Abstract :
The purpose of the study reported here is to illustrate how an approach based
on a culturally appropriate ‘shepherd metaphor’ has helped Asian students to
cross cultural boundaries and to engage in critical thinking online. Asian
students are under different levels of influence from the Confucian Heritage
Culture, which cultivates students to revere authority, maintain harmony and
avoid conflicts in public. This has a significant impact on Asian students’ cultural
readiness to verbalise critical thinking. This paper partially reports
research undertaken in a large English as a Foreign Language reading class in
Taiwan, in which ‘shepherd leadership’ was practised. Shepherd leadership
involves knowing students individually, offering cognitive modelling, exercising
leadership and discipleship, encouraging student leadership and calling on
silent students personally to get them to participate. This approach, concentrating
on Asian students’ affective needs, cognitive modelling, passing leadership
to students and reaching out to silent ones, was found effective.
