N O T E S - B E R I C H T E - C O M M U N I C A T I O N S

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CROSS.CULTURAL EXCHANGE: TEACHING AND LEARNING IN CONTEXT

lntroduction

It has been shown that the way students learn in higher education depends on the context; the way they approach and execute tasks is not simply an individual orienta- tion, but relates to the meaning they make of the context of those tasks. Students attempt to learn according to the way they think their teachers expect them to, as weil as according to their perception of the demands of the task. However, exchange students suddenly, and briefly, experience a change in their learning context whilst they continue to work for a degree of their university or origin. In this respect learn- ing, for the students on exchange, is a compound problem as they attempt to grapple with two learning contexts simultaneously, one overlaid by the other. This paper is concerned only with cross-cultural exchange programmes which have an academic content and in which individual students participate in a course of study within an overseas educational institution as part of a degree programme within their college of origin.

Starting from a brief report of two recent descriptions of student learning, this paper addresses questions such as: How do students cope with changes in the context of their learning? What henefits accrue to the student who selects a period of study abroad as part of his or her course? Assuming the heneficial outcomes of cross- cultural exchange, what are the implications for students who study only in their col- lege of origin? What theoretical framework might be useful for conceptualizing stu- dent learning?

Much of the research on student learning has been conducted from a psychologi- cal perspective and the same can be said of research into 'study abroad ' programmes as represented in the work of Hull and Lemke (1975), Klineherg (1976) and Hull (1981). The picture of experience that emerges is seen in terms of certain individual characteristics and how the exchange student adapts to the host institution. In such research, assumptions were made concerning the stability and consistency of the in- stitutions and of students' needs to adapt to them; thus behaviour was viewed as a function of the individuai, rather than a response to a situation. An alternative ac- count would take a more holisüc view of the learning context as a location for social interaction between staff and students from which new definitions of the situation would arise as negotiation took place between those holding different perspectives. Such a study would maintain that a sociological perspective is necessary to obtain a balanced assessment of study abroad programmes. In terms of the literature on

International Review o f Education - Internationale Zeitschrift f ü r Erziehungswissenschaft - Revue Internationale de Pddagogie X X X I V (1988), 101-124. Al l rights reserved. Copyright © by Unesco Institute for Education, Hamburg and Martinus Ni jho f f Publishers, Dordrecht.

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such programmes this later perspective is exemplified in the work of Barnes (1982). The situation he described was the very opposite of Klineberg and Hull 's presenta- tion, since Barnes' scheine could be seen as a process of institutional change, whereas Klineberg and Hull 's claim was that students' needs were to adapt to the institution. This present paper is compatible with Barnes in its methodological stance since it is ethnographic and dependent on interview data. The data was cross- checked by questionnaire, in keeping with the recognised 'illuminative' research paradigm described by Parlett and Hamilton (1972) and Miller and Parlett (1974). It draws from up-to-date research into student learning in general, and reports and discusses a small-scale project, noting some of the differences exchange students perceive; it offers a theoretical framework for studying the ways students react to the study abroad situation, and it draws out implications of general relevance to stu- dent learning.

Research into Student Learning

Understanding of student learning, so far as this paper is concerned, is based on a brief reference in two pieces of research, the first by Lanrillard (1979) and the second by Standeven (1985). Studying undergraduate science students at the University of Surrey, Lanrillard identified the three most important factors influencing student choice of 'strategic approach and style of execution' of a task as: 1. the students' own orientation towards the task; 2. the students' perception of the teaching; 3. the students' perception of the task. (Laurillard, 1979, p. 407) As a result of her research, Lanrillard's account of what students do when they work on a learning task was given in terms of cognitive and contextual factors. She con- cluded that students' learning bore a direct relationship to their interpretation of their environment. Thus study of such learning needed to be made in the context in which it occurred rather than in a laboratory.

Standeven (1985) confirmed that student learning was both content- and context- dependent and the learner's agency was found to contribute significantly to the meaning which the learning process had for the individual.

Predicated on the basis that student learning is both content- and context- dependent, the next section reports on a smaU-scale study that looked at the question of what happens when an individual's learning context is disturbed by a period of exchange study.

