Immigrant Academics and Cultural Challenges in a Global Environme ...

teacher’s personality type and misinterpret his or her characteristic culture-bound identity traits. This could have a very devastating impact psychologically, as well as professionally, on the teacher.

Where the immigrant scholar is able to quickly decipher the value system by which assessment and judgment are made by his or her colleagues and by the members of his or her immediate society, he or she begins to feel pressure to adapt to it. This explains why “some cultural minority group teachers have reported that they feel as if they have to suppress their cultural identity and behave as people from the majority culture, that is, like ‘white teachers with black faces’ ” ( Nunggumajbar, 1991, p. 38, as cited in Malin, 1994, p. 95). Not surprisingly, students’ perceptions of what is teacher “exemplary behavior” or teacher “dominance or cooperation” have also been studied and found to be influenced by native culture. For instance, Oord and Brok (2004, p. 133) reported that Hispanic students in the United States “perceive more teacher dominance and cooperation than Asian or European born students, even if they are rating the same teacher.” Similarly, in a U.S. study by den Brok, Levy, Wubbels, and Rodriquez (2003, p. 335), looking at the impact of students’ cultural background on student response to the same segments of videotaped teacher behavior, they discover that “Asian-American students felt the teachers displayed more uncertainty than their peers from other ethnic groups, while students mainly speaking Spanish at home perceived more helpful, friendly and understanding behavior.” They concluded that their study provided “further support for the assumption that students’ perceptions are influenced by their cultural background” (den Brok et al., 2003, p. 335).

The increasing diversity of the classroom population in immigrant-receiving countries implies an increasing complexity of the teaching and learning context. Students’ styles and techniques of learning are also similarly diverse, depending on such factors as culture, age, and developmental backgrounds. As noted by Berhanu (2006, p. 273), “[C]ulture strongly influences how we learn, teach and communicate and it is a significant factor in shaping how students and teachers communicate in teaching and learning.” Hence, immigrant teachers who walk into these