The Cultural Attitudes Towards Cooperative Learning: What Proverbs Can Offer

ABSTRACT

Cooperative Learning (CL) is acclaimed for its effectiveness, but is not widely used, partly because the role of culture in its implementation is overlooked. To fill this gap and to introduce an alternative methodology for the study of culture, this interdisciplinary paper examines Iranian proverbs to see how Iranians' culture feels about group work and what psychosocial factors contribute to their attitudes. The findings suggest Iranians’ culture, notwithstanding its potentiality for cooperation, is relatively non-cooperative. This ambivalence was observed to originate culturally from distrust, egoism, antipathy towards reciprocal altruism, and diffusion of responsibility. These findings substantiate the functionality of this alternative methodology.

KEYWORDS:

• culture
• group work
• proverbs
• cooperative learning (CL)
• culturally responsive education

Acknowledgments

I would like to express heartfelt thanks to those who lent me a hand during this research, especially those 20 kind raters who cooperatively answered the 657-item long prevalence rating scale with outstanding accuracy. I must also extend special appreciations to Dr. Ghahraman, Dr. Salmani Nodoushan, and Dr. Sayed Mohammad Alavi who have always been extraordinarily inspirational and supportive of me and my research on cultural matters. Sincere gratitude also goes to Professor Jason Wrench, the editor of the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, and the anonymous reviewers who helped me refine the quality of this paper by their expert comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Since journal articles are constrained by word limits, the full list of the original corpus encompassing 291 records cannot be reported because it would take at least 11 pages. Nevertheless, the list in which each proverb and its occurrence page are marked is available upon request.

2. As a rule of thumb, conceptual metaphors to be identifiable from the body of the texts are written in small caps within the realm of linguistics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohammad Tamimy

Mohammad Tamimy holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics/TESOL and is currently not affiliated with any institutions. Although he comes from applied linguistics/TESOL, his research interests are more educational and he is particularly engrossed in research on intercultural education/communication, especially small group research in intercultural settings. He has previously published on the relations between culture and cooperative learning in some journals including the International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS). He also serves as a peer-reviewer to a few international and Iranian journals.