Internacionalização, globalização e cultura

Internationalization, globalization and culture

ARTIGOS

Internationalization, globalization and culture

Internacionalização, globalização e cultura

Jonathan Richard Henry Tudge^I; Lia Beatriz de Lucca Freitas^II

^IThe University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, USA

^IIFederal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brasil

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to contribute to the debate about the value of internationalization by placing it into a broader theoretical framework. Drawing on developmental psychology as our source of examples, we first examine different paradigms, or world views, to show how ideas about internationalization vary depending on whether scholars' ideas fit within a neo-positivist or non-positivist paradigm. Their different ontological and epistemological positions strongly influence the manner in which internationalizing is done (the methods of thinking about and conducting research). Given that neo-positivist approaches are currently dominant in developmental psychology, we provide examples of ways in which non-positivist approaches can be used (a) to conduct research in different cultures and (b) to encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas across societies.

Keywords: internationalization; globalization; culture; cross-cultural research; publishing.

RESUMO

Este artigo tem por objetivo contribuir para o debate sobre o valor da internacionalização, inserindo-o em um quadro teórico mais amplo. A partir de exemplos da psicologia do desenvolvimento, examinamos diversos paradigmas, ou visões de mundo, para mostrar como concepções sobre internacionalização diferem se as ideias dos pesquisadores alinham-se ao paradigma neo-positivista ou a paradigmas não-positivistas. As suas diferentes posições ontológicas e epistemológicas influenciam enormemente a maneira como a internalização é praticada (os métodos de pensar e conduzir pesquisa). Uma vez que perspectivas neo-positivistas são atualmente dominantes em psicologia do desenvolvimento, apresentamos exemplos de como abordagens não-positivistas podem ser usadas para (a) realizar pesquisa em diferentes culturas e (b) encorajar a trans-fertilização de ideias entre países.

Palavras-chave: internacionalização; globalização; cultura; pesquisa transcultural; publicação.

In many parts of the world, including Brasil and the United States, universities are discussing "internationalization", including in that term the process of establishing relations with professors from different parts of the world, engaging in cross-societal research projects, recruiting students from many countries, and ensuring that material discussed in classes does not deal with issues or data that are only relevant to one's own country. It seems difficult to disagree with the idea that internationalization is something beneficial—how can these types of exchanges not be welcome, and surely it can only be beneficial to expose our students to ideas and practices from other societies?

This paper aims to contribute to the debate about internationalization by placing it into a broader theoretical framework. Given the authors' home disciplines, our focus is on internationalization with reference to developmental psychology, although we suspect that our argument is likely to be relevant to other social-science disciplines. We discuss two major points of contention: methods of conducting research in different cultures, and competing notions about the cross-fertilization of ideas among societies. Initially, however, we examine different paradigms, or world views, to show how ideas about internationalization are likely to vary according to people's overarching beliefs about the world. As we describe, these beliefs are also related to the manner in which internationalizing is done (the methods of thinking about and conducting research).

Although the ideas of Pepper (1942) and Guba and Lincoln (1994) have not been discussed in the context of internationalization, we think that they allow us to take a more critical approach to the issues. Guba and Lincoln described a typology of four basic paradigms (positivism, post-positivism, critical theory and constructivism), which differ in terms of their ontology (view of the nature of the world), epistemology (ways of conceptualizing the connection between the enquirer and what is to be known), and methodology (how the enquirer tries to discover what is to be known). Although there are some differences between them, positivists and post-positivists take essentially the same position with regard to ontology, epistemology and methodology. They differ only in that positivists hold that hypotheses can be proven, whereas post-positivists ally themselves with the mainstream view of scientific method, which holds that the best that can be done is to disprove erroneous hypotheses. Positivists and post-positivists, who we will henceforth refer to as "neo-positivists" (Tudge, 2008) both hold that reality is "real" although may only be imperfectly known, that there should be a clear separation of investigators and participants, with the former striving for objectivity, and that the methods to gather data should be as controlled as possible, whether using an experimental design or questionnaires that have forced-choice answers (Guba & Lincoln, 1994).

