5/30/2018 Week 6 Individualism vs Collectivism

5/30/2018 Week 6 Individualism vs Collectivism

5/30/2018 Week 6 Individualism vs Collectivism

Individualistic countries: USA, UK, Australia, Hungary

Collectivistic countries: Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Venezuela, Guatemala, Indonesia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, and India. [1]

I found this great map about Individualist and Collectivistic countries. https://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=48440

I’d like to share a part from the reading because I think this has key information, such as: “There are elements of both individualism and collectivism in any culture” that’s why we can never assume anything before we ourselves would have done our “homework” to get to know as many information about our students as possible.

“It is important to realize that values, like any human characteristic, fall along a continuum. There are elements of both individualism and collectivism in any culture (Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch, Greenfield, & Quiroz, 2001). For example, a culture oriented to individualism might highly value being able to work independently, while a culture oriented to collectivism might highly value being able to work as part of a group. However, the first culture almost certainly also values being able to work as part of a group, and the second culture also values being able to work independently. The difference is in the relative importance that each culture places on these contrasting values. The concept of a continuum also applies to individuals within a culture. Most members of a collectivistic culture will hold values at the collectivistic end of the continuum, although each will be at a different spot on the continuum, and some will even be at the individualistic end. Where they are on the continuum of values depends on such factors as how closely they identify with traditional culture, their level of education, and the ethnic mix of their community. This variability among people again illustrates the need for individualization in transition services and supports (Atkins, 1992).”[2]

1. What insights did the video give you concerning assessing the behavior and needs of your future culturally diverse students?

I think this video was an excellent eye-opener about Individualism and Collectivism. I come from an Individualistic country, but the Soviet Union tried to force Collectivism on the country and I am sure that it had left some marks in the people’s thinking. As an EFL/ESL teacher from such background, I need to know the difference between the two concepts. It is important to understand that an individualistic child was taught and encouraged from early childhood to make decisions alone, to take responsibility for their own actions, while in a Collectivistic country the opposite is true, children are discouraged to take actions alone. It is considered a selfish act when a person does things alone, the whole family/community/society is more important than the self. As a teacher it is important to understand why certain students might act differently and why other students might not be able to perform a task if it is based on one or the other scale

2. What critical questions do you have concerning this topic?

It is necessary to find out additional information about the students before we start to teach their class? What if the information we find out gives us false imaginations about a specific race?

3. What potential misunderstandings and problems could surface? How will you be better prepared to address them.

As an EFL/ESL teacher we could face challenges of not realizing which group our students belong to. As an individualistic student a person might enjoy working alone and creating their own projects, being responsible for their own work. On the other hand, a collectivistic student might find greater hardships on working of their own, because they prefer to work on problems in a group. These students might need extra support from the teacher or they might require different instructions then their individualistic classmates. It is also true that the borders are not completely set. Some individualistic student might like to work in groups and vice versa some collectivistic student might like to work alone. Therefore, we can never assume how a student might behave according to their culture.

I think it is important to approach each student individually overall we are all individuals and we might all act differently as some might expect from us.

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[1] https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-collectivistic-cultures-2794962

[2] http://www.ncset.org/publications/essentialtools/diversity/partIII.asp