The impact of cultural education on adolescents and their comprehension of culture-specific reading material. Keis Ohtsuka* and Maria Miltiadous Victoria University, Australia Paper presented at the 1996 Educational Research Association (Singapore)/Australian Association for Research in Education Joint Annual Conference, Singapore, 25-29 November 1996. APA Citation: Ohtsuka, K., & Mitiadous, M. (1996, November). The impact of cultural education on adolescents and their comprehension of culture-specific reading material. Paper presented at the Educational Research Association (Singapore)/Australian Association for Research in Education Joint Annual Conference, Singapore, 25-29 November 1996. Abstract The impact of cultural education on adolescents and their reading comprehension of culture specific material was assessed using fifty-five 14-15 year olds. Two experimental groups (n = 22; n = 18) received cultural education, either on Aboriginal or Indonesian culture, and then read passages about cultural conflicts. The control group (n = 15) was not given cultural education. Two passages, either on Aboriginal or Indonesian culture, presented two episodes of cultural conflicts, a universal and culture-specific example. Later participants' comprehension was assessed. A repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that cultural education significantly improved the understanding of Indonesian culture, F(2, 52) = 18.2, MSE= .19, p < .0005. Furthermore, the opaqueness of cultural conflict within a passage had an independent significant effect on comprehension, F(2, 52) = 10.31, MSE = .22, p < .005. Motivation to interact with the culture and negation of former cultural beliefs significantly predict interest in Indonesian culture, F(2, 52) = 57.54, p< .001. There were no significant predictors of learning on Aboriginal culture. Prior knowledge predicted learning on Indonesian culture, F(2, 52) = 16.19, p< .001. The results suggest that cultural education improves adolescents' understanding of cultural information and that reader interest is in part attributed to negation of prior beliefs. The impact of cultural education on adolescents and their comprehension of culture-specific reading material. In the past twenty years, a constructivist theory of text comprehension, which accounts for the knoweldge-based inferences that are constructed when readers comprehend text, dominated narrative comrehension research in psychology (see Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994 for review). In fact, a precursor to modern schema theory, which emphasises the role of general background knowledge in comprehension processes, can be traced back to Frederic C. Bartlett's Remembering published in 1932. Having carried out a series of inquiries on the content of memory recall after English students read the North American Native Folklore, `A War of the Ghosts', Bartlett (1995/1932) demonstrated that readers' expectations regarding story content or cultural knowledge distort the contents of delayed memory recall. It is interesting to note that Bartlett's seminal work on memory recall specifically deals with the influence of cultural `bias' on memory recall processes. As a modern schema theory rediscovers Bartlett's orignal work and gains currency as one of the most influential theories in cognition and education, various aspects of a schema's influence on memory and comprehension were systematically analysed (e.g., Brewer & Nakamura, 1984 for review) and general knowedge structure was initially conceptualised as contextual prerequisites (Bransford & Johnson, 1972). As an unfortunate consequence of a push towards building a general theory, I would argue that systematic research on cultural knowledge and its effects on narrative comprehension has not been rigorously pursued in mainstream cognitive psychology, and the number of such studies remain very scarce. The purpose of the current study is to investigate whether cultural awareness training received by adolescents significantly contributes to their understanding of culture-specific reading material. Furthermore, the effectiveness of cultural training will be examined by contrasting students' performances on reasoning tasks on culturally opaque examples and obvious examples in both familiar and unfamiliar cultures. The underlying assumption is that the acquisition of appropriate background knowledge (schema) facilitates students' understanding of culture-specific episodes thereby contributing to an increase in motivation and an interest in further learning about the culture. Method Participants Fifty-five 14-15 year-old secondary school students were recruited for the current study from a school in a predominantly lower-middle to middle class suburb in Melbourne, Victoria. