Managing the cultural divide: the case for classroom assessment

Abstract

The transfer of training techniques across cultures is fraught with difficulties for both trainer and trainee. Trainers working within multicultural settings need to be especially sensitive to their trainees’ needs and socio‐cultural learning backgrounds. Both trainers and participants in the workplace bring to training courses a baggage of past and present educational experiences that impacts their reaction to organizational learning approaches. Considers how a particular assessment technique can make explicit what trainers often assume to be implicit in terms of their training practices, and how industry can learn from educational case studies. Describes the results from implementing a “one minute” assessment feedback to Asian students undertaking a technical English enhancement programme. Suggests classroom assessment can heighten greater personal awareness to training approaches within a multicultural setting, broaden understanding of participant needs, and encourage a more systematic strategy for expanding and improving training and learning quality. Implies exploiting cultural synergy requires managing rather than merely accepting, the cultural divide.