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8/14/2019 Thang's Teaching Culture Paper
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Running head: TEACHING CULTURE ENHANCING CRITICAL THINKING
Teaching Culture Using Intercultural Communicative Competence to
Enhance Critical Thinking
Thang Q. Tran
Eastern Mennonite University
2006
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Table of Contents
Title Page ___________________________________________________________1
Table of Contents ____________________________________________________ 2
Abstract ____________________________________________________________ 3
Introduction _________________________________________________________ 4
Research Question _____________________________________________ 5
Review of Literature____________________________________________ 6
Method ___________________________________________________________ 17
Rationale ____________________________________________________17
Participants __________________________________________________ 18
Apparatus ___________________________________________________ 19
Procedure ___________________________________________________ 22
Results ____________________________________________________________ 24
Discussion _________________________________________________________ 26
References _________________________________________________________ 34
Appendix A ________________________________________________________ 38
Appendix B _________________________________________________________39
Appendix C _________________________________________________________41
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Abstract
This action research study focused on the process of developing critical thinking through
intercultural communicative communication (IC3) in a Latin American history-culture
course in which culture was examined with cultural values in relation to up-to-date social
development. This intercultural communicative class was not only intercultural in the
way it was connected with other cultures but also in the way students started dialogue,
negotiated meanings, found the right answers for themselves and changed. The study
examined the question: How can teaching culture in a new way through teaching cultural
concepts and teaching culture interculturally help develop learners critical thinking?
Arguments from students essays, midterm exams, and final exams were numbered and
categorized according to Blooms Taxonomy. Students arguments at Application,
Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation levels were considered to be critical. From the first
essay to the final exam, students demonstrated a growing ability to think critically.
Teaching cultural concepts and teaching culture interculturally seemed to enhance
students critical thinking.
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Teaching Culture Using Intercultural Communicative Competence to
Enhance Critical Thinking
Introduction
Culture is often taught in international relations, or history courses, and in
language classrooms. In Vietnam, culture courses are always a core part of a foreign
language curriculum. Over time the culture courses name in foreign language programs
in Vietnam has changed from Study of a Country to History and Geography of a
Country,and most recently to Culture of a Nation, for example a British Culture and
Civilization course for English major students.
The evolution of the courses name in foreign language programs shows that
language curriculum designers see more and more clearly the importance of cultural
knowledge in what foreign language graduates have to know as a part of their
competence. At the same time it shows the perception of people who are responsible for
culture curriculum about how and what is to be taught in the course.
Despite the efforts to design better culture courses for college foreign language
students, the expectation for the outcome of teaching in which students become more
fluent culturally seems to be not yet met (Hudson, 2003). Fantini (1997) said that
although foreign language learners were fluent in the target language they did not have
cultural competence to communicate with the foreign language speakers. Culture
teaching thus needs to go beyond teaching cultural information to help learners go deeper
behind the surface in order to develop cultural fluency.
Cultural competence or cultural fluency is a new concept in foreign language
teaching in particular and in culture teaching in general. Cultural competence is the
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ability to understand cultural values as an organic system always changing and renewing,
as well as the ability to know the logic of a foreign peoples thinking and behaving (Tran,
2000). If this ability is to be achieved after a foreign language program then course
designers should state it explicitly in the goal setting (Stearns, 2004).
Instead of going through facts and information, teacher and students in a culture
course seek to define cultural values and fit them into a system, examine concepts which
shed light to the way people of a nation think and behave, see how their culture develops
in the setting of current socioeconomic life. Students get involved in classroom and
online dialogues with classmates and people from other cultures to form new opinions
again and again. In doing so, students move from the convenience and safety of their
culture into the risky environment of unfamiliar culture of others in order to interact with
them. They will be more confident with the unfamiliar in the foreign culture environment
(Wessner, 2003). Teaching culture through cultural concepts and treating culture as a
system of values seems to be more logical since teachers cannot teach all the culture to
college students. In this case cultural concepts play the role of opening doors to a culture
(Eisenchlas & Trevaskes, 2003; Stearns, 2004).
The argument about teaching culture for better cultural understanding leads to a
research question: How can teaching culture in a new way through teaching cultural
concepts and teaching culture interculturally help develop learners critical thinking?
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Review of Literature
A review of literature identified four issues of culture teaching: redefining culture,
cultural fluency, new ways to teach culture, and Blooms Taxonomy as a way to measure
critical thinking.