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions: Control group (n = 15), The Cultural Training group on Aboriginal culture (n = 22), The Cultural Training group on Indonesian Culture (n = 18). Material Two cultural education sessions and a questionnaire were developed for the purpose of this study. The education sessions were used to manipulate participants' prior knowledge in the cultures. These materials focus on subsections of Aboriginal culture, Yolngu, and Indonesian Javanese culture. Information in the material on Yolngu culture was drawn from Charlesworth (1984), Christie and Harris (1985), and Morphy (1984). Information in the Javanese session was drawn from Brislin, Cushner, Cherrie, and Yong (1986), Miripuri (1990), and Roeder (1974). The questionnaire consisted of three sections. Section 1 and 2 contained questions measuring prior knowledge regarding the culture to which participants in the experimental groups were to be exposed. These sections also measured participants' prior knowledge of a culture, past experience of contact with a culture, prior attitude towards a culture and its people, and prior interest to interact with people belonging to the target culture. Section 2 contained a passage on Aboriginal or Javanese culture describing cultural conflicts. Section 3 contained a series of questions assessing understanding and reasoning regarding why conflicts occurred between the visitor and local residents in the narratives. Each passage was written in a similar narrative structure, each describing tribulations of a new visitor to a culture, her experience of puzzling and or embarrasing events, and subsequent frustrations. Each passage contained two episodes of cultural conflict differing in the degree of cultural opaqueness: a relatively obvious (general) episode and a relatively opaque culture-specific episode. Consequently, it was hypothesised that participants may be able to make inferences correctly for a relatively obvious episode using knowledge about the culture they had been exposed to. However, the opaque culture-specific episode would remain difficult to interepret. Procedure All participants were required to answer the three sections of the questionnaire. After the experimenter was introduced, participants were instructed to complete Sections 1 and 2 of the questionnaire. After pre-test cultural knowledge assessments, two experimental groups (Aboriginal Culture Education Group and Javanese Culture Education Group) were asked to listen to a ten-minute education session on Aboriginal or Javanese culture, respectively. The participants were asked to concentrate on the information so that they could remember the important points later. After the education session, Section 3 of the questionnaire was completed by participants. The control group were instructed to proceed to Section 3 without receiving any cultural training. The entire session lasted about 50 minutes for the control group and 60 minutes for the two experimental groups. After the completion of the research session, debriefing was carried out by the experimenter. Results An alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests. A repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that the cultural education significantly improved the understanding of Javanese culture, F(2, 52) = 18.2, MSE= .19, p < .0005. Furthermore, the opaqueness of cultural conflict within a passage had an independent significant effect on comprehension of Javanese passage, F(2, 52) = 10.31, MSE = .22, p < .005. The cultural education session did not significantly increase understanding of Yolngu culture, F(2, 52) = . 22, p =.8, nor was the effect of opaqueness observed, F(1, 52)=1.81, p =.19. Motivation to interact with the culture and negation of former cultural beliefs significantly predict interest in Indonesian culture, F(2, 52) = 57.54, p< .001. There were no significant predictors of learning on Aboriginal culture. Prior knowledge predicted learning on Indonesian culture, F(2, 52) = 16.19, p< .001. The results suggest that cultural education improves adolescents' understanding of cultural information and that reader interest is, in part, attributed to negation of prior beliefs. Interest in culture prior to education was significantly higher for the Indonesian culture (M = 2.87) than the Aboriginal culture (M = 1.56), t(54) = -15.97, p < .0005. Discussion The results did indicate that the cultural education session was effective in increasing understanding of Javanese culture and demonstrates the benefit of rich background knowledge in assisting students to understand episodes of cultural conflict occurring in an unfamiliar cultural environment. Furthermore, when two episodes of cultural conflicts within Javanese culture, differing in cultural opaqueness (obvious example vs. culture-specific example), were compared, the understanding of the culture-specific episode showed significant improvement compared to the increase in understanding of the more general episode. The results demonstrated that the gain of cultural understanding through