Differences Exchange Students Perceive

From a comparative point of view, the most interesting finding of the small-scale project reported here is the remarkable similarity of student views of an exchange experience, whatever their country of origin. The study focused on fifteen students majoring in physical education, dance and sports science, who spent twelve weeks on exchange at a British polytechnic whilst their fifteen 'partners ' studied, concur- rently, at the two Canadian and three American universities from which their part- ners originated.

American and Canadian exŒhange students believed that the British students played a more active role in their learning than did their peers at home. Similarly,

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British exchangees returned with the view that a characteristic of American and Canadian students was the greater contribution they made to their own learning.

One way of understanding this situation is to see it as an 'exchange effect' , which may speculatively be connected with self-actualization of the individual (Maslow, 1970). Previous research into overseas study programmes (Standeven, 1982) found that during a period of exchange study students became more conscious of cultural differences, and believed that their being different attracted recognition both in and out of class. This changed their consciousness of themselves.

A link may be perceived with Maslow's concept of self-identity (1970). Self- actualizaton and self-identity provide a way of understanding students' enhanced self-confidence and increased maturit~, qualities Heath (1964, 1978) identified as those of the ideal student. Standeven (1985) identified confidence as a critical in- fluence on the way individuals choose their learning response, and MiUer (1976) con- cluded that it was one of the most important contributions to intellectual develop- ment. She i lentified two ways in which students gain and lose confidence: (1) marks, and (2) identification with the department in which the student was working. It is postulated that a feature of the exchange experience, such as close identification with the host department due to lack of familiarity with the environment, can make a significant contribution tö a student's confidence, and increased confidence may serve to intensify, even exaggerate, perceptions of others' contributions in a situa- tion in which individuals feel more capable of contributing themselves. Students had no doubts about the values they perceived in contributing, and their comments make reference to the confidence-related factors identified by Miller:

' I found getting higher marks gave me the confidence to contribute more and that led to me learning more' . (British student)

' I found people very warm, the department is close and I easily felt part of it and an individual in class here. At home you're just a face in the crowd. It made me feel comfortable and able to contribute; I know I 've learned more because of that feel- ing'. (Canadian student)

Students did identify differences between their teaching and learning experiences in Britain and in North America. These included a closer relationship between theory and practice in Britain, greater breadth of topics covered at a laster pace in North America, and different kinds of assessment - in Britain based almost entirely on essays, whilst in North America assessment was frequently based on quizzes and multiple choice examinations. These differences are almost certainly related to dif- ferent curricular models in higher education in general, and physical education in particular, on the two sides of the Atlantic, characterized in a previous paper as general education or professional preparation (Standeven, 1986).

An earlier piece of research, (Standeven, 1982), reported that lecturers in British and overseas institutions perceived equivalence in different ways. For more than half of those who responded, equivalence referred to similarity of subject content, but for approximately a tenth it referred to the development of intellectual skills. Twen- ty per cent perceived equivalence in a quantitative sense, either as a time-related con- cept or in respect to marks obtained. Lecturers made no reference to the nature of assessment, though students then, and again now, comment on what they perceive as the greater intellectual demands of essay assessment. Whilst the staff differed in the importance they attached to equivalence, students saw it as important only in

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order to fulfil institutional requirements, a perception which tends to support Barnes' (1982) view that visiting students adopt an instrumental attitude towards their course. His explanation of their concerns is given in terms of their career ambi- tions and the possibility of the need to extend their length of study to secure gradua- tion, and the financial hardship which this might cause. These explanations may be only partial, since research indicates that such attitudes may be induced as a response to the learning situations which comprise students' experience (Standeven, 1985). Their response, then, may form a critique of learning which has only limited mean- ing for them, and whose rationality is perceived as the accepted rationality in an undergraduate course.

Instrumentalism may, then, be viewed as as rauch a commentary on the distribu- tion of power as a reflection of aspirations or financial considerations. Barnes neglects this point.

