ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cornelius N. Grove, Ed.D., is America’s leading practical ethnologist of education. To quickly gain awareness of the nature of his work, explore either (a) the links in the narrow column to the right or (b) his 18 publications available at no charge at Academia.edu.
A definition of the term ethnologist appears at the bottom of this column.
Cornelius completed an M.A.T. degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1964, then served for four years as a high school teacher in White Plains, NY. From there he moved into educational publishing at two houses in New York City. During 1971-73, he and his English wife devoted two years to sojourning in rural Portugal and traveling in Europe and across Africa. He returned to graduate school at Columbia University.
While completing his Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree, Cornelius became fascinated with the non-linguistic cross-cultural factors that undermine children’s ability to learn in classrooms. For his dissertation project, he examined the cultural challenges affecting immigrant Portuguese students in a Massachusetts middle school. After graduating, he became Director of Research for AFS, the international student exchange organization. He also held adjunct teaching posts at New School and Columbia Universities, where he taught a course of his own design, Cross-Cultural Problems in Classroom Communication. During the spring term of 1986, he taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University and joined the University’s vice chancellor in co-authoring Encountering the Chinese.
During 2006, Cornelius delivered a paper on instructional styles across cultures at a conference held in Singapore. Soon thereafter, he adopted as his professional mission this commitment:
To gather together the practically useful findings of global educational researchers (such as anthropologists) and make this knowledge available, in readily understandable language, to teachers, parents, and other citizens concerned by American students’ inadequate learning.
His first book explores the historical reasons for most Americans’ belief that students master academic learning well, or not so well, largely because of their inborn (fixed) intelligence.
The Aptitude Myth: How an Ancient Belief Came to Undermine Children’s Learning Today
Cornelius’s second and third books are closely related. Together, they reveal the explanation for why students in East Asia master academic subjects more thoroughly, and are able to apply their knowledge more successfully, than American students. His second book investigates East Asian youngsters’ upbringing by their parents at home. His third book discusses how pupils are engaged by their teachers in East Asian kindergartens and primary schools.
The Drive to Learn: What the East Asian Experience Tells Us about RAISING Students Who Excel
A Mirror for Americans: What the East Asian Experience Tells Us about TEACHING Students Who Excel
Around the same time, Cornelius authored an entry on “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy” for the Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence (2015). And for the International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (2018), he authored a lengthy entry on “Pedagogy across Cultures”.
After completing A Mirror for Americans, Cornelius took a fresh perspective on children’s learning. He asked this question: How do young children learn in indigenous and traditional societies where schools play little or no role in anyone’s life? This led to his fourth book:
How Other Children Learn: What Five Traditional Societies Tell Us about Parenting and Children’s Learning
After completing How Other Children Learn, Cornelius returned to the topic that had fascinated him at Columbia University: the non-linguistic cross-cultural factors that undermine children’s classroom learning. He decided he would share with American teachers and corporate trainers practical applications of anthropological research into the varying cultures of classroom learning around the world. He’s now finishing this book, which probably will be published in early 2026:
Misaligned Minds: How Cultural Differences Complicate Teaching. With 76 True Stories of Misaligned Minds from E.C.E. to Ph.D.
Beginning in January 1990 and continuing through December 2020, Cornelius’s day job was as managing partner of GROVEWELL LLC, which delivered executive coaching and cross-cultural services for corporations worldwide.
Cornelius shares his publications not only on Academia.edu but also on ResearchGate.net, where anyone can access several dozen of his publications at no charge. Some concern the ethnology of education while others (written during his 30 years at GROVEWELL) address cross-cultural hurdles in global business relationships. Visit ResearchGate.net.
ETHNOLOGISTS use the research findings of anthropologists to compare parallel features of contrasting societies. As a practical ethnologist of education, Cornelius Grove compares the cultures of learning in contrasting societies, gaining insights into the varying characteristics of knowledge transmission worldwide. He uses those insights to develop actionable suggestions for American educators. Ethnology is based on the Greek words ethnos, nation, and logos, reason or discourse. Don’t confuse ethnology with ethnography, the principal research method of anthropologists, nor with ethology, the study of the behavior of non-human animals.
The material below is being tested for the website of my next book, Misaligned Minds.
