A western perspective on Taiwanese education : cultural differences in higher education – Part 2

This is the second part to a discussion about cultural differences in education where I address some interesting points made in the “Experiences of Teaching Engineering Students in Taiwan from a Western Perspective”  article (Frode Sandnes, Yo-Ping Huang and Hua-Li Jian (2006), International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 22, No. 5, pp. 1013-1022).

First, general questions were asked where no one in particular was addressed, such as “Does anybody know why/what…?”. When nobody volunteered to answer, or when only the same few students answered, specific students were addressed directly by name. This strategy appeared unproblematic, as the student would willingly provide the answer, although he or she might need extra time, and sometimes help from their fellow student, to express themselves in English. While Western students often dislike answering questions from teachers involuntarily, the Taiwanese students attempt to do as the teacher instructs.

Hmm… don’t know about that. I tend to see the other way, which only goes to show that this stereotype also has some problems with it. Taiwanese have often mentioned to me that they fear being put on the spot by their professors, and that this makes them not only nervous when it happens but also when there’s only the chance of this happening. The fear, as far as I understand it, is that the teacher might think they’re bad students or think they haven’t studied hard enough. Making a mistake and “losing face” seems far more important to the average Taiwanese than it is to the average “westerners” I know, me included. So? which observation is right?

It is difficult to involve Taiwanese students in Western-style plenary discussion.

Maybe, but there are ways to address that. Consider the following two lectures I gave in OD class and note the use of “Question guy” and “Question girl” which turned out to be a hit and successfully encouraged participation.

And yet, it’s true that Powerpoints are an issue …

It is a commonly held view among Western teachers that PowerPoint presentations make classes more passive and therefore should be used sparingly. Then, what about a class of already passive Taiwanese students? The use of PowerPoint presentations is consistent with Oriental didactics as such presentations can be authored to contain well defined, correct and authoritative content, i.e., “the knowledge”. Although PowerPoint presentations have the undesired side-effect of making classes passive, they help justify the competence of the teacher and help establish students’ trust. In summary, PowerPoint presentations can be a well-justified life-saver for a Western teacher stepping into an Oriental classroom.

For this I’d say that Powerpoints aren’t the ones to make a class passive, but rather how one uses them. Some Taiwanese professors I study with have the horrible habit of reading out Powerpoint slides full of text, which is usually followed by Taiwanese students doing the same. Yet, some professors use Powerpoint slides in a far more interactional way. In this case – the slides don’t have text that needs to be read out but rather points for the discussion they wish to create. Asking the students to refer to bullets on the presentation could actually help the discussion, especially if it’s possible to make notes on the board where the presentation is being displayed.

Assessing the manuscript is an interesting exercise. Each country has its own grading system, but the Taiwanese, and Chinese, grading systems are in a category of their own. Undergraduate pass grades are in the range of 60% to 100%, i.e., a grade below 60% is a fail. For master students the pass grades are in the range 70% to 100%. Norway has recently adopted letter grades from A to F, where F is a fail, and represents a score below 35%. Clearly, it does not make sense to directly compare percentages from the Western scale to the Taiwanese scale.

This is a serious problem and a source for my constant frustration. Being a PhD student, I can generally say I don’t mind the grade that much. No one will care whether I get an A or a C in my diploma. What I do care about it getting some good feedback on the work I’m doing. With that said, I don’t enjoy getting the same grade as people I know are completely incompetent. It makes me feel useless.

My general observations on the grading system in 80% of the courses I’ve taken are as follows:

• All post graduate student pass (70). If you didn’t pass it just means you’ve done something very very wrong.
• Very few students get above 90. Above 95, or a 100, is very rare if not inexistent.
• (Which means) Almost all students get between 80 and 90.
• All students get a “moral conduct” score of 85 (this one used to really bother me).
• There is little to no feedback given with the grade. There are no explanations as to how the grade was constructed or why the grade is what it is.

To me – this essentially meant that there is very little incentive for anyone to work hard or any way to improve, especially at PhD level. While this used to drive me nuts at first, in time I’ve come to accept how this is and try to understand some of the cultural explanations given to me as to why the system is that way. There are some valid reasons for this that most westerners – maybe like myself – find very hard to accept.

Point is, grading is a culturally sensitive process, and the article is right – it’s useless to compare Taiwanese scores to Israeli scores (full use of 0-100 scale) to UK scores (70 is the highest score). This also proves a real challenge for an international program in Taiwan or a Taiwanese program trying to achieve western oriented AACSB accreditation, resulting in professors using a system they don’t believe in and inherently dislike and international students constantly feeling they’ve been wronged. I’m not entirely sure how those challenges might be successfully addressed.