Review
Teaching Cross-Culturally: An incarnational model for
learning and teaching
Judith E. Lingenfelter and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003
Reviewed by David Sills
Associate Professor of Christian
Missions and Cultural Anthropology
The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky
Published in Global Missiology, Review & Preview,
January 2005, www.globalmissiology.net
This book serves as an excellent introduction to
the challenging task of teaching students from other cultures as well as a textbook for those being prepared to
minister outside their home culture.
The book grows out of the philosophy and groundwork provided by Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin Mayers in their work, Ministering
Cross-Culturally, second edition 2003.
Both works emphasize the necessity that the cross-cultural worker become a 150%
person. However, the teaching experiences of
Judith, both in the USA and on the island of Yap, have yielded the heart of this work and made it
thoroughly practical.
Teaching Cross-Culturally is designed for educators who plan to minister in
a multicultural setting or in a culture that is foreign to the teacher. However,
the uses of the book are many. Pastors,
missionaries, medical personnel, and intercultural workers from many
disciplines will gain valuable
insights from this book.
The authors set out clearly the goals of the book.
They want to help teachers to understand their own culture first. Second, these teachers must go on to become effective
learners of the target culture, specifically learning how teaching and learning
take place in the new culture context. Third,
teachers are taught to incorporate biblical perspectives as they examine the
interaction of diverse cultures. Fourth, the authors hope to guide all teachers
in multicultural or cross-cultural settings
to be as effective as possible while also enjoying their work along the way.
The Lingenfelters explain several key concepts that
help to make the book so practical. One is the explanation of the power issues
associated with being a teacher in various cultures. Another is the hidden curriculum that is taught along with
the subject matter of the class. They also help us to understand the traditional ways of teaching and learning in other
cultures. For instance, some learn by watching and imitating, others learn by
doing (trial and error), some use rote memory methods, and many utilize oral
methods of passing on traditional knowledge. The Master/Disciple relationship,
or mentoring, method of teaching is presented in a way that demonstrates its strength for many cultures.
In their
discussion of the role of the teacher, an interesting series of matrices are
presented that show the relationships of four
prototypes. For instance, the vertical axis represents the role in social
games and the horizontal axis represents the group. The four quadrants are
authoritarian, hierarchist, individualist, and
egalitarian. Societies can be plotted on the matrix to determine social
style or preference. The second matrix presents the four prototype teacher
roles: teacher as
