Impacts of Culture on Learning and Epistemology - Essay Example

As our class readings have explained, even the way that knowledge is acquired in the first place can have a profound effect on how that knowledge is understood, transmitted, retained, passed on, and applied in the future. For instance, in certain Asian cultures questioning the author, the text, or the instructor is considered unconstructive and/or rude (Lei et al, 2011). As such, this type of learning environment deeply affects the extent to which constructive skepticism takes place and may retard deductive reasoning abilities of the student to a certain degree (Zhu et al, 2010).

This is not to pick one culture out from the group and point out its shortcomings; rather, the intention is to show that on aggregate, every culture has attributes that directly affect the way we perceive, understand and apply knowledge. Likewise, with respect to intellectual property and original ownership of a set of ideas, cultural differences allow for a wide array of interpretations. What would be considered cheating in many Western universities or institutes of higher education is not necessarily frowned upon elsewhere in the world as it is perceived that a positive benefit of learning is synthesizing other people’s work (even without attribution) into one’s own.

Likewise, research methodology, argued by some to be an exact science which has withstood the test of time and continues to be a determining factor of success for many students, can perhaps be seen as the crux of the matter as it relates to knowledge, learning, and the cultural influences that benefit and inhibit each one of us (Kinasevych, 2011). For instance, while performing research within the rubric of a formalized research methodology, a student may have fewer inhibitions regarding liberally borrowing the work of another without proper attribution as this would be seen as a net positive and not necessarily a serious infraction of academic integrity (Jorge, 2011).

Likewise, a student with a particular cultural background might be very hesitant to choose a thesis topic that would likely have a contesting view of that of their advisor. Again, none of these situations explain an absolute; instead, they are simply extant to remind the reader that cultural influences in the way we learn, maintain, question, and use the knowledge provided us have a major impact on how we view the world and interact with it. As has been evidenced through the course readings and lecture notes, culture and the way one learns so intimately affects the way in which one presents and understands information as it cannot be rightly overstated.

Whether it is the particular/peculiar method of learning, differentiated attitudes towards borrowing of ideas (plagiarism), or the compound impacts of culture on formalized research methodology have a profound impact on how we view the world. As is the case with this author, I have grown up attending Western schools and learning Western concepts of how to attain, apply, and question knowledge from my earliest years. As such, I would be remiss if I did not discuss the most serious drawback that I see in my own cultural learning experience; the attitude towards plagiarism.

Although it is inarguable