By contrast, those who Guba and Lincoln (1994) refer to as critical theorists (into which group fall neo-Marxists, feminists, postmodernists, poststructuralists and others) and constructivists (those who accept a relativist ontology) are clearly non-positivist in their approach. Rather than taking the position that there is a single reality, they argue that one's position on reality depends on the specific social, political, economic and gender positions of the people being studied (critical theory) or the "local and specific constructed realities" of those being studied (constructivism). Not surprisingly, therefore, proponents of these non-positivist positions take an epistemological position that is transactional and subjective, rather than aiming at objectivity. From a methodological point of view, the goal of the investigator is to enter into dialog with participants, with critical theorists attempting to transform participants' lives. Clearly, this dialogical process is something that runs counter to the idea of a carefully structured interview (and even less a questionnaire), and the guiding assumption is that an investigator's findings are co-constructed with the participants (Guba & Lincoln, 1994).

It is thus clear that neo-positivists and non-positivists have two different world views, and as Pepper argued in his World hypotheses (1942) these views are not commensurate. That is, what counts as supporting evidence for one paradigm or world view is considered invalid from the position of the other, and there is no overarching approach that can be used to determine whether one paradigm is superior to another. From a research point of view, the best that can be aimed for is that researchers be clear about the paradigm within which they are working and ensure that their methods and approaches to analysis fit with their ontological and epistemological positions.

From the point of view of this paper there are a number of implications, the most important of which relates to the issue of the "single measuring stick" (LeVine, 1989) against which groups can be judged. From the neo-positivist perspective, on any given issue groups or individuals can be judged as performing better or worse by using identical criteria for judging (a single measuring stick). This is one reason why it is so important to ensure that the testing or questioning is done in as identical a fashion as possible, with the tester or interviewer being as separate from the participants as possible. If translation of an interview or scale is necessary, the questions or items need to be translated and then back-translated, to ensure that the meaning is as close as possible across translations. The manner of testing or questioning also has to be identical, to ensure that the results satisfy the requirements of objectivity.

From the non-positivist perspective, however, the relativist ontological position means that what is to count as "better" or "worse" must take into account the goals, values and practices of the particular individuals or groups being studied. Moreover, from the epistemological point of view, there should be no separation of investigator and participant; the transactional or dialogical interaction between the two requires conversational interviews rather than testing or applying questionnaires, and when observational methods are used, observations should be conducted within the participants' normal settings rather than in the laboratory or home in a controlled manner. Given this perspective it becomes impossible to say, except in purely local terms, what can be viewed as better or worse. Rather than using a single measuring-stick, there are multiple sticks, each taking into account the relevant values, goals, beliefs and practices of the individuals or groups.

In keeping with Guba and Lincoln's (1994) stipulation that scholars should be explicit about their paradigmatic underpinnings, we (the authors of this paper) are non-positivistic in our approach but do not believe that non-positivist paradigms are better than those that are neo-positivist; the non-commensurate nature of paradigms means that the best one can say is that a high-quality neo-positivist approach requires the appropriate use of neo-positivist methods and analyses whereas a high-quality non-positivist approach requires appropriate use of methods and analyses that fit within a non-positivist paradigm.

It is therefore important to be careful about distinguishing between a neo-positivist and a non-positivist approach to the issue of internationalization. Is its primary goal to make available to people ideas and insights, values and beliefs, practices and activities from diverse societies? Or is its goal something similar to globalization, in which one set of ideas about academia, studying, research, etc. spreads around the world? As Lo Bianco (2009) noted, what is commonly termed globalization seems more like Americanization, given that it is North American ideas that currently are the most widespread.

Answers to these questions are likely to depend on the particular paradigm or world view adopted. For neo-positivists, the most important part of internationalization should be to expose scholars, students and practitioners to the best research and the best practices, in the hope of improving quality on the single measuring stick. The ideas and practices of whichever country does the best research should be studied and, if at all possible, adopted. Thus if one type of parent–child interaction is associated with good child outcomes in this society, those interactions should be encouraged in other societies. Similarly, if policies carried out in school in that country reduce the incidence of bullying, similar policies should be adopted in other countries. For non-positivists, by contrast, internationalization allows scholars, students and practitioners to become better aware of the different ways in which people in other cultures conduct research, study and live their lives. The goal of this greater awareness is not to adopt others' best practices but to understand the reasons for those practices to be viewed as best in that particular culture. From this non-positivist perspective, different types of parent–child interaction may well lead to different outcomes for members of different cultural groups, but notions of better or worse outcomes can only be assessed from the point of view of each of those groups.

With these thoughts in mind, we now turn to the current manner of dealing with internationalization in the area of developmental psychology in Brasil and the United States. We discuss the ways in which these different paradigms relate to internationalization, focusing on (a) the practice of conducting research in different societies or cultures and (b) the spread of research findings across countries.