One further point on which both sets of students were agreed and which supported earlier findings (Standeven, 1982), was the way in which many exchange students felt their study abroad enabled them to develop their critical capacities. Finding their customary assumptions challenged, and their awareness of differences raised, this encouraged them to break out of habitual modes of thinking. Such awareness seemed to increase their capacity to monitor their mental processes, a meta-cognitive skill which became more evident following study abroad. Their ' l ived' experience of comparison, their confrontation with different viewpoints and their need to weigh alternative interpretations and values assisted students' development of evaluative skills. In this way their critical capacities were extended and they began to judge more in terms of contexts rather than by fixed recipes. The present study supports the earlier suggestion (Standeven, 1982) that the focus of concern for academic equi- valence could most appropriately be in terms of the development of such intellectual skills as are commensurate with those expected by a student's college of origin.

Coping with Change in the Learning Context and the Perceived Benefits of Study Abroad

Transfer to a different learning context makes identifiably different sorts of demands upon students as learners. LauriUard's study (1979) showed that students can adapt the way they approach their learning tasks to accommodate perceived dif- ferences in both task and context. British students reporting on their coping strategies in this project described their adoption of memorizing as the most ap- propriate approach to many of their learning tasks and their sense of an 'other- directed' orientation to their situation. The North American students stressed the difficulties they encountered in adapting their characteristic learning approaches to a situation which they sensed demanded self-directed thinking. In typical reports of their experiences students commented:

' I 've liked the way I 've had to work to write an essay, it'.s different. I feel I 've had to do a lot more myself, I 've really had to think about it all rauch more, kind of think behind what the books say instead of learning what they say, and then somehow I 've tried to make something out of it to say myself. ' (American student)

' I t was hard work, I felt I had homework to do every night, you just had to ke¢p up learning this and that for the next text. It made me discipline my studying more

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and that was really good for me, but there wasn't the same need to think through things for yourself. ' (British student)

Coping with the difference they perceived in their learning context caused students to distribute their study time differently. Whilst the British exchangees studied more regularly but for shorter periods of tirae, the North Americans 'revelled in all the free time' during the early part of their study abroad and then experienced 'a rauch more intense' period of learning as essay deadlines approached. Character- istically, the North American students sought guidance on 'which book' they should ' follow' and on 'what line' to take, whereas British students described how they gave more detailed attention to accurate representation of the works of recog- nized scholars.

Studying abroad resulted in a number of perceived benefits including increased confidence in themselves as individuals, a less ethnocentric outlook, and, perhaps most importantly, consciousness of learning as an object of reflection rather than as something taken for granted. This increased awareness of the process of learning, ' the capacity to reflect on how one learns', is considered to have generalizable qualities of both critical reflection and flexible response which can help students to manage their own learning (Nisbet & Shucksmith, 1984). As one British student remarked several months after returning from exchange study: ' . . . because it was suddenly different I became aware that my thinking was working differently. Now I find I plan my approach to tasks more, I think about how I ' ra doing it, at raore or less the same time as I ' ra doing i t . ' For many students, their motivation became raore intrinsic and their interests both more clearly and broadly defined. Ability to reason relativistically and to judge contextually were beneficial outcomes arising from exposure to varied world views.

A Theoretical Framework for Studying Exchange Students' Responses to Study Abroad

It is necessary to clarify what distinguishes the experience of studying abroad, to pick out what is common and transferable from a proposed model of learning for students who remain within their college of origin, and to suggest alterations to take account of overseas study.

Given that higher education is seen to comprise a transaction between learners, teachers and particular subject material organized in specific ways to achieve selected aims, taught and assessed through certain patterns of interaction between students and staff, what distinguishes studying abroad is the way in which for a relatively brief episode within their degree programme students must come to terms with two learning contexts siraultaneously. The potential conflict between the 'home' model and the 'away' experience is generated by the validation of their award coraing frora the students' college of origin. In view of the crucial role of assessment and the way in which it structures student learning (Miller & Parlett, 1974), it is sug- gested that the key factor in exchange learning taust be located in the aims, nature and ¢riteria for assessment at the home institution.

