10/13/2020; Week 05: Cultural Paradigms

 What are Cultural Paradigms? How can understanding what a cultural paradigm is help us as teachers? 

A Cultural Paradigm is something that every single person is affected by but we rarely notice. To illustrate this, let me give you an example. Suppose I showed you the following picture. 

What is this picture depicting? A tree, right? It's not the most detailed illustration of a tree, but no matter who you are, or where you grew up, you'd probably be able to tell that this is an illustration of a tree. But, when shown this image, your brain actually went through a series of connections before getting to the answer of a tree. It looked at the lines themselves, the shapes that the lines created, real work images of trees as well as other items, and a whole host of other, seemingly unrelated information, like that trees lose their leaves in the winter, the first time you saw a tree with with no leaves, among other things. Your brain uses this information, your specific paradigm, to interpret the world around you. 

The issue becomes when the paradigm becomes more complex. There are many simple paradigms, such as car, house, and couch. You can pretty consistently talk to someone else about a house and they can visualize at least somewhere where people live. If you ask someone about beauty, you will likely have more variation in your answer. Beauty is a complex paradigm.

The concept of beauty varies greatly from culture to culture. The things that some might value as "beautiful", such as skinny, blonde, fair-skinned, can be completely different to another. I recently watched a TED talk about a young woman growing up in West Africa being bullied for being too thin, for being skinny, because it meant she was sick, frail and less beautiful. Our culture impacts the way we filter information. 

How does this affect the classroom, you might ask. It's a great question. The way we were raised affects almost every aspect of the classroom. From the amount of eye contact a student maintains to how students view the teacher student relationship, cultural differences adds intricate layers to interactions in the classroom. Each student brings their own paradigm to the classroom, and in an English Language Learning environment, there are even more cultural paradigms at work. It is important for teachers to understand their students' culture and how that can affect the way they interact in the classroom. 

At the end of the day, there is nothing more important than students feeling comfortable. If students feel uncomfortable, learning will be more difficult. 

Here's my question for you. How can you be mindful of your students' individual cultural paradigms in the classroom?