Conducting Research in Different Cultures

It is instructive to examine cross-cultural research conducted in both the United States and Brasil. We have not done an exhaustive search, but it seems to be the case that the vast majority of measures used in this research originated in the United States and was used in that country prior to being translated into Portuguese and applied in Brasil. By contrast, it seems that very little cross-cultural research involving the two countries occurred in the opposite manner—Brasilian measures translated from the Portuguese before being used by North Americans. There are also few examples of studies comparing one or other aspect of development in the two countries that try to understand differences from the perspective of each country, though Freitas, Shelton, and Tudge (2008) is one exception.

Is this a problem? The answer depends primarily on the paradigm being used, because scholars working within a neo-positivist paradigm will answer quite differently from those whose paradigm is non-positivist. Before discussing this issue further, it would be helpful to consider the distinction that anthropologists have drawn between an etic and an emic approach to cultures different from our own or, within psychology, the distinction between cross-cultural psychology and cultural psychology (see, for example, Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; Shweder, 1990; Tudge, 2008). Etic approaches fit well within the neo-positivist paradigm; these approaches aim at understanding similarities and differences across cultures by using a common scale or point of reference. Researchers take care to use identical measures, appropriately translated and back-translated to ensure that appropriate comparisons are made. Emic approaches, by contrast, fit within the non-positivist paradigm and typically do not involve comparisons between cultures; researchers using these approaches aim at understanding a culture's practices, values, belief systems, and so on, from the perspective of the cultural group being studied.

Cross-cultural psychologists, fitting within the etic tradition, generally make comparisons between two or more cultures by using an instrument designed in one culture (often the United States) in each of the cultures in the study. This approach aims at validity by allowing the two or more groups to be measured on exactly the same scale (Adamopoulos & Lonner, 2001). Neo-positivists will argue that so long as the measure is translated and then back-translated it is appropriate to use and if the researchers can show that it has similar psychometric properties in the two countries they will defend its validity. There are two major problems with this approach from a non-positivist perspective. The first is that variables or items from an instrument that fit together in the culture in which they were designed may or may not be appropriate in the other culture(s). The second is that claims regarding validity miss the point if the measure finds that average scores in one country are higher than those in the other, thereby showing that one country's participants are "better" in some way than those in the other. Use of the same measuring scale thus makes it possible to view one country's participants as being at a disadvantage or having a deficit by virtue of the fact that they score less on that scale than do participants from the other country.

Cultural psychologists, by contrast, using an emic approach, usually aim to understand a cultural group from within, on its own terms, without making comparisons with any other group. Rather than using a measuring instrument developed in some other country to gather data, cultural psychologists typically derive measures that make sense to the group itself, regardless of whether the measures would work with other cultures. Clearly this makes comparisons difficult, if not impossible (a serious problem for cross-cultural psychologists working within a neo-positivist paradigm), but as comparisons are not the aim this is not a problem for cultural psychologists.

One difficulty with this approach from a non-positivist perspective, however, is that it is impossible to avoid comparisons. Even when the researchers themselves make no comparisons with any other culture, readers of their work can hardly help but compare the practices, values, beliefs, or institutions of the group that was studied with their own group; cultural research is interesting, at least in part, because of the differences and surprising similarities discovered between the group that has been studied and one's own group.

For this reason we do not think that cultural psychologists should avoid comparisons; instead, they should only avoid the use of a single measuring stick. When comparisons among groups are made, findings cannot be evaluated as though there is a single route to competence or "best" performance, but we need to recognize that cultures differ in terms of what they hold to be competence, and what counts as "best". The goal of comparative studies should not simply be to discover similarities and differences among the groups studied, but to understand the reasons underlying both the similarities and differences.

From a non-positivist perspective, therefore, we should be very cautious about cross-cultural research involving the United States and Brasil that simply relies on the use of measures that were developed in the former country and applied in the latter. Claims regarding validity, however, miss the point if the measure finds that average scores in one country are higher than those in the other, thereby showing that one country's participants are "better" in some way than those in the other. Without taking into account the measure-relevant values and beliefs that are prevalent in each country the use of this single measuring stick is simply invalid, from a non-positivist perspective.

