International Journal of New Developments in Education, 2025, 7(8); doi: 10.25236/IJNDE.2025.070820.
Wenxuan Dong
School of Foreign Languages and Department of College English Teaching, Zaozhuang University, Zaozhuang, 277160, Shandong Provice, China
Education is a common focus for parents worldwide, but teaching models vary across countries due to cultural values. This paper aims to explore the different and similar cultural values behind Eastern and Western educational concepts by analyzing cases from a popular Chinese documentary Childhood Elsewhere from an intercultural perspective. Theories of Cultural Dimension and High-context vs Low-context are adopted in the process of contrast and comparison. The results of the case analysis of the documentary shows that Eastern educational approaches tend to emphasize collectivism, higher power distance, and higher uncertainty avoidance values, and belong to high-context cultures in terms of communication. In contrast, Western educational methods lean more toward individualism, lower power distance, and lower uncertainty avoidance values, and are characterized as low-context cultures in linguistic expression. For similarities, cases from the documentary shows that some ancient Chinese educational philosophies, like Confucian thought, coincide with modern Western teaching practices, but modern Chinese people have somewhat lost their ancestors’ spiritual wealth.
Comparative Analysis; Education, Inter-Culture
Wenxuan Dong. An Intercultural Comparative Analysis of Eastern and Western Educational Concepts—A Case Study of the Documentary Childhood Elsewhere. International Journal of New Developments in Education (2025), Vol. 7, Issue 8: 126-130. https://doi.org/10.25236/IJNDE.2025.070820.
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