Funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments

Marieke van Egmond

Marieke van Egmond

Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS)
Jacobs University Bremen
Campus Ring 1/South Hall
PO Box 750 561
28759 Bremen
Germany

Room: 308

Phone: +49 (0)421 200 3953
Fax: +49 (0)421 200 3955

Email: mvegmond(_a_)bigsss-bremen.de


Marieke van Egmond is a Ph.D. Fellow at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) and is working in the thematic field of Attitude Formation, Value Change and Intercultural Communication.

Dissertation Topic

The meaning of learning across cultures.

Abstract

 

International mobility has become a central dimension of academic life. The numbers of students from diverse cultural backgrounds entering European institutions of higher edcuation are increasing annually. The current project is aimed at understanding the concepts of learning that both students and members of faculty from different cultural backgrounds endorse. The theory that forms the main theoretical base of this project is the mind / virtue orientation theory by Li (2003; 2005). Li found that Western students have a ‘mind oriented‘ approach to learning and Asian students have a ‘virtue oriented’ approach. At the core of the mind orientation is the belief that learning is a cognitive endeavor. Learning is primarily a process of developing one’s thinking skills. In the virtue orientation, learning is perceived as the development of the person as a whole, on the moral and social level as well.

The dissertation presents four studies that were conducted on the basis of this framework. First, an extensive theoretical analysis was conducted to assess whether previously segregated findings in the literature could be integrated into the framework of the mind – virtue orientation. The following two chapters present the findings of survey studies that assessed the beliefs about learning of German and Chinese students and faculty, but also of students from two Eastern European countries; Poland and Romania. Findings indicate a cross-cultural difference between the Western and Asian context, but not between the Western and Eastern European contexts. Lastly, an experimental study is reported that measured the mind and virtue orientation implicitly in German and Chinese students. In conclusion, the conducted studies provide evidence for the hypothesis that Western and Asian academics place a relatively different value on certain beliefs about learning over others. These beliefs can be meaningfully integrated into the framework of the mind and virtue orientation.

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