education works to improve students' ability to make effective inference in a situation where generalisation or inferences based on their own background knowledge (culture) is almost impossible. In contrast, the educational session on Yolngu culture did not register any improvement in comprehension. Furthermore, when the comprehension of culturally obvious and less culturally obvious episodes were compared, there were no statistically significant differences between the two. These findings suggest that secondary students at least had some knowledge of Aboriginal culture, in comparison to the less familiar Javanese example, and therefore they were able to make inferences about both obvious and opaque cultural conflicts. The mean score of the Control Group for the obvious example was 3.17, as well as that for the Indonesian Education Group. The Aboriginal Education Group scored only fractionally higher (M = 3.20). Another possible explanation for the unsuccessful outcome of education is that the level of interest to learn about Aboriginal culture was low comparing to interest in Javanese culture. The mean level of interest prior to education for Indonesian culture of the entire participant group (M = 2.87) is significantly higher than the mean level of prior interest in Aboriginal culture (M = 1.56). Motivation to interact with other cultures and negation of former cultural beliefs are significant predictors of interest in the new culture after receiving education. These findings suggest that the motivation to interact with other cultures facilitates learning from cultural education. Furthermore, finding one's former cultural beliefs negated contributes toward a further increase in interest to learn about the culture. To summarise, the results of the current study suggest that cultural education improves adolescents' understanding of cultural information by enriching their background knowledge, and enabling them to make correct inferences about an unfamiliar culture. Cultural education leads to negation of prior cultural beliefs which in turn facilitate interest in further learning. References Bartlett, F. C. (1995/1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brewer, W. F., & Nakamura, G. V. (1984). The nature and functions of schemas. In R. S. Wyer, Jr. & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition, (Vol. 1, pp. 119-160). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Brislin, R. W., Cushner, K., Cherrie, C., & Young, M. (1986). Intercultural interactions: A practical guide. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Charlesworth, M. (1984). Introduction. In M. Charlesworth, H. Morphy, D. Bell, & K. Maddock (Eds.), Religion in Aboriginal Australia: AN anthology. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Christie, M., & Harris, S. (1985). Communications breakdown in the classroom. In J. B. Pride (Ed.), Cross-cultural encounters: Communication breakdown and mis-communication. Melbourne: River Scene. Graesser, A. C., Singer, M., & Trabasso, T. (1994). Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension. Psychological Review, 101, 371-395. Miripuri, G. (1990). Cultures of the world: Indonesia. North Bellmore, NY: Marshal Cavendish Corporation. Morphy, H. (1984). Yolngu ceremonies and bark painting. In Charlesworth, H. Morphy, D. Bell, & K. Maddock (Eds.), Religion in Aboriginal Australia: An anthology. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Roeder, O. G. (1974). Smiles in Indonesia (2nd ed.). Jakarta: P. T. Gunung Agung. 2. Program Description STRAND/TOPIC - Educational Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Reading Comprehension, Cultural Education, Adolescents, high school students This study is a reading comprehension study based on empirical data which assessed adolescents' (14-15 year old high school students) comprehension of culture-specific reading material. 3. Biodata Keis Ohtsuka received BA and MA at Sophia University and a PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Victoria University, Australia. His research interests are reading comprehension, mental representation and inference, cognitive predictors of risk taking behaviour, and cultural education. Correspondence can be addressed to Keis Ohtsuka, PhD, Department of Psychology, St. Albans Campus, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, MCMC, Melbourne, Vic 8001, Australia. Electronic mail can be placed through his home page http://cougar.vut.edu.au/~ohtke or sent directly to ohtke@cougar.vut.edu.au. Maria Miltiadous gradauted Victoria University with an honours degree (psychology) and received the Australian Psychological Society Prize. She received the Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship and is currently pursuing a PhD in psychology at Victoria University. Her research interests are health psychology and cross-cultural issues. Electronic mail can be addressed to MariaMiltiadous@vut.edu.au.