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11PEDAGOGY
EDUCATION AS A CULTURAL PARADIGM
PhD, Boyadzhieva Ellie Bulgaria, South-West University of Blagoevgrad
Abstract. The paper focuses on some issues concerning the introduction of new universalistapproaches such as learner centered teaching and autonomy, multiculturalism and pluralistic approachesin attempt to bring about a cultural paradigm shiftin the Bulgarian educational system. The basic hypothesis is that the attitudes towards these educational innovations and initiatives introduced and exported by the European Union administrative bodies depend highly on the receiving national culture. Bulgarian national cultureas a set of assumptions, beliefs and shared expectations isthen described along the six dimensions underlying Hofstede 's theory of organizations and cultures. An analysis of the teacher-student relationship as an archetypal social pair in Bulgaria is provided and implications concerning the innovative concepts of in education are conferred. Finally, it is concluded that local culture specifics can cause setups in the introduction of innovations in the overall educational process and to prevent the intended cultural paradigm shift.
Keywords: cultural paradigm, student-teacher relations, cultural dimensions, national education
Introduction.
The recent (and not so recent) trends in modern education are most often related to buss expressions such as learner centered education, learner autonomy and motivation, multiculturalism and pluralistic approaches. Undoubtedly, they are intrinsically related as the shift from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach, which originated initially in foreign language teaching pedagogy, was informed by the search for increasing motivation in the educational process. At present learner autonomy, pluralistic approaches and multicultural education are seen as a tool to enhance learners' motivation in general. The latter have become part of the overall educational strategy of the European Union and a mainstream in the modern philosophy of education. Additionally, these innovative concepts have become one of the majorintellectual export products to be employed in the national educational systems of the member states. A latest example illustrating the situation is thatin the spring of 2016 the Bulgarian Ministry of Education issued a decree that demands the introduction of compulsory subject in the tertiary curriculum named Multicultural communication following directly the European guidelines. It is a fact that for years many of the international academic exchange and scientific programs in humanities have promoted multiculturalism and focused on the ways how to provide multicultural education worldwide.
However, while the success of multicultural education and the other innovative initiatives proves to be highly effective in some countries, in others it seems to be quite questionable. The major heuristic problembrought to the fore in this study is Why this is so?
The possible answer may lie in a domain which,at least at a first glance, seems to be quite far away from the field of education and pedagogy per se. I would suggest that the efficiency of the educational innovations such as the shift in the teacher's role, the strategies and methods of rising learner's motivation by providing learner autonomy andthe overall attitude of the community towards these educational initiatives instigated by the European administrative bodies depend extremely on the national culture, which is the ultimate recipient of these innovations.
Education
Education cannot be ripped off a national culture as it presents an intrinsic part of the overall attitude of a society to preparing the coming generations to become its effective and efficient members.
Initially education meant childrearingincluding training in social codes and manners or referred to training of animals. It was recorded in Middle French in the14c. originating from the Latin educationem(nominativeeducatio) The modern meaning of education as "systematicschoolingandtrainingforwork"dates to1610s [Education 1].
As most dictionaries attest theterm educationin modernity has three basic dimensions: first, it is the action or process of teaching someone especially in a school, college, or university; second, it
may defined as the knowledge, skill, and understanding that you get from attending a school, college, or university; and third, it is a field of study that deals with the methods and problems of teaching[Education 2].All three dimensions of education are culturally biased as, first, the process of teaching involves two parties, these of the educators and educated whose relations are shaped by historically based cultural patterns of interaction. Second, knowledge, skills and understanding reflect the cultural attitudes and beliefs of a people transmitted through education, and, finally, the field of study and the methodology of teaching are a result of socially constructed practices characteristic of a particular society. The latter relates to learning styles which are significantly influenced by the mode a culture communicates with its children and young people.
The definition of Wikipedia states that: "Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits", which directly_relates culture to education, as it involvesconcepts like values, beliefs and habits that are terms traditionally related more to culture than to education.[Wikipedia].
Obviously, educational systems present major elements of every national culture along with language, religion, attitudes, beliefs and values. They are products of the historically established conventional social practices and are thus an important part of the social organization of a society.