Redefining Culture
Culture is a concept having different meanings to different people in different
situations. Thus before getting into any research relating to culture, defining it is
necessary. In foreign language education, culture plays the part learners have to build into
their knowledge. This cultural knowledge is required to be more than knowing facts, for
example, what people do on holidays or how the election is implemented. Therefore,
culture needs to be explored in a wider scope and more systematically than it is treated
now. Culture in the educational setting described above needs to be seen as an organic
system of material and spiritual values created by human beings during their interaction
with natural and social environments (Tran, 2000).
Despite the fact that culture is not static, that is, new values are formed and old
values which do not fit into the evolving society are discarded, it is treated as such in
foreign language teaching (Lo Bianco, 1999). The communicative language teaching uses
cultural themes as illustrations for grammatical points or for language functions in each
unit. Thus culture is something to be learned by taking notes in notebooks and reporting
back in the final exam rather than to be explored by discussing, comparing,
understanding deeper, or adapting in new situations (Ellis, 1994). Moreover, cultural
skills are not stated to be learned explicitly but depend on individual teachers intention
and their cultural knowledge. Adding to the fact that culture is not static, learners are the
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agents who carry cultures and create cultures (Lo Bianco, 1999). Failure to treat culture
in this way is the reason why the goal of communication in language teaching is not
reached (Ellis, 1994). Culture should not be added into the list of our disciplines topics
but addressed as new ways of thinking, new assumptions and hypotheses (Smith, 2004).
Culture taught in courses is usually high culture such as literature, art, music,
tradition, and custom (Hough, 1997). It is agreed that now culture needs to be understood
more than high culture (Hough, 1994; Hudson, 2003). The culture to teach college
students must cover everyday practices and the ways people of that culture think and act
as well. To understand a culture, one cannot only learn cultural facts which are on the
surface but deeper concepts which form the logic of the culture. Students really learn
only when they interact with concepts and use those concepts to examine what is in
process of development in present society to see how the culture lives its life (Crawford-
Lange and Lange, 2001; Hudson, 2003; Liddicoat, 1997, 2004; Rowan, 2001; Stearns,
2004).
CulturalFluency
Cultural fluency in general is understood in the literature as an ability to
understand the logic of a culture and to communicate in that culture (Fantini, 1997; Lo
Bianco, 1999; Sellami, 2000). Cultural fluency has another name: intercultural
communicative competence. According to Wessner (2003) intercultural communicative
competence is defined as the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in the
native and foreign languages toward problem solving and world view expanding. Fantini
(1997) defined cultural fluency as the awareness, attitudes, skills, and knowledge that
will make us better participants on a local and global level, and to understand and to
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empathize with others in new ways (p. 14). During development of cultural fluency
learners find a third place between the two cultures from which they can communicate
comfortably and appropriately. They have changed in the sense that they get out of both
their own culture and the culture of people who speak the foreign language they are
learning to form a third place and from that third position they are flexible to fit into
intercultural communicative situations (Lo Bianco, 1999). For example, they may express
that they know hugging when meeting is important in Western cultures but they are not
yet comfortable with hugging. That act of explaining the difference can create
understanding and empathy.
Wessner (2003) described the development and enhancement of intercultural
communicative competence through a process of dialoguing in 4 stages. In stage 1,
students deal with interaction, new relations, sharing experience and perspectives through
verbal and nonverbal means. This is the stage of initial trust and empathized knowledge.
In stage 2, students are engaged with reflective dialogue to articulate hidden tacit
knowledge. In stage 3, students form their more critical and systematic knowledge
through finding information for themselves by combining relevant data, concepts and
theories. In stage 4, there will be a new combination of explicated and critical knowledge
to form a new level of intercultural communicative competence. From this point students
can continue the process of dialogue in a new cycle. This kind of dialogue sees the
students changing to more critical beings having point of views in wider scope and
closer to people from other social strata as well as from other cultures. This kind of
dialogue is similar to the dialogue containing epistemic virtues such as willingness to
listen to others, sensitivity to the feelings, needs, and interests of others, willingness to
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change if warranted, and willingness to examine ones own biases can help pluralistic
society reach agreement and resolute conflicts nonviolently (Kilby, 2004).
