Cultural Attitudes to Learning

As we can see from the case of our Japanese student, most students thi nk and study and write in the way they have been trained at school and university. Each country has its own traditions not only about what a student must learn but also how he should learn. In some countries students are not encouraged to ask questions; in others countries they are expected to question both their teachers and the materials they are learning.

In some countries the teacher or lecturer provides all the information which the students must learn; in others students are expected to find most of their material independently, by reading or by their own experiments and re­search. When a student trained in one cultural tradition moves, as you are planning to move, to study in another country, a different style of learning is often necessary.

All of the characteristics presented in this diagram can be found in all education systems and in all cultures. Some learning strategies, however, are given more importance than others according to the context in which they occur. It is the context that determines which learning strategy is preferred. We can see, for example, how this ap­plies to different levels of schooling in the Australian education system.

In primary and secondary school, to a large extent, students learn by memorizing information, solving problems and following procedures set by the teacher. We have called this the reproductive approach to learning. The move to tertiary education, in particular university education, involves an important shift to a new approach to learning - the analytical approach. In this context stu­dents are required not simply to memorize but to question and think critically about the knowledge that is presented to them. And,

student must learn

these learning styles

Indonesian postgraduate student