That the application to learning is not siraply a function of the characteristics of an individual is shown in Figure 1, where the institutional milieu provides the context

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within which students learn. Models which portray students simply as respondents are too one-sided and assume a completely passive acceptance of control; this was the fault of Klineberg and Hull 's account (1979). Students do impose their own meanings, but the extent of student influence is considerably constrained by the con- trol vested in the dominant lecturers' group in a well-articulated and formaUy ap- proved way; Barnes appeared to give insufficient attention to this (1982). The model offered in this paper (see Figure 1) takes account not only of the curriculum and the lecturers, but also of the culture of the peer group, which is located within a specific subject 'atmosphere' and is open to potential redefinition.

The soci01ogical location of this model clearly lies within the orbit of social action perspectives since it assumes that it is by the creative acts of individuals that societies are continuously being reproduced and partly modified. Becanse of constant inten- tional and unintentional change, social reality is perceived as fragile, lacking in- variable regularities. The action account gives prominence to the way in which the social world can be changed by individuals, but what action theories currently fall to provide is a sufficient awareness of power, conflict and constraint. Individuals cannot act outside the constraints imposed by transformable social structures. For this reason Giddens' (1976) concept of 'duality of structure' is the preferred theoretical base, since his conception takes account of the way in which social struc- tures exist through their manifestation in human action and are reproduced and transformed by creative innovative acts. As Giddens puts it: 'Every act which ton- tributes to the reproduction of a structure is also an act of production, a novel enter- prise, and as such may initiate change by altering that structure at the same time as it reprodu¢es i t . ' (Giddens, 1976, p. 128)

Figure 1 attempts to describe exchange programmes as learning situations ¢om- prising similar ingredients, though these are ¢ulturally specific, and when they are interpreted by the individual they give rise to consciously innovated learning strate- gies. To take account of overseas study two layers of the model must be super- imposed on one another, (shown in Figure 1 sideby side), but since the students con- tinue to work for a degree of their college of origin the overlay on assessment may be transparent, the student perceiving the need to comply with different expectations simultaneously, giving rise to the instrumentalism found by Barnes (1982). One way of potentiaIly overcoming this is to alter the distribution of control, allowing students more autonomy in their learning and some self-assessment.

Implications of General Relevance to Student Learning

This paper suggests that higher education should be more concerned than it has been to provide students with a full range of intellectual skills. From this it might even be argued that all students would benefit from cross-cultural exchange as part of their undergraduate course. Given that such a suggestion is impractical, the question arises as to how the kind of conditions provided by exchange learning may be simulated. Intellectual skills may be most effectively developed and exercised when individual involvement is induced through confidence gained from self-actualization and self-identity. One way of achieving this may be to expose all students to cross- cultural comparative studies of their own subje¢t; another, to include an indepen- dent learning assignment in every course. At the level of social theorizing Giddens' concept of 'duality of structure' may provide the greatest potential for generalizing

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research into student learning since it provides a way of taking account of social ac- tion and social structure simultaneously.

JOY STANDEVEN

References

Barnes, L.R. 'Cross-Cultural Exchange: How Students Can Frustrate the Aims of Study Abroad Programmes'. International Review o f Education. 28 (1982), No. 3, pp. 373-376.

Giddens, A. New Rules ofSociological Method. London: Hutchinson, 1976.

Heath, D.H. The Reasonable Adventurer. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1964.

Heath, D.H. 'A Model of Becoming a Liberally Educated and Mature Student'. In Parker, C. (ed.) Encouraging Development in College Students. Minneapolis~: Uni- versity of Minnesota Press, 1978.

Hull, F.W. IV. 'Cross-Cultural Experiential Programming'. International Review o f Education. 27 (1981), No. 1, pp. 64-75.

Hull, F.W. IV, and Lemke, W.H. 'The Assessment of Off-Campus Higher Educa- tion'. International Review of Education. 21 (1975), No. 2, pp. 195-206.

Klineberg, O. International Educational Exchange: An Assessment of its Nature and Prospects. Paris: Mouton, 1976.

Klineberg, O. and HuU, F.W. IV. At a Foreign University: An International Study o f Adaptation and Coping. New York: Praeger, 1979.