As education refers to the transmission of skills, ideas and attitudes (along with training in particular disciplines), it is evident that education as a system is bound to transmit cultural ideas and should be considered part of the national culture equally resulting from and producing the specific national cultural paradigm.
For centuries noweducation has taken place in either formal or informal settings. No matter that recently a lot of attention is paid to informal education, part of which is the life-long learning model, it is an undeniable fact that there is no European country where there is no school system regulated by the state in one form or another. Most European countries have developed a public school system starting in the 19th century and which today has turned into an industry of its own right.
National school systems may vary in different countries but all of them are united by the fact that they present formal education in a structured environment. National educational systems have been plannedand developed in the history of a country in conformity with a specific set of values and ideals that directthe individual choices starting from the curriculum, regulating the student-teacher relations, and establishing the methods of assessment.
The student-teacher relations are recently discussed under the umbrella term classroom management used to describe the way the process of education is realized in the classroom so that lessons run smoothly by preventing possible troublesome behaviour of the students. Classroom management relates tightly to classroom discipline, learner's respect to the teacher and learner motivation.
As already mentioned education is an industry of its own within every national economy and an important part of social life. In most European countries compulsory education requires that children spend at least 10 to 12 years at school and those years are the most important in the process of maturation of the individuals and crucial for preparing them to become ready to enter social life. At school children learn how to communicate with their peers. This is the place they learn about social differences and acquire basic social skills. School culture reflects to a great extent the national cultureparadigm on the one hand.On the other, school culture can be pondered as a specific type of a corporate subculture.
The teacher and the student are an archetypal role-pair in virtually any society. Observations on the teacher-student modes of interaction in different national school-systems display a great diversity, varying from closeness and friendship-like relations, to total dominance of the teacher over the student accompanied by indisputable respect of the student to the teacher.
I strongly believe that the range of such variances is rooted in the type of the national culture paradigmin which the educational system functions as school culture is a mini-world containing all the features characteristic of the existing cultural environment. The basic factors that underlie the variances are the social positions of teachers and students, the differences in the historically established patterns of teacher-student interaction, and the differences in the way students are expected to learn in a given society.
In the time of ongoing globalization the emergency of a number of universalist ideas aiming at global unification of approaches and practices in education create challenges to the national educational systems, which they have to face and comply with thus imposing a shift in the existing culture paradigm.
Culture Theory
Cultural paradigm is defined as the shared set of assumptions and similar expectations in how
people within a culture perceive the world[Cultural paradigm].
This definition is in compliance with Hofstede's concept of culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another." [Hofstede 2009: 24; Hofstede et al 2010: 4-5].As his theory of cultures and organizations is based on corporate behaviour, and education is a particular kind of such behaviour, his framework seems to be appropriate for the purpose of the discussion below. He and his team have elicited six cultural dimensions along which native cultures can be defined. These are individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, term orientation and indulgence.
Individualism refers to the people's self-image as defined in terms of "I" in individualistic societies and "we" in the collectivist ones.In individualist societies people are supposed to look after themselves and their direct family only. In collectivist societies people belong to 'in-groups' that take care of them in exchange for loyalty. Others are recognized as belonging to 'out-of-the group'.
Power distance (PD)expresses the attitude of the culture towards the inherent social inequalities. Cultures are divided into such where power distance is high and other where power distance is relatively low. In societies with high PDhierarchy and centralization are undisputable and taken for granted. In such societies subordinates expect to be told what to do and the ideal boss is perceived as a benevolent autocrat whose decisions cannot be refuted. Cultures with low PD accept hierarchical organizations as normal. The ideal boss is a "good father" who supervises you and tells you what to do. However, superiorsare highly visible and have to constantly and consistently prove themselves in order to make people respect and accept their decisions.
An important point to be made here is the fact that in cultures that score high both in collectivism and high power distance age is perceived as a source of wisdom and is highly respected.