In foreign language learning, cultural competence can be divided into 3 stages. In
the first stage students know what the culture is. In the second stage students know the
reason why the culture is the way it is. In the third stage students know how to anticipate
the cultural patterns based on knowledge and skills gained from stage 1 and 2. Stage 1 is
equivalent to elementary level when the language competence is relatively low. Students
can describe cultural facts. Stage 2 is equivalent to intermediate level in which they can
explain the reasons of cultural facts. Stage 3 is at an advanced level of language
acquisition when students know the logic of culture of people who speak the foreign
language, understand why people think and act that way, and finally they can
communicate comfortably in that culture (Sellami, 2000). While Wessner described
intercultural communicative competence as a competence developed through dialogues,
Sellami saw the cultural competence as what students have to develop through foreign
language learning in a curriculum which is based on culture rather than on grammar or
linguistic functions.
New Ways to Teach Culture
Together with realizing the importance of culture in foreign language training as
well as in other disciplines, there are efforts to search for new ways to teach culture.
Those efforts are summarized in the following paragraphs.
Dealing with the root of culture. In most efforts to teach culture in a new way,
the terminology of concepts of culture, exploration of culture, culture analysis is
emphasized (Eisenchlas & Trevaskes, 2003; Hough, 1997; Hudson, 2003; Stearns, 2004).
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In other words, the dynamics of culture must be explored, that is, culture is taught and
learned as a system, and not only the question what the culture is is answered but also
what the logic of culture is. Exploring culture in depth can help understand a recent
development in its essence. For instance, Hudson (2003) pointed out that only static
understanding of culture was taken into account so that a certain culture (Islamic) was
regarded as responsible for September 11 in America in 2001. This static view of culture
locks people into permanent conflicts and does not promote conflict resolution and
reconciliation (Lo Bianco, 1999). Exploring culture in depth will develop in learners the
ability to interpret and treat culture appropriately in unfamiliar communication situations
(Lo Bianco, 1999). Eisenchlas & Trevaskes (2003) stated that teachers could not teach all
the cultures but could give students the tools for critical understanding of the social
conventions that operate in both the target and the base cultures (p. 398).
Assessment of learning. Hough (1994, 1997) reiterated that when assessing how
students learned, or whether students learned something or not, the focus had to be on
process. That is why relying on only a final exam to decide who acquired the skill and
who did not means that learning was not treated as a process.
Through the 4 stages of intercultural communicative competence development by
Wessner (2003), the self-examining and self-assessing is completed by learners under the
instruction of the teacher. Students stop at intervals to see how much they have learned
and how they have changed. For example, after a period of time in a course students write
about how much other peoples opinion helped them to change or to confirm their point
of view. The cycle of four stages can be repeated again and again so after each cycle,
intercultural communicative competence learning is at a higher level.
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Engaging with the otherness. In intercultural communicative teaching, teachers
and learners interact with people from other cultures to examine culture from different
angles, contrast their ideas with others, and negotiate meanings. Hudson (2003), by video
connection, linked two classes of Islamic Civilization constructed by her and another
professor in a class at the University of Arizona in Tucson and at Arizona State
University in Phoenix. In such a class one of the most valuable benefits is witnessing two
instructors with very different approaches and specialties questioning each others
assumptions and regional biases. Eisenchlas & Trevaskes (2003) saw the value of
intercultural communicative teaching and learning in exploring how people use
language in specific situations to perform culturally appropriate speech acts, establish and
maintain social relations, mark ethic or group identity, and reflect value systems that are
at the core of culture (p. 399). Wessner (2003) taught a number of courses in which
students discussed online with students from foreign cultures and then traveled to meet
them in person in May Term cross-cultural workshops.
Learners as culture carriers. In the process of changing, students not only explore
but also create culture as active participators. They create their own custom-made
textbook by forming their own questions, choosing best answers for themselves,
deciding how much they learn (Eisenchlas & Trevaskes, 2003; Wessner, 2003). Lange
(1998) regarded the following activities as students active participation in learning:
gather data by means of observation, study cultural artifacts, interview representatives of
the culture, and examine documents and literature texts. Students form hypotheses about
the culture they are learning, refine the hypotheses, and make comparisons and contrasts
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between that culture and their own. Cultural competence is stated explicitly as one of the
teaching programs goals.
Culture needs to gain its position in parallel with its importance in foreign
language education as well as in social sciences education (Fantini, 1997; Hough, 1994;
Hudson, 2003). Intercultural communicative ability cannot be developed via exposure or
osmosis but needs to be taught explicitly (Eisenchlas & Trevaskes, 2003). With the
explicit focus on culture, students cultural knowledge will be arranged into a system.
Teaching and learning culture will not be sporadic any more and we can expect better
results of understanding and predicting culture (Stearns, 2004).