How, then, might non-positivist research be appropriately conducted in different cultures? We will go into some detail to show the ways in which comparative research need not involve the use of a single measuring stick to assess "best practices" in different societies. It is important to stress that the research examples we provide are those with which we have most experience and they are intended simply to be illustrative of what can be done. We by no means wish to imply that these are the only examples of appropriate ways of conducting research across different cultures. The first author's research (see, for example, Tudge, 2008) involves a study of young children's everyday activities and interactions, including children and their typical social partners in a single city in each of seven societies (Greensboro in the United States, Obninsk in Russia, Tartu in Estonia, Oulu in Finland, Suwon in South Korea, Kisumu in Kenya, and Porto Alegre in Brasil). In each city, half the families selected for the study were of middle-class background (defined by the fact that parents had higher education and, if they worked outside the home, a professional occupation) and half were of working-class background (parents did not have higher education and worked in the non-professional sphere).

At first sight, it appears that this research is typical of most cross-cultural research, for the methods used in each country were developed in the United States and then applied elsewhere. However, there are three major differences between what is typically done and what occurred in this study. First, the aim of the group that developed the observational method to be used in the study was to use a coding scheme (Tudge, Sidden, & Putnam, 1990) that could be applied in a wide variety of cultural contexts. We were helped in this aim by the fact that two of the developers had lived in a variety of countries (England, Russia, the United States, and Western Samoa) and that we collaborated with two researchers who had spent a good deal of time studying children and examining parent–child interaction in a Mayan village in Guatemala and a hunter-gatherer group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Our goal was thus to develop a way both to observe and to code what we observed in a manner that was sensitive to a very wide variety of types of activities and interactions.

Second, the observational methods were designed explicitly to be used with virtually any cultural group. Observers from the relevant culture, appropriately trained, simply follow three-year-old children from that culture for the equivalent of one complete waking day in their lives, observing the settings they are in, the activities that are going on around them, the activities and interactions in which they are involved, their roles, partners, and so on. Each child is observed for 20 hours, the first 18 of which are live coded (the final two hours are videotaped), spread over six days, covering all parts of the day from when the child wakes until he or she sleeps. Coding and field notes detail what happens for a 30-second "window" every six minutes. Apart from the constraint that an observer is present, following each child wherever he or she is situated, no attempt is made to control the situation, as the goal is to observe the children's naturally occurring everyday activities and interactions in the settings in which they typically occur. This process can occur whether children spend most time with their mother in their large suburban house, whether they are in child care from early morning until collected at late afternoon, whether they are relatively free to wander the areas in and around their family living space, or helping their mothers collect crops.

Third, and most important, is the fact that although the first author's (Tudge, 2008) research is clearly comparative there is no intent to use a single measuring stick to show that one group is somehow "better" than another group. Obviously, the observational and coding methods allow us to say that one group of children engaged in more conversation than did one or more other groups, or that one group of children was more likely to play with school-related objects than were other groups, or that one group of children was most likely to be found playing with other children in public spaces. However, our position is that whether engaging in conversation, playing with school-related objects, or playing with peers is considered "good" or "appropriate" can only be judged with reference to the values and beliefs of the group.

This position derives directly from the theory within which we were working. Cultural-ecological theory (Tudge, 2008) is a non-positivist contextualist theory, and one of the tenets of any contextualist theory is that the meaning of any cultural group's activities and interactions can only be understood from the perspective of the group itself. In order to understand what members of one group think is important in terms of raising children, for example, researchers can of course conduct interviews focusing on their child-rearing values and beliefs. But a more direct method is to observe how children are actually dealt with, the settings they are allowed or encouraged to spend time in, the activities they are allowed or encouraged to engage in, as well as those activities and interactions they are actively discouraged from. Children's own wishes and desires, based in part on their personal characteristics, such as their temperament, also influence their activities and interactions, and the ways in which adults deal with them. However, culture can be thought of as a "provider of settings" (Whiting, 1980) and as an organizer of activities and interactions. As Weisner (1996) pointed out, if you want to know how a child will develop, look at the culture in which he or she is being brought up.

