Culture

Although various attempts have been made to define culture, traditional definitions of culture have been very limited in scope. Historically, culture has been defined as a series of traits shared by a group of individuals. That is, the concept of culture has been understood as shared norms that shape individual behavior. These behaviors have been interpreted as being standardized rules for a group of individuals. Despite the unifying traits that organize and, at times, define cultural groups, culture has been traditionally construed as a monolithic variable that is stagnant or fixed both in time and space. Defining culture in such a way fuels a discourse that essentializes individuals of particular cultural groups by universalizing the existence of a uniform set of traits that is shared by each group. What is problematic is how this definition reinforces a perspective that universalizes and/or standardizes group norms, behaviors, and ideologies. Doing so perpetuates a discourse that reinforces these behaviors and ideologies as being static and neither fluid nor dynamic.

Emerging, however, are attempts to understand culture as the everyday practices and beliefs that individuals embody and display through behaviors and practices. This perspective reinforces discourses suggesting that individuals communicate their culture through language, rituals, religious beliefs, value systems, traditions, and other beliefs. In other words, culture has been constructed as a way of ‘doing life’ or engaging in life-centered activities. Given this orientation, culture is a socially constructed concept that is dynamic, emergent, interactional, and multidimensional; it is not constant, fixed, or compartmentalized within a particular category or definition.

Rather than focus on what culture is and is not, the aim of this entry is to reflect on the practices in which individuals engage within a particular context and within a particular moment in time. Embedded within this perspective is an affirmation of how individuals engage in life and how individuals discuss their engagement. This entry examines the construct culture by moving beyond uniform categorizations of shared group cultures that tend to essentialize groups and their respective practices. The entry's purpose is threefold. First, it provides a general understanding of culture within the field of educational psychology. The complexities of culture are then illustrated by examining how research reports learning styles and the variation in learning outcomes. Second, a critical discussion is presented on the complexity that arises when using broad definitions of culture and ethnicity, especially when analyzing and discussing specific cultural groups. A discussion highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of using broad-based terms to define specific cultural groups when designing, conducting, and interpreting empirical research follows. Finally, there is a discussion on how constructs such as ethnicity and race are often used interchangeably with constructs such as culture.