Blooms Taxonomy as a way to measure critical thinking
Critical thinking. As educational philosophy has been shifting from the banking
method (Freire, 1972) to a learner centered one, critical thinking is emphasized. Many
scholars mention critical thinking as the ability to analyze, evaluate, anticipate and make
decisions when one faces the reality of life (Moore, 2004; Petress, 2004; Phillips & Bond,
2004; van Gelder, 2005). Ennis, a leading researcher in the field of educational
philosophy, was cited by Moore (2004) as saying that critical thinking includes grasping
the meaning of statement; judging ambiguities, assumptions or contradictions in
reasoning; identifying necessary conclusions; assessing the adequacy of definition;
assessing the acceptability of alleged authorities (p. 5). Schools are putting critical
thinking into the outcomes for example Bergen Community College states: students will
actively reflect on, reason about, and form independent judgments on a variety of ideas
and information and use these skills to guide their beliefs and actions(Dlugos, 2003).
Critical thinking is also a general ability to see the familiar in a new way (Harrigan, &
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Vincenti, 2004). Ballauff, a German philosopher of education, was cited by Thompson
(2004) that persons need to turn toward their own prejudiced thinking and reconsider the
underlying statements and assumptions that have not come to the public attention and
they need to do this time and again. And finally, Papastephanou (2004) said people
needed to keep a distance from the reality to leave space for critique. In the language of
metacognition, critical thinking is known as entailing awareness of ones own thinking
and reflection on the thinking of self and others as an object of cognition (Kuhn & Dean,
2004).
For critical thinking to be an outcome of education it needs to be embedded in the
course as a goal or a component (Harrigan & Vicenti, 2004; Yanchar & Slife, 2004).
Critical thinking in a course starts with forming generic questions followed by activities
such as comparing, contrasting, forming a defense position (Yanchar & Slife, 2004).
Those activities, as belonging to the cognitive process, are arranged in Blooms
Taxonomy.
Blooms Taxomomy. Blooms Taxonomy has six hierarchical levels: Knowledge,
Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation (Anderson, 1999;
Aviles, 1999; Bloom, 1956; Charles et al., 2002; Imrie, 1995; Krathwohl, 2002). The
lowest taxonomy level is Knowledge. This is defined as the facts or information students
need to remember forming the base for going up to higher activities. For example,
according to Bloom (1956) students are at this Knowledge level when they can give
answers to questions such as: About what proportion of the population of the United
States is living on farm? (p. 79); What is the branch of biological science which deals
with the structure of living organisms called? (p. 83).
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text students are required to answer the question What is the general structure of the
composition (p. 161)? This is analysis of organizational principles.
The fifth level is Synthesis: Students put together elements and parts to form a
whole. Here the pattern or structure for combining is not known before. Synthesis can be
the product of performance as a unique communication for one or more of the following
purposes: to inform, to describe, to persuade, to impress, to entertain; as a plan or
proposed set of operations to be carried out; as a set of abstract relations which
themselves are not clear from the start but discovered or deduced. Writing an essay using
an excellent organization of ideas and statements is the act of synthesis.
The last level is Evaluation: Students make quantitative or qualitative judgments
based on the criteria determined by the students (internal) or given to them (external).
The internal standards are often consistency, logical accuracy and the absence of internal
flaws. The external standards are efficiency, economy, and utility. For example, students
evaluate according to internal criteria when they demonstrate an ability to indicate logical
fallacies in arguments. Students evaluate according to external criteria when they
compare major theories, generalizations and facts about particular cultures.
For critical thinking to take place, students should reach at least the Application
level and above (Tumposky, 2004).
In conclusion, there seems to be two tendencies in teaching culture. One is an
effort to redefine culture and put it into its proper place in curriculum. Second is an effort
to develop ways to teach culture to build a cultural fluency in learners. If cultural fluency
can be understood as an ability to use cultural knowledge to solve problems in
communication, to understand, analyze, and predict social development, in other words,
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to be more critical in thinking, then it is a good idea to set cultural fluency as an outcome
of teaching culture and test to verify whether teaching culture in some new ways can
enhance the critical thinking of learners. In doing so the teacher can be more confident in
choosing which strategies to use in practice and at the same time add to the second effort
of seeking ways to teach culture for cultural fluency. From that reasoning, this teacher
researcher raises the research question: How can teaching culture in a new way through
teaching cultural concepts and teaching culture interculturally help develop critical
thinking?
