Learning across cultures: appropriateness of knowledge transfer

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the issue of transfer of cognitions, motivations, and dispositions related to learning across different cultural-educational contexts. Research with learners from Confucian Heritage Culture, mainly from Singapore and Hong Kong, studying in their home country and as international students in Australia is used to establish the usefulness of the concept of socio-cultural appropriateness to understand transfer. The examples discussed reveal how some aspects of students learning travel extremely well and are congruent with the characteristics of learning valued in the host context, while others reflect ambivalent, difficult, or inappropriate transfer. The significance of mutual individual-context dynamic interactions, subjective nature of appropriateness, and emotional dimensions involved in transfer of learning is highlighted. Implications for educational practice in an international, multicultural perspective are outlined.