Uncertainty avoidance (UA) refers to the way in which a society deals with the fact that the future can never be knowncreating ambiguity that which results in anxiety. In cultures with high UA there are rigid codes of belief and behaviour. In these cultures there is an emotional need for rules (even if the rules never seem to work) time is money, people have an inner urge to be busy and work hard, precision and punctuality are the norm. As security is the basis of individual motivation, unorthodox behaviour and ideas are not tolerated and innovation is generally resisted. Cultures with low UA maintain a more relaxed attitude in which practice counts more than principles. Innovations are tolerated as a way to success. Failures of new ideas and practices create a basis for further exploration.
Masculinity relates to what motivates people in their actions - wanting to be the best,which is typical for masculine cultures, or liking what one is doing regardless of the final result of the activity, which is typical for feminine cultures.High masculinity indicates that the society is driven by competition and achievement. Success is defined by the winner and is demonstrated by status symbols like cars, impressive houses, clothes etc. People work hard to achieve a high living standard and are expected to show their achievements to the public. Long working hours and dedication to work are a necessity. On the contrary, high femininity indicates that the dominant values in a society are well-being and caring for the other. Standard of living is much less important than quality of life that is the most important sign of societal success. In such societies the focus is on "working in order to live". Standing out from the crowd is not admirable. Incentives such as free time and flexibility are favoured.
Time orientation (TO) relates to how a society has to maintain some links with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the present and future. Short TOindicates cultures that take a more pragmatic approach. They encourage thrift and efforts as a way to prepare for the future and are able to easily adapt traditions to newly-changed conditions. Such cultures show strong propensity to save and invest. Long TOcharacterizes normative societies preferring to maintain time-honoured traditions and norms and view societal change with suspicion.
Indulgence is the extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses. Relatively weak control is called "indulgence" and the relatively strong control is called "restraint".Indulgence cultures show fairly free gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoying life, having fun and thus put much emphasis on leisure time. Restraint countries have a tendency to cynicism and pessimism, and control the gratification of their desires. People's actions are restrained by social norms and they feel that indulging themselves is somewhat wrong.
BG culture after Hofstede's cultural dimensions
BG scoring 30 is a typical collective culture. Collectivism effects in the fact that the teacher and the learner belong to different groups, where the learners consider teachers as outsiders of their own group and vice versa. In-group relationships prevail over task which to a high extentinhibits co-working and sharing responsibilities. The communication between the teacher and the student is curbed by the presumption that students should speak only in called on by the teacher. Conversations
including teaching techniques such as group work are limited within very small groups. This prevents the easy adoption of the concept of learner autonomy based on the presumption of freedom of choice on the one hand, which in turn lowers learner motivation. What is more, motivation is different for the teachers and the students as it is embedded in the prevailing in-group values that are different for each group.
The high power distance of Bulgariascoring 70 indicates high centralization where subordinates expect to be told what to do meaning that Bulgarians (both teachers and students) do not welcome leaders that give them the opportunity to state their opinions. They avoid expressing disagreement, as well as being included in the decision-making process.Students expect teachers to initiate conversation. They also expect that the teacher knows all. Being in the role of the superiors in the classroom environment the teachers are ascribed the role of major judges whose opinion is never contradicted or criticized. The expected classroom behaviour of the students is that they should always show respect and obedience to the teacher. This added to collectivism and the need for formal harmony in a learning situation explains the reluctance of both teachers and students to collaborate and make changes that are not approved of by higher authorities as both teachers and learners expect to be told what to do. This maintains a teacher-centered education and practically handicaps autonomy.
The high uncertainty avoidance in Bulgarian culture scores85 and indicates that unorthodox behaviour and ideas are generally resisted. Generally, teachers view intellectual disagreement as personal disloyalty. This high score points towardthe fact that the Bulgarian society is intolerant to 'out-of-the-box' type of thinking which adds to the first two dimensions and further enhances the inflexibility of the traditional educational system. It is resistant to innovations, especially those that are imported from abroad as they feel foreign. This builds a vicious circle, namely, the central body represented by the Ministry of education agrees with the innovative directives initiated by the EU and in turn informs the schools. The schools seemingly take measures for their implementation and report the achievements to the superior bodies. However, what happensis that the new ideas and initiatives are only spoken about and manifested in official documentsincluding school reports and academic research, but in fact remain theoretical constructsvoid of content, which rarely (or rather never) take place in school- life practices.