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Method
Using Blooms Taxonomy, the development of critical thinking was examined
with a group of undergraduate students at a university during the history-culture course of
Latin America. Although this culture course was taught in the native language (English)
and this group of students was not in a foreign language program, there were similarities
to the culture courses in the foreign language curriculum in terms of developing culture
fluency to communicate effectively with people speaking the foreign language.
Besides having to read required books for the course and to take exams as usual
this group of students discussed online with people from other cultures and stopped at
intervals to assess what they had learned. Students formed their own questions important
to them and there were no right answers but the students negotiated the meaning and
found answers for themselves, especially answers to questions regarding controversial
issues. Students compared the two kinds of cultures (the foreign cultures and the culture
of their own) and examined the recent developments of foreign societies in the
interconnectedness with cultural core concepts.
Rationale
There was a new textbook for Vietnamese culture course containing this lesson:
Vietnamese people lived on planting rice; Vietnam was situated next to its huge neighbor
China (Tran, 2000). This lesson was thought to be too easy to learn. Vietnamese students
did not realize how those simple things profoundly shaped their life and how complicated
those simple things were. While the pilot textbook had an implication of exploring
culture in a new way, the teaching and learning culture was not in conformity with that
implication. A new way of teaching culture was needed and many new ways were
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presented in literature. The teacher researcher felt the need to examine some of the new
ways in a culture course to see if critical thinking of the learners was enhanced.
Participants
The participants in this project were college students studying a Latin American
history-culture course at a mid-Atlantic university, a History Department professor and
the teacher researcher as a participant observer.
The university was a Christian liberal art college with the mission of educating
students to live in a global context and challenging them to pursue their life calling
through scholar inquiry, artistic creation, guided practice, and life changing cross cultural
encounter. The universitys total enrollment was around 1,600; the student faculty ratio
was 11:1; and the class rank of first year students was 36% in top fifth of high school
class.
This Latin American course, offered by the History Department was a 200 level
course. The intercultural interaction consisted of online discussion with people from other
cultures in the frame of a foreign film series and online discussion with long term
Mennonite Central Committees workers in Latin American countries. The questioning
strategy also belonged to the intercultural interaction as it widened the scope of students
thinking beyond Latin America toward a global context.
Most of the students were history majors but some from other departments and
they were different in background and interest. One thing they shared was the Global
Village Curriculum of the campus and the denominational mission of serving others and
solving conflicts in non violent ways. Some of the students took the course for their cross
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cultural requirement, some for their personal interest in Latin America. The discussion
online was their first learning experience.
The professor of history was Mennonite Central Committees worker in Asia for
many years. He was the coordinator of the schools foreign film series and of a
curriculum writing project dealing with developmental issues and cultural fluency.
The teacher researcher was in the course as a participant observer doing almost
the same thing students did such as reading the course materials, participating in the
foreign film series, discussing in class, discussing online. He collected data for this action
research project in an attempt to improve his future designing and teaching of culture
courses.
Apparatus
The data collection consisted of an electronic interview form (Appendix A) and
an electronic questionnaire (Appendix B). The electronic interview form was sent to the
students twice at the beginning of the course in January 2006 and at the end of the course
in April 2006. The aim of the interview was to see if there was a change in the students
understanding culture as well as in their seeing the differences and similarities between
Latin American and their own culture. The electronic questionnaire merely asking about
facts on Latin American countries was sent to the students in April 2006. The
questionnaire aimed at testing if the students remembered substantial information from
the course materials. These electronic forms were word documents and were attached to
an email to send back to the teacher researcher.
The data collection also consisted of a position essay on Peru at the beginning of
the course, then a midterm paper, an essay on Cuba, an essay on El Salvador, and a final
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that is, not students own, then it could only be categorized as Knowledge or
Comprehension. Similarly, if the thesis was interesting and might give an impression of
critical thinking but there were not enough facts and analysis supporting it, this argument
could only be categorized as Knowledge or Comprehension.
Arguments were categorized according to Blooms Taxonomy and given a value
from one to six depending on what category in Blooms Taxonomy they were put into:
Knowledge (1), Comprehension (2), Application (3), Analysis (4), Synthesis (5), or
Evaluation (6). Value 1 indicated the less critical thinking and value 6 the most critical
one.
