Teaching in a new culture

Ruza Ostrogonac-Seserko Lecturer Department of Civil and Resource Engineering

In 1995 I arrived in Australia from the former Yugoslavia and faced the many challenges of starting life in a new country. I had anticipated some differences in my new environment but they were bigger than I had expected. My real difficulties started when I tried to find a job and then to understand the educational system.

As a teacher, my first encounters with the educational system in Australia highlighted major differences in the surface structures and artifacts of education between the two countries. In the former Yugoslavia university entrance examinations are set by the faculties. Students are a little older upon entry, all students in a faculty take the same courses and they are assessed using a final examination that covers every aspect of the course. Lecturers teach only in their thesis area and the university teaching day starts at 7am and ends at 3pm leaving time for a rich personal life. Adjustment to a different educational environment was not easy, but at least the differences were obvious.

Less obvious were the values that guided education in Australia. In my previous country, teachers are perceived to be authorities and students rarely complain. Respect is demonstrated through attentiveness in lectures and the use of family names rather than first names. In individual interactions with lecturers, students may ask questions, but usually only questions of clarification. The curriculum focuses very much on theoretical issues rather than application, and lectures are designed to give students as much information as possible in every curriculum area. As I have been discovering, things are different in Australia. The underlying assumptions motivating educational behaviour in communist countries was that education should ultimately contribute to the good of society as a whole. In Australia the opposite seems true, where people promote teamwork in educational activities and seem to value “mateship”, while the assessment system rewards individuals and competitive behaviour.

These are, of course, only a couple of the many assumptions that seem to guide behaviour in two specific cultures. I present them to give an indication of the type of issues a teacher in a new culture needs to learn about and also an indication of the size of the task the teacher faces when trying to make sense of what is said and what is done.

I was employed at UWA for more than a year when I received a personal call from the Centre for Staff Development to attend the Foundations of University Teaching and Learning programme. After I enrolled in the programme all my problems started to be solved. Finally I felt that I belonged to a big family of people with similar problems. In Foundations I was able to learn more about the Australian way of teaching, to participate in many interesting seminars and meet many important people. It helped me to start to function effectively in a new culture and in its education system. I have learned so much and finally I have started to benefit from this experience. Coming from a different cultural and linguistic background, my biggest barrier has been the language. I did not get much help in this area. But it is not just learning the language. It is learning about new culture, about different ways of thinking, about different ways of doing things. Presently I am trying to synthesize the two educational systems. I have started to love the place. The best parts of it are students. They are my tutors and we work together.

There is no doubt that professional development has been great for me. Without it I would not be able to cope with the complexity of the situation. Theory and practice in modern education were introduced to me. I had previously worked under a very traditional teaching philosophy.

In a world where many teachers find themselves seeking employment or experience in foreign countries, an awareness of how to participate effectively in a new educational environment becomes essential. If new teachers are not adequately prepared in advance the process of adjustment is likely to be significantly prolonged and in some cases lead to personal distress.