Collectivism and high power distance prevent the idea of equal participation and shared responsibility of teachers and learners in the teaching/learning process. "Foreign" intellectual products imported from outside in the culture go against the in-group type of thinking and the high uncertainty avoidance blocks creativity and innovations and reinforces the fears of novelties.
The score of 40 placesBulgaria among the feminine type of cultures. In feminine cultures people work in order to live, free time is important. Femininity requires modesty, status is not important,leisure is a measure of success.The feminine type of culture promotes keeping a low-profile type of behaviour in the group. That is why 'popular' students (if any) in the Bulgarian schools are an exception.Passive silence and listening are very much part of the communication style at school.
Bulgaria with a score of 69 is defined as short-term oriented culture, referred to also as apragmatic culture, where the future dominates the past and stability is the most important virtue.The short-term orientation makes students attribute success and failure to sheer luck, where the student's success is attributed to the teacher's professional excellence. Carpe diem is a leading principle in education.
As for the last sixth dimension, namely indulgence, Bulgaria presents a restricted culture with a score of only 16. Individual's actions are restrained by social norms and people feel that indulging themselves is somewhat wrong.Students in restrained cultures are raised to control their actions according to the established social norms and to feel that indulging themselves is an inappropriate behaviour. Pragmatism combined with indulgence also undermines the possibilities of shifting to a learner-centered education and the unconditional acceptance of autonomy.
Universalist concepts in European education
There are three areas where national culture and the innovative universalist philosophy in education clash, namely learner-centered education, learner autonomy, multicultural education and pluralistic approaches.
The communicative approach in foreign language teaching and constructivism changed the traditional views about the teacher role where the teacher used to be considered a supplier of ultimate knowledge, while the learner was seen as an empty vessel. These concepts prompted the idea that the teacher should bea facilitator and the learner should actively participate in the teaching/learning process both in formal and informal education.As a result 'learner autonomy' and 'motivation' as relatively new concepts became buzz-words related to the shift from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach in FLT methodology, which is closely related to the philosophy of pluralistic approaches including multiculturalism.As a result, the recent concepts of learner autonomy and
motivation, which as seen from the discussion above are very sensitive to culture, have become underlying principles in multicultural education as well.
Yet, it should be borne in mind that the idea of multicultural education emerged as a side effect of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's in the US and it reflects a historical stage in the development of the US educational philosophy [Banks and Banks 2013: 4]. Later itgrew to eventually include "[...] diverse courses, programs, and practices that education institutions decided to respond to the demands, needs, and aspirations of the various groups" [Banks and Banks 2013:5]. As a result the Common European Framework of Reference for languages set an aim to build a multilingual and multicultural competence as means of overcoming the ethnic differences between and the prejudices of the nations in united Europe and a leading principle of the European philosophy of education. It has been recently supposed that multiculturalism supports the idea that students and their backgrounds and experiences should be the center of their education and should provide for learner autonomy. In effect, students are expected to develop a positive perception of themselves by demonstrating knowledge about their own culture, history, and to contribute to the mutual understanding of diverse groups.In the long run those positive perceptions are expected to strengthen students' ability to make choices and become autonomous which will in turn enhance their motivation. Finally, the pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures in education have been proposed as an innovative didactic method.
However, multiculturalism along with learner-centered teaching and learner autonomy that originated in West-European cultures, present attempts intended to solve problems and change the educational systems typical for western cultures. Yet, no matter how worthy these concepts are, they are felt foreign and far away from the problems Bulgarian education faces because of the cultural specifics of the Bulgarian cultural paradigm, which is reflected in the historically established national educational system.
