children and for the weak. Feminine cuftures, on the other hand,
define relatively overlapping social roles for the sexes, in which, in
particular, men need not be ambitious or competitive but may go for
a different quality of life than material success; men may respect
whatever is small, weak, and slow. In both masculine and feminine
cultures, the dominant values within political and work organizations
are those of men. So, in masculine cultures these political/organiza-
tional values stress material success and assertiveness; in feminine
cultures they stress other types of quality of life, interpersonal rela-
tionships, and concern for the weak.

Country scores on the four dimensions have been plotted in Figures 1

and 2, while Tabfe 2 lists the countries and regions and the abbreviations
used. Figure I plots Power Distance against Individualism/Collectivism.
It is immediately clear that there is a statistical association of Power
Distance with the Collectivist end of the I/C dimension (r= - .67 across
the original 40 countries). This association, however, is due to the fact
that both Power Distance and Individualism correlate with national
wealth (the country’s per capita GNP correlates - .6.5 with the Power
 Cultural Differences 309

POWER DISTANCE INDEX (PDI)

SmaffPower Large
Power Bslance
GBR Mgh Indwiduabsm
Dlslance US
H/gh Indwfduahsm AUL'r
6
. . . . . . * . . . . . . . ...* . . . . . . . . ...* . . . .
11 28 61 77 94

FIGURE 1. A power distance x individualism-collectivism plot for 50 countries & 3

regions.

Distance Index and .82 with the Individualism Index). If we control for
national wealth, the correlation between Power Distance and Collectiv-
ism disappears. In the ecological factor analysis of 32 values questions
mean scores for 40 countries, Power Distance plus Collectivism showed
up on one factor. Their joint relationship with wealth and the fact that
their intercorrelation disappears when we control for wealth, is one of the
two reasons why I split this factor into two dimensions. The other reason
is that Power Distance (inequality) and Collectivism (social integration)
are conceptually two different issues: some countries, like France and Bel-
gium, show that large Power Distance and Individualism can be combined.
Figure 2 plots Masculinity/Femininity against Uncertainty Avoidance.
In this case there is no statistical association between the two dimensions
(correlation across the original 40 countries r = .12). These two dimen-
3/u

*.....*-..../.....4.....l.....j

5 ZJ <I ‘., 7; 9’

FIGURE 2. A masculinity-femininity x uncertainty avoidance plot for 50 countries &3

sions are directly based upon two separate factors in the ecological factor
analysis of 32 values questions mean scores for 40 countries. Because the
joint association of Power Distance and Collectivism with national
wealth, we tend to find in Figure 1 the Third World countries separated
from the wealthy countries: the former in the upper right hand corner, the
latter in the lower part of the diagram. However, masculinity and Uncer-
tainty Avoidance are both unrelated to national wealth, so that in Figure
2 we find both wealthy countries and Third World countries in all four
quadrants of the diagram.

THE 4-D MODEL APPLIED TO TEACHER/STUDENT AND

STUDENT/STUDENT INTERACTION

The cultural differences related to Individualism/Collectivism and to

Power Distance are the ones that tend to distinguish wealthy, industrial-
ized societies from poor, traditional ones (Figure 1, lower left to upper
right). They will therefore be likely to account for most of the pitfalls in
teacher/student interaction in training programmes aimed at economic
development. However, fairly large Power Distances are also found in
some industrialized countries (like Belgium and France), and some poor
countries like Jamaica and India score relatively individualist.
In Tables 3 and 4 I have listed suggested interaction differences related
to Individualism versus Collectivism and to Large versus Small Power
Distances, respectively. These tables are inspired by differences found in
the work situation (Hofstede, 1980: 235 and 122). The tables describe
extremes; the situation in many countries and schools probably lies some-
where in between these extremes, and some of the differences listed may
apply more in some places than in others. However, the tables are meant
to alert the teachers and the students to the role differences they may
encounter.
Contrary to the differences listed in Tables 3 and 4, those related to
Uncertainty Avoidance and to ~asculinity/Femininity are unrelated to
the economic development levels of the countries (see Figure 2). They can
account for some of the perplexities of a German teacher in the Nether-
lands, or of a Thai student in India. I have listed them in Tables 5 and 6
(inspired by Hofstede 1980: 184 and 294). The same provisos apply as for
Tables 3 and 4: the tables show extremes and reality is often in between
these extremes.

