The role of cultural background and team divisions in developing social learning relations in the classroom

Rienties, BC, Hernandez Nanclares, N, Jindal-Snape, D and Alcott, P (2012) The role of cultural background and team divisions in developing social learning relations in the classroom Journal of Studies in International Education.

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Abstract

A common assumption is that students prefer to work together with students from similar cultural backgrounds. In a group work context, students from different cultural backgrounds are “forced” to work together. This might lead to stress and anxiety but at the same time may allow students to learn from different perspectives. The prime goal of this article is to understand how international and home students from different cultural backgrounds build learning and work relationships with other students in and outside their classroom using an innovative quantitative method of Social Network Analysis in a pre-post test manner. In Study 1, 50 Spanish and 7 Erasmus economics students worked in self-selected teams. In Study 2, 69 primarily international students in a postgraduate management program in the United Kingdom worked in randomized teams. The results indicate that in Study 1 learning ties after 14 weeks were significantly predicted by the initial team division and friendship ties. The seven international students integrated well. In Study 2, learning ties after 14 weeks were primarily predicted by the team division, followed by initial friendship ties and conational friendships. Although international students developed strong (multinationality) team learning relationships, international students also kept strong links with students with the same cultural background. As the initial team division had an 8 times stronger effect on learning ties than cultural backgrounds, these results indicate that the instructional design of team work has a strong influence on how international and home students work and learn together.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions :	Department of Higher Education
Authors :	Name Email ORCID Rienties, BC Hernandez Nanclares, N Jindal-Snape, D Alcott, P
Date :	1 November 2012
DOI :	10.1177/1028315312463826
Additional Information :	This is the author's version of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Studies in International Education. The copy of record can be found online at http://jsi.sagepub.com/
Depositing User :	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited :	05 Feb 2013 17:18
Last Modified :	31 Oct 2017 14:56
URI:	http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/id/eprint/745581

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