Conclusions
The implementation of innovative approaches in education such as multiculturalism,learner centered education and learner autonomy show different levels of acceptance in different countries. They can be either enhanced or prevented by factors embedded in the recipient native culture.It can be suggested with a high level of certainty that new ideas are transferred more easily between countries with similar cultural paradigms. In contrast, innovative ideas can be heavily handicapped when the exporting and the recipient countries are located at the extremes of the cultural dimensions. All these new ideas are concepts that originated in highly individualistic Western European societies with low power distance and relatively low uncertainty avoidance.These concepts have been imposed on Bulgaria through the mechanism of the EU global policies in education and became popular among the professionals in the sphere of education with little importance (if any) for the teaching practice.
It seems quite unlikely these innovative ideas to be implemented in the Bulgarian education in the near future in the way the western authors originally meant. However, there might be an alternative to find a way todo so in the coming years.
One possible way is Bulgaria as a sovereign country to accept theEUdirectives as guidelines and to adapt them to the Bulgariancultural paradigm by taking appropriate measures, a major oneamong which is investing in the training of teachers aiming at the following outcomes:first, the teachers should be allowed to take the responsibility to make their own autonomous decisions in the classroom. Second, they should be trained to become aware of their own culture in the first place and become ready to change their own traditional attitudes to the educational process. Third, they should become intellectually and emotionally aware of the fact that in other societies people learn in different ways and transmit these new attitudes to their students and parents. Fourth, teachers need to be trained to become cultural communicators who can mediate between students and the society in order to bridge the cultural gap between western and eastern ideas. This means that they themselves should undergo a cultural paradigm shift, which is a process that takes time and effort on the part of both the teachers and the educational authorities.
Only after this, the teachers will be able to teach the students to understand otherness in all its cultural dimensions, they will be capable of encouraging students' autonomy and enhancing the students' capability of making their own decisions and taking responsibility for their own training. Otherwise it seems that all attempts of implementing innovations in Bulgarian education will only remain a wishful thinking based on theoretical constructs that are far away from the real-life school practice.
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BILINGUALISM AND SPEECHREADING IN CHILDREN
AND STUDENTS WITH HEARING IMPAIRMENTS
Assist. Professor PhD, Georgieva Diyana Bulgaria, Stara Zagora, Trakia University, Faculty of Education
Abstract. The present article is dedicated to the relation between the forming of speechreading skills and bilingualism. This is a complex dynamic interdependence (condition), having in mind that in the circumstances of bilingualism the competition between the phonological codes of two linguistic systems causes changes in the cognitive functions directly connected with the ability to decode oral speech, perceived through the visual sensory channel. In comparative aspect are examined the skills for the perception of the optical characteristics of different linguistic levels - isolated words, sentences, connected text, of monolingual and bilingual individuals with hearing disorders. In the article are emphasized thee manifestations of the bilingualism in the conditions of deafness -Bulgarian, Bulgarian gesture and another verbal language (the languages of Turkish and Romany ethnic communities).
Keywords: visual perception of oral speech, speechreading skills, bilingualism, children and students with hearing impairments, phonological decoding
The term Bilingualism froms Latin "bilinguis" means. Various definitions of bilingualism can be found in scientific literature (F. Daskalova, 2003; Bell, 1980, Kyuchukov, 1997), which proves its complexity and its studying in different areas of science - psychology, linguistics, sociolinguistics, pedagogy, hearing and speech rehabilitation and many others. Generally bilingualism is considered to be the knowledge and use of two languages by a particular individual or group, a joint functioning of two linguistic systems in communication. The bilingual person usually knows in the same degree and depth both languages and is able to use them equally effectively in any situation. The bilingual person has the ability to keep two linguistic systems separated, so that it would be easy to switch from one to the other. With this definition F. Daskalova (2003) meant the ideal case of bilingualism. As a matter of fact, people manage to a different degree to approach this definition. Interesting typologization suggested Kyuchukov, who scrutinized the so-called asymmetrical type of bilingualism, characteristic of children of minority background. In all of these children, regardless of which of both languages is first (according to the order of learning), the primary in function in the family is not Bulgarian language. Children acquire the categories of both languages as a simple combination of concepts without consecutively relating them as belonging to one or the other linguistic system. Evidence of that are the so-called language interferences (appearing on phonetic - phonological, lexical -