TABLE 2

Country Abbreviations

ARA Arab countries GER Germany PER Peru

(Egypt, Lebanon, GRE Greece PHI Philippines
Lybia, Kuwait, Iraq, GUA Guatemala POR Portugal
Saudi-Arabia, U.A.E.) HOK Hong Kong SAF South Africa
ARG Argentina ID0 Indonesia SAL Salvador
AUL Australia IND India SIN Singapore
AUT Austria IRA Iran SPA Spain
BEL Belgium IRE Ireland SWE Sweden
BRA Brazil ISR Israel SWI Switzerland
CAN Canada ITA Italy TAI Taiwan
CHL Chile JAM Jamaica THA Thailand
COL Colombia JPN Japan TUR Turkey
COS Costa Rica KOR South Korea URU Uruguay
DEN Denmark MAL Malaysia USA United States
EAF East Africa MEX Mexico VEN Venezuela
(Kenya, Ethiopia, NET Netherlands WAF West Africa
Zambia) NOR Norway (Nigeria, Ghana,
EQA Equador NZL New Zealand Sierra Leone)
FIN Finland PAK Pakistan YUG Yugoslavia
FRA France PAN Panama
GBR Great Britain
312 Geert Hqfstede

TABLE 3

Differences in Teacher/Student and Student/Student Interaction

Related to the Individualism versus Collectivism Dimension

COLLECTIVIST SOCIETIES INDIVIDUALIST SOCIETIES

l positive associatron in society with lposrtrve association in society with

whatever is rooted in tradition’ whatever is “new”
l the young should learn; adults cannot *one is never too old to learn; “perma-
accept student role2 nent education”
l students expect to learn how to do *students expect to learn how to learn
l individual students will only speak up *individual students will speak up in
in class when called upon personally class in response to a general invitation
by the teacher by the teacher
l individuals will only speak up in small *individuals will speak up in large
groups3 groups
l large classes split socially into smaller, *subgroupings rn class vary from one
cohesive subgroups based on particu- situation to the next based on univer-
larist criteria (e.g. ethnic affiliation) sakst critena (e.g. the task “at hand”
l formal harmony in learning situations *confrontation In learning situations can
should be maintained at all times be salutary: conflicts can be brought
(T-groups are taboo)4 into the open
l neither the teacher nor any student *face-consciousness is weak
should ever be made to lose face
l education is a way of gaining preshge *education is a way of Improving one’s
in one’s social environment and of economic worth and self-respect based
jornrng a higher status group (“a ticket on ability and competence
to a ride”)
l diploma certificates are important and *diploma certificates have little symbolic
displayed on walls value
l acquiring certificates, even through *acquiring competence is more impor-
illegal means (cheating, corruption) is tant than acquiring certificates
more important than acquiring
competence
l teachers are expected to give prefer- *teachers are expected to be strictly
ential treatment to some students (e.g. impartial
based on ethnic affiliation or on rec-
ommendation by an influential person)

1. e.g. Treviho, 1982

2. Lieh-Mak et al., 1984
3. Redding, 1980: 211
4. e.g. Cox and Cooper, 1977
 Cultural Differences 313

TABLE 4

Differences in Teacher/Student and Student/Student Interaction

Related to the Power Distance Dimension

SMALL POWER DISTANCE SOCIETIES LARGE POWER DISTANCE SOCIETIES

l stress on impersonal “truth” which *stress on personal “wisdom” which is

can in principle be obtained from any transferred in the relationship with a
competent person particular teacher (guru)
l a teacher should respect the indepen- *a teacher merits the respect of his/her
dence of his/her students students’
l student-centered education (premium *teacher-centered education (premium
on initiative) on order)
l teacher expects students to initiate *students expect teacher to initiate
communication communication
l teacher expects students to find their *students expect teacher to outline paths
own paths to follow
l students may speak up spontaneously *students speak up in class only when
in class invited by the teacher
l students allowed to contradict or *teacher is never contradicted nor
criticize teacher publicly criticized2
l effectiveness of learning related to *effectiveness of learning related to
amount of two-way communication in excellence of the teacher
class.3
l outside class, teachers are treated as *respect for teachers is also shown
equals outside class
l in teacher/student conflicts, parents *in teacher/student conflicts, parents are
are expected to side with the student expected to side with the teacher
l younger teachers are more liked than *older teachers are more respected than
older teachers younger teachers

