Alan D MacLean

Sage Insight Alan D MacLean

Clear communication is at the essence of teaching, yet there are subtle aspects of cross-cultural communication that work with or against educators. Three aspects of communication impact teaching in different cultures-verbal, body language, and meta-communication i.e. all that is contained and implied within a holistic communicative setting. Indigenous people are far more sensitive and intuitive on the subtle meta-communicative level than those of Western culture. Often educators do not transmit or perceive on that level in the same way or to the same degree as village people. Educators quite often think they are communicating a positive message and helping when they are inadvertently offending students. With fifty years experience among Alaska Native people and forty years extensive experience as a professional educator, the author gives you insight into what does and does not work in cross-cultural classroom settings. This book exposes the raw truth of why, for decades, education in rural Alaska has fallen short. It pierces to the heart of the conflict. The missing element in rural Alaskan instruction is identical to, or comparable with the missing element in all cross-cultural learning situations. Clear suggestions for improving student performance are provided herein, although there are no quick fixes. Becoming a proficient teacher in a cross-cultural setting is a lifetime endeavor. The fundamental question is, "What is meta-communicated when a student is required to do a lesson for which there is no demonstrable real-life application?" The meta-communicated answer is "dominance." That is at the root of resistance to learning in village schools. As young people mature, their culture demands that they become self-directed individuals. When an educational system is intuitively perceived as being autocratic, the cultural need for independence and maturation by local standards overrule students' desires to do well in academic settings. However, when choices are built into lessons, when real-life applications are explicitly defined and demonstrated, when students know why they are doing a lesson, clearly seeing its personal benefit, then schools become help-centers, teachers become facilitators, and classroom lessons become engaging.