For two years, 1990-91, I took part in a once-in-a-lifetime adventure: I taught geophysics- my specialty- in Botswana, a country whose economic development was tied to geophysics and whose culture was exotic and very different from my own. (For a general discussion of physics and development in Africa, see Edmund Zingu's article, Physics Today, January 2004, page 37.)
The northern neighbor of the Republic of South Africa, Botswana is dominated by the Kalahari Desert, where daytime temperatures can reach 120°F and where only the most adaptable living beings- including the San people- survive. Consequently, Botswana's population density is very low: The country has about the same area as Texas but about 1/12 the population. Although Botswana's official language is English, the people generally socialize in their native Setswana, a language of the Bantu group.
Historically, Botswana's primary form of wealth has been cattle. In social contexts, that emphasis remains, but more westernized forms of wealth now influence the nation's economy.
Botswana's relatively recent financial gains result directly from geophysics. De Beers, the huge international diamond company headquartered in South Africa, has long been interested in expanding its mining operations into Botswana. In 1967, De Beers geologist Gavin Lamont discovered the Orapa kimberlite, a volcanic rock vein that produces diamonds; that discovery greatly transformed Botswanan life. Foreign money poured into the treasury, and for some Botswanans, the thirst for Western consumer goods replaced the old appetite for amassing large herds of cattle.
One beneficiary of the new prosperity was the University of Botswana. Its student body increased rapidly, and faculty members, like me, were recruited from abroad.
More than 90% of my students were African; fewer than 1% were European, and the balance were from the Indian subcontinent. I soon learned that cultural differences between Botswanan and American students necessitated a change in my teaching approach. For example, many familiar American experiences, such as using the accelerator pedal in a car and being in a vehicle that starts to roll over while speeding around a curve, were unfamiliar to African students. I had to develop alternative ways of presenting and illustrating physics concepts. I saw this new pedagogy as a broadening of my teaching repertoire. My attempts to adjust my teaching approach for the Botswanan students ranged from the hilarious to the unnerving.
My initial classroom discussion of acceleration in general physics, for instance, involved a car's accelerating from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 8 seconds. I realized almost immediately that most of my students did not comprehend. So in my next lecture, I called on my knowledge of local culture, and detailed how one might change the velocity vector of a stubborn cow's path with an appropriately applied external force.
In a presentation of rigid body dynamics, I related locating an object's center of mass to pushing a cow over onto the ground for branding. That illustration, too, succeeded because it relied on an experience familiar to the students. Initially, they found my examples unusual for the classroom, and therefore humorous; but they gradually came to accept them.
A particularly curious cultural issue was the Botswanan students' difficulty in studying what is to American students a very straightforward topic: water. Botswana has had serious droughts over the past 40 years. As a landlocked country with primarily a desert terrain, it has until recently depended on rain as its main water source. Water is such a precious entity that "pula," the Setswana word for rain, is also the name of the country's currency. Students initially had difficulty thinking of it as an ordinary physical substance. Some thought that water waves behaved differently from acoustic or other waves, or from pulses along a string.
My standard US illustration of transverse wave motion- a body surfer's bobbing up and down at the beach- would likely be incomprehensible to Botswanans. I illustrated basic principles of wave flow, such as the dependence of wave velocity on properties of the medium, by sending pulses down a stretched string.
Another cultural difference showed up in the optics lab. I noticed that many students confused the wavelengths for the colors blue and green but not for other pairs of colors. I discovered the source of the difficulty: In the Setswana language, blue and green are called by the same name; they are thought of as the same color. A careful discussion with the students removed the hurdle. I was pleasantly surprised by the creative approach some of them used. They gave, as a mnemonic device, new Setswana names for each of the two colors. Later, back in the US, I learned that the Hopi people of the American Southwest also do not distinguish between blue and green.
Cultural dissimilarities that affected my teaching extended beyond the classroom. Occasionally, I needed to call a student into my office. Invariably, the student would show up at my door with almost the entire class at his side. When I asked the others to leave, there was some initial resistance from the group. When the student and I were alone, he typically acted very uncomfortable. I learned that this was not simply strength in numbers, but a manifestation of a cultural trait, the collectivist mentality. An African faculty member explained to me that a Botswanan growing up normally does not seek privacy. Personal matters, even serious ones, are discussed openly in front of a group. In an individualist society, by comparison, members often deal with each other on a one-to-one basis and the rugged individualist is revered. After I explained this fundamental distinction to my students, they gradually became more relaxed about coming to my office individually. I remarked that the university encompasses both the individualist and the traditional collectivist approaches. If the students took jobs with international companies, I explained, private discussions would be typical.
Despite the challenges and frustrations I faced, my experience in Botswana allowed me to reevaluate fundamental aspects of my approach to pedagogy. I strengthened my skills through constant checks to see how well my lessons were being comprehended and by adapting my teaching style to fit very different cultural and educational backgrounds. Now, when I lecture to my US students, I take much less for granted, and I'm careful to seek out illustrations and examples that are relevant to their lives.
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