Chapter 4 of Misaligned Minds
Mixing Individualism and Communitarianism in Schools
This is the second of four chapters that each include nineteen stories illustrating how cross-cultural differences can complicate teaching. The stories in this chapter describe actual cases of misaligned minds that occurred when students and parents who regulate their relationships and learning according to communitarian norms and values come face-to-face with individualistic teachers.
4.01
The class whose members couldn’t learn without collaborating
Place: U.S. Midwest
Level: adult English class
People: Hmong students, U.S. teacher
Summary: Teacher frustrated by constant student collaboration.
4.02
How best to discipline Native Alaskan students
Place: Alaska
Level: high school
People: Native teacher and boys, Anglo principal
Summary Using Native ways, teacher disciplines boys; principal disciplines her.
4.03
American parents reject instructional methods from abroad
Place: United States
Level: middle school
People: American parents and principal
Summary: Principal mandates European-style group projects; parents revolt.
4.04
Non-Inuit teachers undermine their Inuit pupils’ learning
Place: Quebec
Level: primary
People: Inuit pupils and teachers, non-Inuit teachers
Summary: Inuit teachers allow pupil collaboration; non-Inuits do not.
4.05
4.05 American mother startled by Japanese classroom procedure
Place: Japan
Level: primary
People: American mother, Japanese pupils
Summary: Allowed to observe in classrooms, mother is astonished by what she sees.
4.06
African students lose interest in a British business course
Place: United Kingdom
Level: business school
People: African students, British course administrator
Summary: Students gradually lose interest in a four-week course.
4.07
A student’s dilemma: Help a colleague or refuse to cheat?
Place: Germany
Level: adult German class
People: American and Eastern European students
Summary: Europeans critical of Americans’ refusal to cheat.
4.08
Responding to a misprint on a major exam in Zimbabwe
Place: Zimbabwe
Level: middle school
People: Canadian teacher, local students
Summary: Misprint on practice exam raises question of how to respond.
4.09
Communitarian values reign in a Berlin ice cream parlor
Place: Germany
Level: adult German class
People: German teacher, Eastern European students
Summary: Teacher treats students, is perplexed by their behavior.
4.10
Native American propriety affects students’ writing ability
Place: United States
Level: community college
People: Native American students, Anglo teacher
Summary: Due to a Native norm, students are unable to summarize.
4.11
A second look at the capabilities of inner-city pupils
Place: United States
Level: upper primary
People: Black pupils, white teacher
Summary: Teacher asks pupils to write about their lives, understands them much better.
4.12
University student from Kuwait objects to American-style grading
Place: Middle East
Level: university
People: Kuwaiti student, U.S. teachers
Summary: Design student objects to teachers’ preference for innovative ideas.
4.13
A misunderstanding with international teaching assistants
Place: United States
Level: graduate school
People: U.S. math teachers, Chinese students
Summary: Teachers shocked to learn that Chinese are not grasping advanced math.
4.14
Anglo teacher laments Native American students’ timidity
Place: U.S. Southwest
Level: middle school
People: Anglo teacher, Native and Anglo students
Summary: Teacher ascribes Natives’ classroom passivity to “timidity.”
4.15
University student from Bahrain hates to cite his sources
Place: Middle East
Level: university
People: Student from Bahrain, teachers from the U.S.
Summary: Student rails against requirement to cite sources in his papers.
4.16
Differing levels of international students’ commitment
Place: United States
Level: undergraduate
People: U.S. teacher, students from many nations
Summary: Perplexed by differing levels of commitment, teacher finds answer.
4.17
Trainee teacher decides between two contrasting districts
Place: Southeastern U.S.
Level: district
People: trainee teacher juggling job offers
Summary: After choosing district similar to where she grew up, teacher struggles to be accepted.
4.18
Shocking wall chart discovered in a Chinese classroom
Place: China
Level: high school
People: American researcher
Summary: Researcher shocked by huge chart listing each student’s name, test scores, class rank.
4.19
Eighth-grade students found digging a trench in Zimbabwe
Place: Zimbabwe
Level: middle school
People: Canadian teacher, local students
Summary: Teacher finds girls digging a trench, apparently for no reason.