To illustrate this argument, we draw on data from the first author's research. As many scholars of child-rearing practices in Kenya have shown, children as young as 3 are more likely to be engaged in work (helping sweep the house, weeding, buying something at a local shop, etc.) than are children in the industrialized world. The first author (Tudge, 2008) found the same thing, except only for the working-class children in Kisumu, who were far more involved in work than were children from any other group (Tudge, Doucet, Odero, Sperb, Piccinini, & Lopes, 2006; Tudge, 2008). By contrast, Kenyan children from middle-class families were involved in work as little as children were in the other cities and were more likely than were children from any other group to have school-related lessons and to play with things (games, books, shapes, etc.) that were designed to help with later schooling. Which of these two types of activities is "better" for development? Clearly that depends on the competencies required within the group—the Kenyan working-class children were being encouraged to engage in activities that would help them in the future, as were the middle-class children. The anticipated futures of the two groups were markedly different, however.

A similar point can be made with regard to children's experiences in child care. At least some of the children in each of the groups we studied spent 20% or more of their time in a formal child-care center. Focusing only on children in Kisumu (Kenya), Porto Alegre (Brasil), and Greensboro (the United States), it is clear that their experiences in child care were quite different in these three cities. In Kisumu, the children spent approximately half of their time engaged in formal school-related lessons and playing with objects that were designed to help them in school; in Porto Alegre, the children's time in child care was spent almost entirely in play and conversation with peers; in Greensboro, the types of activities in child care mirrored those in which the children engaged at home—for example, the working-class children watched almost exactly as much television in child care as they did at home (Tudge, 2008).

Although we, as readers, are likely to have our own beliefs about what should, or should not, occur in child care, it is impossible to say that what typically occurs in child-care centers in one of these cities is better or worse than what happens in another without reference to the prevailing values about the role of child care in each of the societies. Although there are within-society differences, the currently widespread Kenyan view is that children should be sent to child-care centers in order to get the school-related skills that will help them pass the exams needed to get into the schools that are considered better. By contrast, in neither Porto Alegre nor Greensboro are children required to pass exams to get into schools considered to be good; in both cities, parents can pay for private schooling if they can afford it and in Greensboro the "better" public schools are situated in, and therefore take students from, areas of the city with more expensive housing where middle-class families live.

In Brasil, as in the United States, the history of child care (whether known as "day care" or "preschool") is inseparable from social class, with children from poor and working-class homes traditionally being provided somewhere to spend their time while their parents work and children from middle-class and wealthy homes receiving part-time "quality" experiences (Freitas et al., 2008). Child care in Porto Alegre, therefore, varies by the social-class background of the children attending, with more, and more expensive, materials, smaller group size, and so on for middle-class children. Nonetheless, our data (Tudge et al., 2006; Tudge, 2008) reveal that child-care centers in Porto Alegre are designed to be places in which children can play with others in a safe and secure environment rather than place in which to stress activities intended to prepare children for school.

In Greensboro, as in the United States as a whole, there is continuing debate about what constitutes "quality" child-care experiences. However, there is still the sense that working-class families prefer to send their children to child-care centers that stress children learning to follow the rules and learn useful things, whereas middle-class families often look for centers which encourage children to play and, through their play, learn things that will be useful to them (Lubeck, Jessup, deVries, & Post, 2001).

In other words, the types of activities that should be encouraged in child care, as elsewhere, can only be understood from the perspective of a given cultural group—Kenyan views about their children's activities and interactions will be different from North American views and also from Brasilian views. Moreover, even in any given society, different social classes may well disagree about what their children should be doing. A single measuring stick is simply not appropriate when comparing activities among different groups; what is necessary is to understand the reasons why each group organizes activities and interactions for its young in the way it does.

A Cross-fertilization of Ideas

A second way in which internationalization may be effective is by spreading ideas between countries in the form of research-related publications. Currently, one of the measures of the quality of Brasilian post-graduate programs in psychology is the extent to which they encourage internationalization (Lo Bianco, Almeida, Koller, & Paiva, 2010).

Research published in the United States is, we believe, widely available and cited in Brasil. To what extent is the reverse true? We decided to examine recent publications in two of the leading journals in psychology (the authors' home discipline), one in Brasil and the other in the United States. The criteria for our choice was the highest ranking by Qualis (CAPES, 2009) for a psychology journal in Brasil or, in the United States, one of the highest impact-factor scores for journals in developmental psychology (Developmental Psychology, 2008). We chose, from 2009, one entire issue from each journal. Of the 25 articles published in the US issue, 15 were authored by Americans, three by Canadians, two by British authors, and one each by authors from Belgium, China, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands. Most interesting, however, was the fact that 89% of the references in the papers published in the U.S. issue were to books, chapters, or articles published in North America, with a further 4% to sources published in the United Kingdom. Having taken into account references to unpublished papers and citations from the internet, only 5% of references were to published sources from other countries. Even in those papers written by scholars outside of North America, references to American scholarship ranged from 69% to 91% of the total references, with only three sets of authors (those from China, Belgium, and Japan) citing more than 10% from outside North America or the United Kingdom (13%, 11% and 11% respectively). It is perhaps not surprising that Sherrod (2010) argued that in the United States current knowledge about children's development is based on 5% to 7% of the world's population!

