Cultural Foundations of Learning East and West

Western and East Asian people hold fundamentally different beliefs about learning that influence how they approach child rearing and education. Reviewing decades of research, Dr Jin Li presents an important conceptual distinction between the Western mind model and the East Asian virtue model of learning. The former aims to cultivate the mind to understand the world, whereas the latter prioritizes the self to be perfected morally and socially. Tracing the cultural origins of the two large intellectual traditions, Li details how each model manifests itself in the psychology of the learning process, learning affect, regard of one's learning peers, expression of what one knows and parents' guiding efforts. Despite today's accelerated cultural exchange, these learning models do not diminish but endure.

1. Faust and birth of a research agenda; 2. Learning to master the universe and learning to transform self; 3. Time past and time present…; 4. Mind-oriented and virtue-oriented learning process; 5. Curiosity begets inquiry and heart begets dedication; 6. Nerds' hell and nerds' haven; 7. Socratic and Confucian tutors at home; 8. Devil's advocate and the reluctant speaker; 9. Implications for the changing landscape of learning.

This book describes fundamental differences in learning beliefs between the Western mind model and the East Asian virtue model of learning, detailing how children engage in learning, regard their learning peers and express their learning, as well as how parents guide their children.

Dr Jin Li is tenured Associate Professor of Education and Human Development at Brown University. Her research examines different cultural learning models and how such culturally based models shape children's learning beliefs and achievement. She collaborates with researchers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the UK, Germany, Israel and the United States. Dr Li has published in leading journals such as American Psychologist, the Journal of Educational Psychology, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Ethos and Cognition and Emotion, among others.