1. according to Confucius, “teacher” is the most respected profession in society

2. E.g. Faucheux et al, 1962
3. Revans, 1965; Jamieson and Thomas, 1974; Stubbs and Delamont, 1976

Of course, not all differences in teacher/student interaction can be

associated with one of the four dimensions. Certain interaction patterns
are particular to a given country or even to a given school; often differ-
ences may relate to other dimensions, not identified in my study. An
example of differences at a high level of specifity are the ages at which a
young person is supposed to show particular behaviours. In Japan, pre-
school age children are allowed a greater freedom of emotional expres-
sion and drive gratification; from kindergarten to the university entrance
examination, they are expected to be disciplined and competitive and at
university again they are allowed to take it easy. The U.S.A has almost the
reverse pattern: the pre-school child is already instilled with a sense of
responsibility; kindergarten, primary school and high school are relative-
 314 Geert Hqfstede

TABLE 5

Differences in TeacherlStudent and StudentlStudent Interaction

Related to the Uncertainty Avoidance Dimension

WEAK UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE STRONG UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE

SOCIETIES SOCIETIES

l students feel comfortable in unstruc- *students feel comfortable in structured

tured learning situations: vague objec- learning situations: precise objectives,
tives, broad assignments, no timetables detailed assignments, strict timetables
l teachers are allowed to say “I don’t *teachers are expected to have all the
know” answers
l a good teacher uses plain language *a good teacher uses academic language’
l students are rewarded for innovative *students are rewarded for accuracy in
approaches to problem solving problem solving2
l teachers are expected to suppress *teachers are allowed to behave
emotions (and so are students) emotionally (and so are students)
l teachers interpret intellectual disagree- *teachers interpret intellectual disagree-
ment as a stimulating exercise ment as personal disloyalty
l teachers seek parents’ ideas *teachers consider themselves experts
who cannot learn anything from lay
parents-and parents agree

1. Stroebe, 1976
2. Triandis, 1984

ly child-centered and easy-going, whereas the university study period is

one of extreme competitiveness. Another source of problems in teacher/
student interaction may be ethnic or colour differences per se, regardless
whether these are accompanied by differences in mental programming;
ethnic prejudice as such may affect behaviours.

THE INFLUENCE OF LANGUAGE

This paper on cross-cultural teacher/student interaction would not be

complete without paying attention to the language factor. In many cross-
cultural learning situations, teacher and student speak different native
languages. I suggest that the chances for successful cultural adaptation
are better if the teacher is to teach in the students’ language rather than if
the student is to learn in the teacher’s language, because the teacher has
more power over the learning situation than any single student. Language
is the vehicle of culture and it is an obstinate vehicle. Language catego-
rizes reality according to its corresponding culture. Together with a for-
eign language, the teacher acquires a basis of sensitivity for the students’
culture. From personal experience I recall several striking examples of the
influence of the course language on the learning process. In one multina-
 Cultural Differences 315

tional company training programme, trainers estimated participants’ fu-

ture career potential. A longitudinal follow-up study of actual careers
showed that they had consistently overestimated participants whose na-
tive language was English (the course language) and underestimated
those whose languages were French or Italian, with the native German
speakers in between (Hofstede, 1975: 46). In an international business
school I taught the same executive course in French to one internationally
mixed half of the class, in English to the other half, equally international-
ly mixed; often one group would be taught in the morning in one lan-
guage, the other group in the afternoon in the other. It was remarkable
that the discussion of the same case studies in French would regularly
lead to highly stimulating intellectual discussions, but few practical con-
clusions; in English, it would not be long before somebody asked “so
what?” and the class tried to become pragmatic. Nobody in the French-
speaking group even asked “et alors ?” (so what?); and the English lan-
guage would hardly find the words to express the Francophone intellectu-
al speculations. In the same course, we would use reading material
orginally written either in English or in French and translated into the
other language. The comments of the class on the translated versions was
almost identical in both cases: translated material was considered “unnec-

