IC Knowledge Competency 1: Information Gathering
Successful intercultural partnerships start with each partner taking an interest in the other鈥檚 culture and demonstrating willingness and initiative to learn about and discover unfamiliar cultural values, practices and contextual information.
Gathering such information is important for various reasons. Policy or sector information is usually essential for the task at hand; an understanding of the other鈥檚 beliefs, values and business practices can create a better basis for relationship-building, and – on a personal level – can broaden people鈥檚 horizons.
In the eChina-UK Programme, British members needed to gather information on issues such as the following:
- The Chinese educational policies and practices, such as e-learning policies, quality assurance mechanisms, and common classroom practices;
- The target trainees of their proposed teacher training programmes;
- Key cultural values and concepts, such as hierarchy, face, and 鈥榞uanxi鈥�*
*Guanxi roughly equates to 鈥榩ersonal connections鈥� and denotes the value Chinese people attach to the building and maintaining of relationships, which involves receiving and returning favours – both personal and business-related.
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Case Study Example: Acquiring Content-specific Information
Some of the British developers needed some content-specific information on the Chinese educational context, as well as Chinese research data, in order to write some of their units. They found it difficult to obtain this, and it was not always clear whether this was because it was only available in Chinese (and thus not searchable in English) or whether it did not exist. For example, a British developer needing to write a unit on teacher evaluation commented as follows:
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I found it was difficult to find specific information in the literature in English. I鈥檇 track down articles via the internet, but the abstracts were in Chinese. But after being over there, and talking to the teachers, I began to think that the material on teacher evaluation doesn鈥檛 really exist. It depends on the area, the school you鈥檙e in. Maybe people haven鈥檛 done that kind of research. Maybe it鈥檚 also a different kind of research. I was looking for something in-depth, teachers talking about how they are evaluated in schools, which there鈥檚 a lot of now here. But what I could find, and what I was sent, seemed to be very quantitative. There were a lot of figures and graphs. So it鈥檚 obviously a different kind of research being done, so maybe that鈥檚 why I couldn鈥檛 find what I wanted.
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Information can be gathered from many sources (e.g. books, internet etc.) and all of these should be utilised. However, the eChina-UK teams found that well-chosen cultural informants were particularly effective sources of important information.
- Tip: Find a 鈥榗ultural informant鈥� who can act as an effective bridge to the other culture.