The Effective Learning Characteristics In Chinese Cultural Context

The fast development of Chinese economy is enhancing the world'sglobalization. More and more multinational companies realized the importance ofthe cultural adaptation for their employees' training and development. And thelearning transition from student in higher education to workplace environment isemphasized for the long term development. And the researches on effective learningin Chinese context became the hot spot (Ginsberg, 1992; Biggs, 1996; Marton,1996). Recent studies found consistent differences between Western and Asianlearning behaviors as well as the particularities of the Chinese learner (Chart, 1999;Dahlin & Watkins, 2000). However, the majority of them were mostly based onstudent samples in foreign country or Chinese student in higher education context(Peter, 2002). This research applied focus group discussion and qualitative contentanalysis to explore the distinctiveness of the Chinese learner and its effectivelearning structure in the higher education and workplace environment fromindigenous perspective.The focus group discussion was used to obtain the learners' perspectives of theChinese concerning the learning methods, process and expected instructor. Theparticipants were 72 students and 68 employees from multinational companies inChengdu, Dalian, Hangzhou and Shanghai. The whole discussions were videorecorded and transcribed, and then analyzed using qualitative content analysis withthe help of Atlas.ti software.The structure of effective Chinese learning showed that person, process andcontext were the significant influences on their learning behaviors. And the face effect on the learning motivation, the expected roles of teachers as authorities andfriends, and the cultural explanation on the "passive" behaviors showed theimportant influence from Chinese traditional value. There were also severaldifferences between participants in higher education and workplace environmentalthough the major dimensions were similar. Employees preferred the preciseness ofthe material and information from the teacher while students emphasized theteacher's attitude, personalized supervision and the support from learning partners.