Culture School is in session! In this series, we take an aspect of intercultural theory and apply to daily life. Basically, our goal is to expose those cultural moonwalking bears. And because this blog is about culture and education, we consider each topic in the context of the classroom.
photo by maryatexitzero
The first few weeks I (Anamaria) taught at Indiana University, I was very puzzled by my students’ behavior.
They behaved nothing like Romanian college students. As their instructor, I could never tell if what they were doing was normal, or not. Was it respectful or disrespectful? Was it appropriate or not?
I just never knew.
One particular instance comes to mind. One day, a student simply got up from his seat and left the room without saying anything. I couldn’t believe it! In Romania, students would never do that! If students need to leave the room, they always ask for permission.
I remember standing in front of my students completely panicked about what my reaction should be. Should I stop the student? Should I let him leave? Would he come back?
Panic, panic, panic
If you have ever been abroad – or simply worked with people from different cultures – you know exactly what kind of panic I am talking about. The kind that only goes away after a long, long time of having been immersed in a certain culture.
But now I know a quicker way to get over the panic.
I often use a tool that helps me stop and reassess a cross-cultural situation that is causing me to panic.
It’s called O-DIVE.
Basically, before reacting in any way to a cultural situation that has troubled us, we should carefully Observe what’s going on, then D-I-V-E in.
photo by Tom.Lechner
DIVE stands for Describe-Interpret-Validate-Explain.
Here’s how you use it.
Step 1: Describe a situation as objectively and concretely as possible, while avoiding judgment or personal bias.
Step 2: Think of several possible interpretations of the situation – from your perspective and others’.
Step 3: Talk to other people about what happened, preferably cultural natives, and ask for their interpretations to validate yours.
Step 4: Find an interpretation that most accurately explains what happened and use this to reflect on the situation and explain it to yourself.
Only after you have completed all of these steps – sometimes more than once! – will you have a good, well rounded understanding of the cross-cultural situation that initially troubled you. And, most importantly, that awful panic goes away.
How does the O-DIVE apply to my story?
When that student suddenly got up and left the room, my first reaction was to stop him. But then I observed that none of the other students were troubled in the least by this student’s behavior. So, I told myself I must be missing something, and I decided to reflect on this situation later using the O-DIVE model.
After my class, I went to an American colleague and objectively described the situation. I said something like, Sarah, I was in the middle of teaching today and one of my students suddenly stood up and left the room. Is this normal behavior for U.S. college students?
[Notice how this is different from starting with an interpretation, such as, Sarah, one of my students was so disrespectful today! He just got up and left the room without asking me for permission.]
Then, after my objective description, I asked Sarah for possible interpretations of my student’s behavior from a U.S. American perspective.
She explained that in the U.S., college students are not expected to ask for permission to leave the classroom to, for example, use the restroom, and that it was very probable that that was where the student was going.
I immediately thought back to that situation and realized that the student returned to the classroom a couple of minutes later, which validated my colleague’s interpretation.
So, I thought to myself, the student was not being disrespectful; he probably just wanted to use the restroom! I then realized that he wasn’t being intentionally rude; he was just acting in accordance with his cultural programming.
It would have taken me a lot longer to have come up with this explanation on my own, which is why the O-DIVE model is so valuable. O-DIVE can spare you of days – even months – of panic, anxiety, and stress when living in another country or interacting with people from different cultures.
Question: What do you do to better understand a confusing intercultural situation?
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