Becoming visible: developing and testing an educational cultural measurement tool

While international students have always been an important part of university life and research shows that a diverse student body brings many advantages, the current financial necessity to recruit international students is unprecedented. One major challenge this has created, for students and lecturers alike, is increased culture clash in the classroom.

It has well been documented that culture clash, (when cultural differences create difficulties such as communication breakdown, divergent expectations or insensitive interactions), has a profoundly negative impact on student performance and is a source of great frustration for lecturers. This study looked at the cultural measurement tools developed in the world of business and management and used them as a template to develop an educationally relevant cultural measurement tool: The Cultural Survey of Educational Behaviours (CSEB).