Informal teaching attracts foreigners

New report from the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management at CBS

International students prefer the Scandinavian teaching philosophy instead of the one they know from their home countries. That is proved in a new report from the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management at CBS, made by Associate Professor Sven Bislev and Associate Professor Simon Kragh. The investigation, which is conducted among 416 Danish students, who have studied abroad, and 380 foreign students who have spent a semester in Denmark, map values and attitudes towards authority at business schools around the world.

Compendiums – not textbooks

Among other things, the report shows that the informal form of address in Denmark only is one of many signs that Danish universities are among the least authoritarian in the world. Especially in Southern and Eastern Europe, the universities are far more hierarchic.

“In Denmark we prefer compendiums instead of textbooks. We value argumentation, and teachers and students cooperate. In authoritarian systems, the professors’ lectures are the center of rotation, fact knowledge is valued highly, and the students’ viewpoints do not count as much as the professors’”, Sven Bislev says.

Read the report

Sven Bislev and Simon Kragh have made a diagram of the teaching democracy at business schools around the world. Students have answered questions about form of address, amount of group work, teacher roles, and amount of group discussions.

Top 5 of involvement of students in the classroom:

1. Denmark

2. Sweden

3. Finland

4. Australia

5. Holland

…

22. Germany

23. Russia

24. Poland

25. Italy

26. Japan