For example, in the essay on Peru student 4 formed the thesis: With half of all
Peruvians living beneath the poverty line, 15% living in extreme poverty, and 45% of
them being indigenous, doing anything we could to empower such a large percentage of
the population would be more than justified. Furthermore, the potential these people
possess, though buried under layers of hopelessness and discouragement, is worth
seeking out. The first part of the thesis was from the textbook thus standing alone it
could be categorized as Knowledge. But interestingly student 4 went on to state that
changes needed to base on the potential these people possess. Student 4 showed her
understanding of the mass strength and later on in the essay she provided contexts and
concepts, facts and analysis to prove that the poor Peruvians had potential to change their
life for better. This argument was categorized as Application. Stating why the thesis was
important and what further questions the thesis prompted student 4 wrote: Change must
be bottom-up, and the people at the bottom have to believe in it. Could Peru ever elect a
leader great enough to inspire and initiate this kind of grassroots vision, and then
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talking with guest speakers were also posted on line by students after each film screening
and after each guest speakers presentation in class. Students posted their opinion on line
twice as a group after in class discussion about the film and after reading other cultural
groups opinion. The talking online with guest speakers was also posted twice but
individually.
Among eight students who agreed to participate only two students answered and
sent back the first time interview form and none of them sent back the second time
interview form and the questionnaire.
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Results
Below is the result table describing data from students papers. Each essay was
counted as two arguments; 15 concepts in the midterm exam were counted as 15
arguments; and 10 concepts in the final exam Part 1 were counted as 10 arguments. Each
argument was given a Blooms Taxonomy value from one to six according to which
category the argument was judged to: Knowledge (1), Comprehension (2), Application
(3), Analysis (4), Synthesis (5), or Evaluation (6). Cumulating the values of arguments of
all participating students gave the data for the third column: Total Blooms Taxonomy
value of the essay. The fourth column data came out as the total Blooms Taxonomy
value of the third column divided by the number of arguments of all participating
students. For example, in the case of the essay on Peru, each essay had 2 arguments and
there were 8 participating students, so the total number given to the argument was 16.
Cumulating Blooms Taxonomy value of all these 16 arguments gave a total value of 35
(Total Blooms Taxonomy Value of Argument). The average Blooms Taxonomy value
of Argument was 2.19. The last column showed the percentage of arguments which were
categorized as critical, that is, arguments given the value of three, four, five, or six. In the
case of Essay on Cuba, 100% from the last column meant all the arguments had a value
of at least three or more.
Arguments Categorization According to Blooms Taxonomy
Essay
Number of
Argument
Total Blooms
TaxonomyValue of
Argument
Average
Blooms
TaxonomyValue of
Argument
Ratio ofCritical
Argument
Essay on Peru 2 35 2.19 31.3%
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Midterm Exam 15 265 2.2 28.57%
Essay on Cuba 2 79 4.94 100%
Essay on El
Salvador
2 62 3.87 100%
Final Exam-1 10 222 2.78 31.2%
Final Exam-2 2 78 4.88 100%
Final Exam-3 2 74 4.63 100%
Looking at the table above, the two papers in the first half of the course showed
the average value of 2.19 and 2.2 which were slightly above the level of Comprehension
according to Blooms Taxonomy. There was also a growth from the midterm exam to the
final exam 1: from 2.2 to 2.78. Although the two exams did not yield high results the
growth was toward 3.0 which meant the Application level of Blooms taxonomy.
However, four essays in the second half of the course showed consistently high results:
4.94 (essay on Cuba), 3.87 (essay on El Salvador), 4.88 (final exam 2), and 4.63 (final
exam 3). Those numbers represented Synthesis, Analysis, Synthesis, and Analysis
respectively. In the four essays in the second half of the course, all the arguments could
be considered as critical: 100% of the arguments had the Blooms Taxonomy value of
three or more.
No students sent back the second time interview form and questionnaire so the
reporting of changes in students cultural understanding as well as the testing on
remembering facts could not be completed.
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Discussion
Analysis
The results showed a consistent growth in critical thinking from the first to the
second half of the course. There might be a positive relation between critical thinking and
teaching culture in a new way through teaching cultural concepts and teaching culture
interculturally.
The first essay and the midterm exam in the first half of the course carried the
averages of 2.19 and 2.2 respectively meaning students written work was slightly above
Comprehension of Blooms Taxonomy. In the first half of the course, students were
confident in presenting the information from reading the courses materials and
discussions. They were beyond the degree of only remembering and stepped into the
degree of understanding the information better, understanding the essence of events and
development, knowing to arrange the information to fulfill the task of communication:
writing an essay (the first paper), showing the significance of concepts (the second
paper).