TABLE 6

Differences in Teacher/Student and Student/Student Interaction

Related to the Masculinity versus Femininity Dimension

FEMININE SOCIETIES MASCULINE SOCIETIES

l teachers avoid openly praising students *teachers openly praise good students
l teachers use average student as the *teachers use best students as the
norm norm
l system rewards students’ social *system rewards students’ academic
adaptation performance
l a student’s failure in school is a *a student’s failure in school is a severe
relatively minor accident blow to his/her self-image and may in
extreme cases lead to suicide
l students admire friendliness in teachers *students admire brilliance in teachers
l students practice mutual solidarity *students compete with each other in
class
l students try to behave modestly *students try to make themselves visible
l corporal punishment severely rejected *corporal punishment occasionally con-
sidered salutary
l students choose academic subjects in *students choose academic subjects in
view of intrinsic interest view of career opportunities
l male students may choose traditionally -male students avoid traditionally
feminine academic subjects feminine academic subjects
essarily verbose, with a rather meagre message which could have been
expressed on one or two pages.” The conclusion is that what represents a
“message” in one language does not necessarily survive as a message in
the other language; and this process of loss of meaning works both ways.
“Information” is more than words-it is words which fit in a cultural
framework.

BRIDGING THE CROSS-CULTURAL TEACHING GAP

If one chooses to try to cope with, rather than ignore (as often hap-
pens), the perplexities of cross-cultural learning situations, there are obvi-
ously two possible strategies:

1. Teach the teacher how to teach;

2. Teach the learner how to learn.

In the same way as in the previous section (on language) I put the burden
of translation preferably on the teacher, I would prefer (1) over (2) where
possible. If there is one foreign student in a class of 30 with a local
teacher, (2) is the obvious approach. If the number of foreign students
increases (I) wifl very soon become necessary. For an expatriate teacher,
(1) is imperative. Polycultural learning situations (I remember an ITP-
International Teachers’ Programme-class in 1979 with 25 nationalities
among 60 participants) are extremely difficult to handle, and demand a
mixture of (1) with a heavy dose of (2); private or small-group tutoring of
students. The focus of the teacher’s training should be on learning about
~~s/~er own culture: getting intellectually and emotionally accustomed to
the fact that in other societies, people learn in different ways. This means
taking one step back from one’s values and cherished beliefs, which is
far from easy. In a study of the values of faculty and executive students at
an international business school, I related values to gradings and showed
that faculty unconsciously favoured the course work of students whose
values were closest to theirs (Hofstede, 1978). It is possible that in order
to be effective as trainers abroad, teachers have to adopt methods which
at home they have learned to consider as outmoded or impopular: usually
much more structured than they were accustomed to. For example, (s)he
has to teN a person to speak up in class. A creative solution to this
problem was presented by a Dutch teacher with a mixed Asian adult
student group. After each session, the students were expected to give ar
evaluation of what they had learned. The teacher at this time passed a
pencil around, and whoever had the pencil was expected to speak. This
was a nice symbolic way of institutionalizing the “speaking up” process.
This paper amounts to a plea for an anthropological approach to
teaching, based on insight into cultural variety across the world. Good
 Culturul Differences 317

intentions are not enough. In an insightful piece, Moran and Renwick

look critically at the management training manual prepared by one U.S.
multinational for use around the world. The manual provides do’s and
dont’s under the headings of “Performance Goals,” “Managing Climate,”
“Active Listening” and “Questioning.” Moran and Renwick analyse this
material from a Middle East (Arab countries) cultural point of view and
it falls almost completely apart (in Moran and Harris, 1981: 79-92).
Another example I owe to Kraemer (1978). When in 1976 children of
Vietnamese refugees went to regular schools in the U.S.A., the U.S.
Office of Education issued an instruction for teachers “On Teaching the
Vietnamese.” Part of it runs:

Student participation was discouraged in Vietnamese schools by liberal doses of

corporal punishment, and students were conditioned to sit rigidly and to speak
only when spoken to. This background . . . makes speaking freely in class hard
for a Vietnamese. Therefore, don’t mistake shyness for apathy.

