Geert Hoftede’s cultural dimensions as a scientific foundation of pedagogical interaction with foreign students
Authors:   Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, Bezukladnikov Konstantin E. , Novoselov Mikhail N. ,   Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University
Published: December 2024

This article is devoted to the urgent problem of improving the effectiveness of pedagogical interaction with foreign students, speakers of different cultures in the educational environment of a pedagogical university. In the social sciences and humanities, having experienced many crises and paradigm shifts, historically there have been different approaches to the definition of the category “culture”, taking into account its many forms and manifestations. Quantitative methods of studying such a phenomenon as “culture” present certain difficulties. The solution was proposed by Dutch psychologist and sociologist Geert Hofstede, who worked for a long time at IBM, a global multinational corporation with offices and subsidiaries around the world, traveled a lot and conducted research on company employees in different positions in different countries. The hypothesis of Hofstede's research was that the potential cultural differences of the company's employees could, in the short and long term, affect the financial performance of such a large multinational corporation as IBM. Hofstede defined culture as the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes members of one group or category of people from others. The scientist put forward the idea of “cultural dimensions” or special cultural parameters based on the values around which the national culture is organized. Hofstede's Cultural dimensions have become the basis of one of
the typologies of cultures. To determine the main factors of human behavior in an organization, the researcher suggested using the following parameters as a support – continuums reflecting such characteristics of behavior as individualism – collectivism; power distance (degree of participation in decision-making concerning everyone); uncertainty avoidance; masculinity – femininity (masculinity – femininity); short and long – term orientation (short – long).
One of the cultural parameters is considered in detail in the article. Such a cultural dimension (parameter), which is relevant for our work in the context of planning and organizing individual and group work with foreign students, is the index continuum “individualism – collectivism”. The scientific explanation of this parameter is given, the approaches of domestic and foreign researchers to its definition and measurement are presented. The study highlights the features of “collectivist and individualist cultures”. The regularities and interrelations between the student's belonging to a certain culture and the peculiarities of his teaching and learning style are revealed. The presented features became the basis for the development of methodological recommendations when working with foreign students in order to increase the effectiveness of pedagogical interaction with them. In individualistic cultures, the highest values are independence and selfconfidence. Individual achievements are noted, in contrast to the achievements of the group. There is a predictable emphasis on personality. Representatives of collectivist cultures value group harmony. The group is of paramount importance. Any individual achievement will be marked as an achievement of the whole group, since the members of the group (family, collective, etc.) played a certain role in this.
Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University has an extensive practice of working with foreign students (Republic of Kazakhstan, People's Republic of China). Students study at all faculties, levels (bachelor's and master's degree), various areas of training. The staff of the Department of Foreign Language teaching methods basing on Hofstede's research have significantly revised and implemented methods, techniques and forms of work taking into account scientific provisions.
The article presents a comparative analysis of the cultures of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, which became possible due to online tools developed by Geert Hofstede. The authors of the article introduce readers to these tools, which significantly expand the possibilities of pedagogical diagnostics when working with foreign students. The significance of Hofstede's research is that “cultural dimensions” allow to a certain extent to use mathematical quantitative methods of studying such an “abstract” phenomenon as culture, to obtain more reliable data for psychological and pedagogical research, to compare different national cultures, to better understand the values of different countries and more effectively build interaction with foreign students.