Although the written tasks provided opportunities to be critical: Students were to
create their own essay questions and generative theses, to view concepts from the angle
of their significance in understanding Latin America rather than telling what the concepts
were, only a small number of arguments could be regarded as critical (at Application,
Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation): 31.3% (paper 1) and 28.6% (midterm exam). This
might be due to the fact that at the first half of the course students and the professor
focused on covering the materials. Techniques to enhance critical thinking were limited
to the professors questioning strategy and introduction to what it meant by critical
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thinking. In addition, dialogue with other cultures was limited to only watching and
discussion about two films from Latin America: Central Station and Motorcycle
Diary. This was problematic because the students exposure to other cultures and their
act of discussion seemed lacking in intensity.
The essay format consisted of thesis, contexts and concepts to understand the
thesis, facts and analysis, and finally restatement of how important the thesis was. The
midterm paper format was a list of 15 concepts and students were required to show how
significant these concepts were to understand Latin America. Both the essay and concept
format promoted critical thinking. For the essay, students could choose their own issue to
form question, thesis, and provide facts and analysis to support the thesis. This essay
format gave no limit to what students could think. For the midterm exam, 15 concepts
were given and instead of asking what the concepts were, the exams requirement was
showing the significance of the concepts in understanding Latin America. Again, students
had a chance to compare, to analyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate. However, most of the
students written work stated the theses found in the textbooks and provided facts,
analysis found in the textbooks. Those arguments, though sometimes deep, reasonable
and interesting, showed nothing of students further thinking, thus could not be put into
the categories of Application or higher in Blooms Taxonomy. For example, in the essay
on Peru, student 8 wrote this as the thesis: Because of the condition of living in Peru the
only way to create a change for Peruvians is to help the extreme impoverished and
socially fragmented people through the start of institutions and organizations. This thesis
seemed to be all right but could be categorized as Knowledge because it was already
addressed in the reading materials and student 8 only remembered the argument.
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had occurred. However, when critical thinking was set as an outcome of the course, the
average of 2+ (Comprehension) was not enough.
In the second half of the course, students became more familiar with what was
expected in answering questions and in essays. They demonstrated more critical thinking.
For example, in the essay on Cuba student 7 showed the politeness or empathy by calling
Cuban communist regime governmental society and posted a critical question: What
was the source of the Cuban joyfulness in the context of poor material life? How could
that source come from the government that served them and also repressed them
immensely? Student 6 evaluated that there would be no need for foreign intervention in
Cuban economy because small capitalism was already there. She called starting
economic liberty in Cuba seed for the countrys democracy and bright future.
In the second half of the course, the average value of the arguments jumped to 4.9
(essay on Cuba), 3.9 (essay on El Salvador), and4.9 (final exam 2), 4.7 (final exam 3)
which were almost at the level of Synthesis, Analysis, Synthesis, Synthesis in Blooms
Taxonomy respectively. All arguments could be considered as critical thinking. This
might be due to the fact that guest speakers presented Latin American countries in a
different light widening students scope of understanding them. Moreover, the dialogue
on line with guest speakers after they spoke was very productive and enthusiastic.
On average students argument from the paper on Cuba was categorized into the
level of Synthesis according to Blooms Taxonomy (4.94). All the arguments were at the
level of Application, Analysis, Synthesis, or Evaluation thus could be considered as
critical. Through the essay on Cuba students expressed insight understanding of Cuban
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political and cultural situation and reasonably predicted the future of Cuba and its relation
with the USA.
In the essay on El Salvador, students focused on finding ways to solve conflicts
and rebuild the war torn country rather than on analyzing and comparing the countrys
socioeconomic situation. Therefore, most arguments were categorized as application. In
this essay students also showed consistent critical thinking. All the arguments were
considered to be critical (at Application, Analysis, Synthesis, or Evaluation).
The final exam was challenging: Students had to complete 3 parts of the exam
closed notes, closed books. The first part in which 10 concepts were given and students
needed to show how significant they were to understanding Latin America was similar to
the midterm exam. The progress from 2.2 (midterm exam) to 2.8 (final exam part 1) not
reaching the Application (3) threshold might due to the fact that in this part students had
to deal with concepts covering the whole Latin America and the form of question in itself
was more difficult to be critical in comparison to essay.
The two essays in the final exam showed the sustainable critical thinking (4.9 and
4.7 both near the Synthesis level) but since the questions were homogenous the factor to
decide how critical students were did not lie on the thesis and restatement of the thesis
but on how students made the thesis and restatement of the thesis clear, and how adequate
information and facts students brought to make the answers more persuasive.