To most West-European and North-American readers, this instruction

looks okey at first. However, it becomes more problematic when we look
for all the clues about U.S. culture which the quote supplies, which are as
many sources of bias. In fact, the U.S. Office of Education ascribes to
the Vietnamese all the motivations of young Americans-like a supposed
desire to participate-and explains their submission by corporal punish-
ment, rather than, for example, respect. At a doctoral seminar I taught in
Sweden, one of the participants (Ake Phillips) made all the essential
points by reversing the statement-in the way the Vietnamese Ministry of
Education might have instructed the Vietnamese teachers of American
refugees in Vietnam (if there were any):

Students’ proper respect for teachers was discouraged by a loose order and stu-
dents were conditioned to behave disorderly and chat all the time. This back-
ground makes proper and respectful behaviour in class hard for an American
student. Therefore, don’t mistake rudeness for lack of reverence.

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ABSTRACT TRANSLATIONS

Le m&tre et 1'&'areformentun couplequi existeen tant qu'

archGQpe dans presquetoutesoci&&. Dumanent qw ceux-ci
viennentde culturesdiffkentescanmeil arrive'a1'intkieur de
programnesde &eloppement konomique les m’esententes risquent
de se multiplier. Elle seront cd&es par la position so&ale
diffgrente du m&re et de 1’&ieve dans le.9deux soci&&s, par 1'
in&r&z different du tours @ur les dews sociGt&, par as
czznbinaisons disparates de.5 facult& cognitives en vigueur chez
les deuxpopufations concern&s,ou bien p3K cks divergencesdans
les id&s p&xi&antes sur l'interaction entrem&h-e et &be et
pour les Wzves entreeux. L'articletraiteen particulierde
ces diffhrences interactionnelles.11 1eS ratLXhe au mod&e 4-D
&velo& plr 1'auteuret qui dkrit les diffkencesculturelles
panniles so&t&, surlaba~ede recherchesdesvaleurslie&
au travail dans plus de 50 pays. Lesdivergenoesdes i&es
p&xi&antes sur 1 interaction entrema&e et &%ve axrane entre
&i&es sont d&rites selon les quatre dimensions: de 1'
Individualisme vis a vis du Collectiviane,de la Distance
Hikarchique plusou mainsgrande, du Contrijle de PIncertitude
plus ou moinsforteet de la Masculinit& vis 'avis la f&mini&
On disc&e aussicertainseffetsdu faitque maitreset &'&es n'
ont pas la m2me langue maternelle. Dans la formation
interculturelle 03 sentles enseignantsqui devraientassLpneren
premier lieu la charge que constitue1' adaptation"a cette
situation.(Author-supplied abstract),

Profesor y alunno conformanun "par"arquetipico

en casi toda
so&&ad. Cuandokibosprwienen de diferentes culturas,coma es
el case en el context0de programasde desarrolloecon&nico,
pueden ocurrir muchasconfusiones. Estaspuedendetxrsea la
320 Geert Hofstede

diferente psicih social que ocupan tanto profesoresccmo

alkxnnosenlasdossociedas, alas diferencias de relevanciaen
el curriculun para talessociedades, a diferencias en perfilesde
habilidacks cognitivas entre las pblaciones de las dos
sociedades0 a diferentes expectativasde las interacciones
profesor/alwrio y alunno/alunno.Este estudioesta centradoen
las diferenciasde tales interacciones. Las mismas est2.n
relacionadascon el mode10de 4 Dimensionesde diferencias
culturalesentresociedades desarrollack poorel autor, basadoen
irwestigaciones sobrevaloresrelacionados al trabajoen el que
participaronmas de 50 pa&es. Las diferencias de expectativas
de las interaccionesprofesor/alunno y alunno/alunnose ban
listadoen relaci6na Las cuatrodimensiones de: Individual&no
versus Colectivismo,mayor versusmenorDistancia de1 Poder,
EVitaci&n de Incertidumbre intensaversusescasa EVitaci"onde
Incertidurnbre y Masculinidad versus Femeneidad. Se discuten
ademas algunos efectos de las diferenciasde lenguaje entre
profesor y alunno. El ikfasis para la adaptacih de 1aS
situacionesde aprendizaje trans.-culturales deberia ser puesto
principalmente en 10s profesores.(Author-supplied abstract)