Gender, religion, and sociopolitical issues in cross-cultural online education

Abstract

Cross-cultural education is thought to develop critical consciousness of how unequal distributions of power and privilege affect people's health. Learners in different sociopolitical settings can join together in developing critical consciousness -awareness of power and privilege dynamics in society -by means of communication technology. The aim of this research was to define strengths and limitations of existing cross-cultural discussions in generating critical consciousness. The setting was the FAIMER international fellowship program for mid-career interdisciplinary health faculty, whose goal is to foster global advancement of health professions education. Fellows take part in participant-led, online, written, task-focused discussions on topics like professionalism, community health, and leadership. We reflexively identified text that brought sociopolitical topics into the online environment during the years 2011 and 2012 and used a discourse analysis toolset to make our content analysis relevant to critical consciousness. While references to participants' cultures and backgrounds were infrequent, narratives of political-, gender-, religion-, and other culture-related topics did emerge. When participants gave accounts of their experiences and exchanged cross-cultural stories, they were more likely to develop ad hoc networks to support one another in facing those issues than explore issues relating to the development of critical consciousness. We suggest that cross-cultural discussions need to be facilitated actively to transform learners' frames of reference, create critical consciousness, and develop cultural competence. Further research is needed into how to provide a safe environment for such learning and provide faculty development for the skills needed to facilitate these exchanges.

An online educational model in andrology for student training in the art of scientific writing in the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…A variety of factors might impact or influence the learning outcomes of the mentees during the online mentorship, such as gender, religion and socio‐political issues (Zaidi, Verstegen, Naqvi, Morahan, et al, 2016). Amongst these factors, a healthy mentor–mentee association or relationship would be one of the essential factors for achieving optimal learning (Chan et al, 2017).…”

Identity text: an educational intervention to foster cultural interaction

“…Further research is also needed to determine whether an intervention such as Identity Text increases dialogue on sociocultural issues in a professional development setting (15). …”

“…Our earlier research emphasizes this challenge. We found that health professions educators from diverse cultures who were participating in residential program sessions, followed by online distance educational discussions, made surprisingly few references to sociopolitical events or norms in their home countries (15). When they did, their online contributions were more likely to be greeted by silence or superficial, short-lived discussions than in-depth exploration of the issues raised.…”

Cultural hegemony? Educators’ perspectives on facilitating cross-cultural dialogue

“…The listserv is used for formal e-learning modules, alumni-designed community conversations, and as an informal resource network and a social support network for Fellows. During the formal e-learning sessions, Fellows are required to post ‘at least one substantive comment that advances the topic’, but are not given any specific guidelines to deliberately post comments to promote multicultural discourse (18). …”

“…We have operationally defined ‘educational cultural hegemony’ as educational practices where teachers assume that the content and task is ‘culture free’ and, therefore, implicitly discourage bringing in personal cultural context. We found that health professions educators from over 40 countries rarely mentioned culture; they focused rather on the specific educational content and tasks (18). As a follow-up to the study, here we aim to explore educational cultural hegemony further by analyzing participant responses to a direct call to discuss cultural issues.…”