If critical was trying to be well informed, looking at things from another persons
point of view, withholding a decision when the evidence is insufficient, being open
minded then intercultural communication seemed to enhance that. If thoughtfulness was a
process of making meaning (not just receiving it) and negotiating the meaning with
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others (not just thinking alone) then intercultural communication might be useful to serve
that purpose. The intercultural communication impact on critical thinking might lie
mostly in the wider scope in which learners handled the concepts relating to
development, liberty and governance of Latin American countries and in the dialogue
into and from which learners interpreted explicit and implicit meanings of their own and
of people from other cultures.
Through the course a number of things were learned. First, the professors
rhetoric did not only lie in the enthusiasm and the height of pitch but also in the wider
scope the professor put the issue in. For example, human right was not necessarily the
freedom of speech. It could be the right to have clean water many people took for
granted. Second, students should be regarded as able agents in dealing with academic
challenges and critical thinking should be required explicitly. In the second half of the
course when students were told explicitly to analyze, synthesize, evaluate they
demonstrated critical thinking in the essays. Third, when students understood cultures
they empathized and demonstrated personal growth to be global citizens.
Limitations
First, this developing critical thinking was a process and required a long period of
time. Most of the workers in the field claimed to have a certain degree of culture fluency
and critical thinking after a number of years working. Therefore, examining critical
thinking development in only one semester might not be an accurate representation of
student capacity to think critically.
Second, in the present context the teacher researcher had to categorize students
arguments according to Blooms Taxonomy himself. Although each category in Blooms
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the classic praxis set by Freire (1972). Dialogues were now started and that was
pedagogy of the liberated.
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Appendix A
Interview Questions
(Write at least one paragraph to each question and limit your total answer to less
than 2 pages)
1. How would you define culture?
2. What is your culture?
3. What similarities are there between Latin American culture and your culture?
4. What differences are there between Latin American culture and your culture?
5. How important are the indigenous people to Latin American culture?
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Appendix B
Questionnaire
Circle the best answer a, b, c, or d
1. Indigenous population forms the majority in _________:
a) Argentina b) Bolivia
c) Chile d) Guatemala
2. The largest racial category in most Latin American countries is _________:
a) Mapuche b) Mestizos
c) Mulattos d) Wauja
3. Title II of the Helms Burton Act requires:
a) Both Fidel and Raul Castro be prohibited from participation in a transitional
government
b) Clear commitment to return properties taken over since 1959 to current U.S.
citizens
c) A transitional government in Cuba
d) No interference with Radio Marti or Television Marti broadcast
4. What are the problems of Latin American lost decade?
a) Economic recession and political crises
b) Economic recession and foreign debts
c) Oil shocks and foreign debts
d) Social turmoil and military coups
5. Where abortion is not considered a crime in Latin America?
a) Argentina b) Bolivia
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Appendix C
Participant Consent Form
Participants name: _____________________
Participants mailing address: _____________________
_____________________
Dear Participant,
You are invited to participate in a research project on teaching culture, which I will be
conducting as part of my 2006 graduation work in the Education Program at Eastern
Mennonite University and which requests the exploration of critical thinking and
intercultural communicative competence.
Besides your midterm and final exam papers as well as your discussions on line, this
project will thus investigate, through a questionnaire and interview questions, some
aspects of critical thinking and intercultural communicative competence so as to detect
relationships between teaching culture and critical thinking development.
This research will, therefore, require you as a participant to respond to a questionnaire
(which will be sent to you in April) and a set of interview questions (which will reach
you in January and April). In total, it will take you approximately an hour to write your
responses.
From this study, I may understand and be able to determine principles of teaching culture
and their possible impacts on critical thinking and intercultural communicative
competence as well as on instruction and learning of English as a foreign/second
language.
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You may feel anxious about your answers being closely examined and discussed in
publications. If this should occur, please rest assured that none of your answers will likely
be quoted in full and that your identity as a participant will be protected throughout the
research and will not be revealed in any published results without your request for
identification.
Your participation in this project is absolutely voluntary, and you can decide not to
answer some or all of my questions without giving any explanation. You can also
withdraw your consent and terminate your participation at any time during the study.
If you have any questions or comments about this study, you can email me at
[email protected] . You may also contact Dr. Cathy Smeltzer Erb, my action research
mentor, at (540) 432 4638 or at [email protected].
By signing and returning this form, you are indicating your consent to participate in this
study.
Your signature: ______________________________ Date: _______________________
Your printed name: ___________________________
Thank you for your participation.
Sincerely,
Thang Tran
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]