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]