Laurillard, D. 'The Processes of Student Learning'. Higher Education. (1979), No. 8, pp. 395-409.

Maslow, A.H. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Miller, C.M.L. 'Intellectual Development. Confidence and Assessment'. In Klug, B. (ed.)A Question ofDegree. A Report of the Group for Research and Innovation in Higher Education, The Nuffield Foundation, University of Sussex, 1973.

Miller, C.M.L. and Parlett, M. Up to the Mark: A Study of the Examination Garne. London: Society for Research into Higher Education, Monograph 21, 1974.

Nisbet, J. and Shucksmith, J. 'The Seventh Sense'. Scottish Educational Review. 16 (1984), No. 2.

Parlett, M. and Hamilton, D. Evaluation as Illumination: A New Approach to the Study of Innovatory Programs. Occasional paper 9, Centre for Research in the Educational Sciences. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1972.

Standeven, J. 'An Evaluation of the Contribuüon of Overseas Study Programmes in the Education of Students'. Paper given at the 3rd International Symposium of the International Society for Comparative Physical Education and Sport, University of Minnesota, Proceedings. 1982.

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Standeven, J. 'Curricular Models in Physical Education: Professional Preparation or General Education-Sponsored or Contest Mobility'. In Haag, H., Kayser, A. and Bennett, B. (eds.) Comparative Physical Education and Sport. Illinois: Human Kinetics Press, 1986, pp. 295-303.

Standeven, J. 'A Study of the Relationship between Some of the Content and Con- textual Factors that Influence Student Learning, with Special Reference to Students of Physical Education'. Unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, 1985.

PERFORMANCE AND TEACHER LAY-OFFS

This paper explores the impact on morale of using poor performance as the criterion for laying off teachers during a change in enrolment or a fiscal crisis. Because of demographic shifts during the late 1970s and early 1980s, several nations faced the necessity of reductions-in-force (RIF) among tenured teachers. (For a discussion of Canadian RIF, see Crespo and Hache, 1982; for Sweden, see Boucher, 1982, p. 59.) The research reported here was funded by a grant from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

In the United States, as in many nations, the most widely-used lay-off criterion was inverse seniority, 'Last hired-first fired' has been criticized, however, for perpetuating past discrimination (Roberts, 1981; Whelan and Rubin, 1977), reward- ing mediocrity (Dennis, 1983) and failing to link performance and organizational rewards (Yeager, Rabin and Vocino, 1985). Although educators are aware of this criticism, many argue that performance-based lay-offs would hurt teacher morale (Darling-Hammond, Wise and Pease, 1983; McNeil, 1981; and Murnane, 1981). The most widely cited empirical confirmation of the low-morale hypothesis is Johnson's (1980) study of four American school districts that used poor assessments of performance as a criterion for laying oft teachers; she found both teachers and principals were uncomfortable with the system.

Problems arise, however, in relating performance RIF to low morale. A 1981 Massachusetts survey of districts using a performance criterion found that 71.8 per cent of the supervisors and 83.3 per cent of the teachers preferred an evaluation- based system (Phelan, 1983). How can using a process that the staff prefers be the cause of morale loss?

Johnson's study is flawed because she implicitly assumed that she would have found less tension and anxiety in districts where lack of seniority was the criterion; she never bothered to examine the RIF process there. But her assumption is exactly what she has to prove to make any case against using evaluations. An equally plausi- bie assumption is that retrenchment itself causes the morale loss. Faced with lay- offs, some supervisors and teachers will react negatively, no matter what system is used.

To make a link between a particular RIF criterion and morale loss requires com- parative analysis of 'performance' and 'seniority' districts. The role of particular criteria has to be separated from the anxiety caused by retrenchment itself.

This paper offers a comparative analysis that should be useful to educational ad- ministrators who want to develop effective lay-off systems. Research centered on six 'performance' and two 'seniority' districts in Connecticut or Massachusetts, two American states that allow local school districts to set their own lay-off policies through collective bargaining with their teacher unions. All the districts enrol be-