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The Cultural Framing of Communication in Management Education (cont.) |
Curtin University of Technology
Perth, Western Australia
- In the education of would-be managers it is an accepted general principle (even a tired truism) that communication skills should play an especially important role. But just what does "communication" signify in this context? What expectations do Management students and teachers have about learning the particular communication skills needed to acquire, evaluate and convey knowledge in their field of study? What counts as "reading" and literate behaviour generally within the framework of undergraduate courses in a business school?
- Because a large proportion of those who study management in most Australian universities today are from non-English-speaking backgrounds, an inquiry into current literacy practices in that disciplinary area must also consider specific cross-cultural difficulties in language-based situations. Again, there is a shortage of precise information. Despite the fact that general relationships between linguistic communication and cultural context are well understood at a theoretical level, it remains true that much research in discourse interpretation "operates within a specific cultural frame" (Candlin 1978). Ethnographers and linguists such as Clyne (1988) are addressing this problem. Yet as Bhatia (1993) remarks, while "cross-cultural variation in spoken interaction has become a well-established area of discourse study, very little has been published in the case of written genres."
- The importance of the topic has been emphasised by some Australian writers on literacy, notably Freebody and Luke (1990), Hedrick and Holton (1990), Pauwels (1990), and Ballard and Clanchy (1991). But a comprehensive study of its intricacies is lacking. Cross-cultural aspects of English communication skills in Australian university settings, and their variations across different fields of study, have never been investigated on a large enough scale to produce definitive answers. Instead, we are left with a multitude of issues that still need to be researched.
- Questions about what teachers expect are particularly pressing. For instance, how common is the expectation that students from overseas will learn on their own to adjust their learning habits and literacy practices to an Australian academic environment? Is it generally assumed that students who are non-native-speakers of English should, by their own efforts, just "keep up" with native-speaking students in reading and writing for the same course? How widespread, and how effective, is the practice of establishing dialogue between staff and students to delineate their respective responsibilities regarding literacy issues? How explicitly do teachers indicate the literacy conventions that are normative in academic culture? Are they knowledgeable enough about linguistic matters to do so?
- Although answers to most such questions cannot yet be provided with any fullness, some are beginning to emerge from work now in progress - a project that is gathering data on communication skills in several disciplines across several Australian university settings. The following observations are drawn primarily from just one of the various sites of investigation: a first-level unit of a Management program in a university which has a large number of students of non-English speaking background, mainly from overseas, a significant proportion being enrolled in business courses. Supporting evidence from a third-level unit in the same program is also provided. Data sources include classroom observations, interviews with students and teaching staff, and analysis of unit-related materials such as textbooks, unit outlines, study guides and exam papers. Only a few of the interim findings are reported summarily here.
- Because a large proportion of those who study management in most Australian universities today are from non-English-speaking backgrounds, an inquiry into current literacy practices in that disciplinary area must also consider specific cross-cultural difficulties in language-based situations. Again, there is a shortage of precise information. Despite the fact that general relationships between linguistic communication and cultural context are well understood at a theoretical level, it remains true that much research in discourse interpretation "operates within a specific cultural frame" (Candlin 1978). Ethnographers and linguists such as Clyne (1988) are addressing this problem. Yet as Bhatia (1993) remarks, while "cross-cultural variation in spoken interaction has become a well-established area of discourse study, very little has been published in the case of written genres."
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Last Updated 3 Feb, 1997