ABSTRACT

Claims of a special cultural emphasis on learning and education (SCELE) in East Asia versus the West – the United States in particular – are legion in the research literature. The evidence is, however, largely anecdotal, severely geographically limited, or reflects an unrepresentative selection of respondents. We review the evidentiary strategies of earlier studies, situate the assumed SCELE in a theoretical framework, and compare the prevalence of learning and education words in general-interest newswriting samples from across East Asia and the United States (N = 61). Our findings confirm earlier unsubstantiated claims, provide new insight into the strength of the difference, and illustrate a novel means of quantifying the difference in magnitude of SCELE in East Asia in comparison to the United States.

摘要

在研究文献中，有很多人声称在东亚与西方，特别是美国，对学习和教育（SCELE）进行了特殊的文化强调。但是，这些证据在很大程度上是轶事，在地理上受到严格限制，或者反映出对受访者的选择不具代表性。我们回顾了较早研究的证据策略，将假设的SCELE置于理论框架内，并比较了来自东亚和美国（N  = 61）的具有普遍意义的新闻写作样本中的学习和教育用语的普遍性。我们的发现证实了较早的未经证实的主张，为差异的强度提供了新的见解，并说明了量化与美国相比东亚地区SCELE差异幅度的新颖方法。