Book Review: Teaching and Learning Across Cultures, by Craig Ott

teaching and learning

Ott, Craig. Teaching and Learning Across Cultures: A Guide to Theory and Practice. Baker Academic 2021. 352 pages.

Few subject-matter experts think that they need to learn how to teach their subject, and even fewer imagine culture affects the way they teach. Teaching and Learning Across Cultures—written by Craig Ott, a highly experienced teacher and missiologist—helpfully dispels these assumptions. If you’re involved in crossing cultures and teaching, then you ought to read this book. You’ll learn so much that you didn’t know you didn’t know.

I live and teach on the foreign mission field. I’ve made mistakes and I’ve seen mistakes made. Ott’s book will help me and others to make fewer mistakes. For example, Ott describes the different perspective of African leaders and the visiting American teachers who have came to train them. The American teachers may say, “They’re so hungry for the training we offer.” Or, “They listened so intently. They just hung on every word.” Meanwhile, the African students are saying, “You conclude that you’re communicating effectively because we’re paying attention when we’re actually just intrigued by watching your foreign behavior.”[1] I suspect this is quite common. Those American teachers didn’t know how they were being received, but how could they?

Teaching and Learning Across Cultures helps the reader to avoid such situations. The book doesn’t go in-depth on every subject, but it gives plenty of footnotes so the reader can. Ott is balanced and avoids reductionistic explanations that are so prevalent in books that propose to teach either culture[2] or education.[3] He urges humility and prizes the disposition to learn, which is something one would need to read a book like this. Unfortunately, as a general rule, we Americans don’t tend to be humble cultural learners.

Someone told a joke once about how little Americans know about other countries. “The problem isn’t the ignorance,” he said, “but the complete lack of desire to learn.” He described a conversation:

American: Wow, your country is great!

Frenchman: Thank you so much, but a lot of it has to do with our new prime minister. What do you think of him?

American: Oh, I don’t even know who your president is.

Frenchman: Our Prime Minister . . . is—

American: Oh, don’t worry, I don’t care.

That’s obviously exaggerated, but the point is simple: we don’t keep up with world activities very well. For example, have you heard of the Second Congo War? It was massive and terrible. Nine countries with 25 different armed groups fought; more than 5.4 million people died. It ended less than 20 years ago and is the deadliest conflict since World War II, but most Americans have never even heard of it. I only know about it is because my family lived and worked in Zambia and The D.R. Congo a few years after the events. Global, worldview-shaping events regularly go unnoticed by us Americans.

Though Ott’s volume doesn’t address what’s likely the biggest liability among mission workers today—they don’t have a clear grasp of the Word—it does address another big challenge: a lack of intentionality in teaching which makes missionaries unable to effectively communicate across cultural barriers.

If you’re a parent, then you’ve probably realized that you instinctively do whatever your parents did unless you’re deliberately focused on changing. I’ve known people who hated the way they were parented repeat the same mistakes as their parents. This pattern extends to teaching as well. I’ve seen people who said they learned nothing in school repeat the same teaching style their school employed. I often encounter teachers who are more concerned that all of their prepared material exits their mouth, regardless of whether or not the students understand. The concept of slowing down so that the translator can translate all of the material is often dismissed. But even without a translator, many teachers I’ve met are often opposed to confirm understanding through Q&A or review of the material.

But these concepts should be basic. Thankfully, Ott takes readers beyond the basics into nuanced depth. This, admittedly, can be a hinderance. Teachers who don’t want to hear the basics on better teaching will throw up their arms and say, “But I’m preaching the Word, and it will not come back void!” Of course, the Bible makes it pretty clear that saying the words out loud doesn’t have some sort of magical saving effect. The audience must hear and believe to be saved. As R.C. Sproul notes, “Saving faith requires information.”[4] But if the hearers don’t understand what they’re hearing, then how can they believe it? If the students don’t understand what they’re hearing, then how can they learn? Put simply, cross-cultural workers need to learn how to communicate effectively and clearly.

Teaching and Learning Across Cultures is a well-honed piece of scholarship, but as I noted, it has a few drawbacks. Many will not approach it. As with any balanced scholarly volume you might find your positions helpfully confronted or balanced out. But the book is likely most helpful if you hold to its positions first. Sadly, many who propose to teach across cultures have never considered whether their content should be changed to fit psychological learning styles, how effective the use of proverbs would be among adult oral learners, or many other important educational and cultural nuances.

In conclusion, this is a very helpful volume. While I suspect few people want to read it, I do wish many would read it. How unfortunate. Because, as the author mentions, “today there are worldwide an estimated 420,000 Christian missionaries”[5] who are living and teaching across cultures. Beyond that, America sends approximately 1.6 million people on short-term trips each year.[6] That’s a lot of culture crossing! This book, if it is understood and applied, could seriously helps in making all that work much more effective.


[1] Ott, Craig. Teaching and Learning across Cultures (p. 6). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] For example, a very popular volume that is used to help missionaries understand culture, lumps the entire world onto either ‘hot culture’ or ‘cold culture.’ I have personally seen the confusion in missionaries who cross cultures expecting people to neatly fit into those 2 tidy categories. No one does.

[3] An example of this would be a fatalistic categorizing of people by their ‘learning style,’ or supposing classical western educational models are “the way to teach” rather then “a way to teach.” This type of reductions is addressed in the book.

[4] R.C. Sproul, St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary: Romans (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 355.

[5] Ott – Loc 277

[6] Ott – Loc 278

Mat Kountz

Mat Kountz is currently serving in Cuenca Ecuador with his wife, Amy, and their four children. Mat completed an MA in Missiology at Southern Seminary and an MA in Church Planting at Southeastern Seminary and is doing Doctoral Studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Missions and Theology. The Kountzes intend to train and mobilize Ecuadorian pastors and missionaries to reach their own neighboring communities as well as peoples beyond the borders of Ecuador.

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