By contrast, the papers published in the Brasilian journal were either written by Brasilian scholars (17 papers) or by scholars based in Portugal (4 papers). Papers written by Brasilian authors cited more references (42%) to North American publications (including books originally published in the United States but subsequently translated into Portuguese) than to Brasilian publications (35%), with 4% published in the United Kingdom, 8% published elsewhere around the world, and 7% unpublished Brasilian scholarship. Of the papers published by Portuguese scholars, almost the same percentage of references were to North American publications (41%), but 46% were to books and papers published in Portugal. Of the remaining citations, 5% were to U.K. publications and 1% to work published in Brasil.

In other words, American authors who published in this leading U.S. journal almost never cited any work published by scholars outside of North America or the United Kingdom; scholars from other countries cited American publications overwhelmingly, with publications from countries other than the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. comprising from 6 to 13% of the total references. Scholars who published in this leading Brasilian journal were about as likely to publish papers from their home country as from North America, but whether they were Brasilian or Portuguese scholars fewer than 10% of their references were to other countries around the world.

From this evidence, then, it seems that North American scholarship has spread far more widely to Brasil and Portugal than scholarship from these and other countries has spread to the United States. Perhaps it is not surprising to find that North American and Brasilian scholars mostly cite North American literature, whereas only Brasilian authors commonly cite research conducted in Brasil. Scholars in North American routinely think that the best journals in which to publish their articles are those that are the most prestigious in the United States. The same appears to be true in Brasil. Of the 40 journals in Psychology that CAPES ranks as the most prestigious, only two are Brasilian; one is Mexican, one is from Spain, and the remainder are either North American or British (CAPES, 2009).

Thus there is clearly a spread of ideas from one country to another, with Brasilian scholars being exposed primarily to North American research (but also, thanks to papers written by their Portuguese counterparts, research from Portugal). From a neo-positivist perspective, there is no problem; the "best" ideas should spread as widely as possible. However, from a non-positivist perspective what might appear to be internationalization seems to be closer to globalization—with ideas spreading only going in one direction. What is particularly troubling from the non-positivist point of view is that research conducted in the United States, with American participants, is so often considered to be equally relevant to Brasilians, although even from a neo-positivist perspective one would never say that data collected from a sample derived from one population of interest can be generalized to another population. The dangers of such thinking, however, are captured well by Watters (2010), in his book Crazy like us: The globalization of the American psyche. Watters describes the ways in which North American views about mental illness are no longer treated as one culture's understandings of what constitutes mental health or sickness, but as appropriate for the entire world.

From a non-positivist perspective we would like to see more examples of true cross-fertilization of ideas across societies rather than the spread of ideas from one country to another. The study of gratitude, by the second author and her colleagues, provides a good example of one way in which cross-fertilization of ideas across societies may occur. Before providing more details, we would like to stress again that this is merely one way among many in which cross-fertilization can happen; we have provided this example simply because it is one in which we have personal experience. When she started her research on the development of gratitude, she wanted to develop vignettes, or short stories, of children being helped in some important way by another child or an adult. A professor at a North American university had used a number of vignettes in research on a different topic, but the second author was able to adapt two of them for use in the gratitude study, and she then developed several more such vignettes. These vignettes were then used to collect data on the development of gratitude in children and adolescents in Brasil (see, for example, Castro, Rava, Hoefelmann, Pieta, & Freitas, 2011; Freitas, Pieta, & Tudge, 2011; Freitas, Silveira, & Pieta, 2009a, 2009b).

Shortly after this process, an official exchange agreement was signed between the American and Brasilian universities where the two professors work. Partly as a result of this, the American professor visited the Brasilian university and gave a presentation about her research. However, most relevant was the fact that this professor and the second author had the opportunity to discuss their mutual interests, and the American used two of the second author's vignettes in her multidisciplinary and longitudinal study focusing on the emotional, cognitive, and social factors that relate to early school success (Freitas, O'Brien, Nelson, & Marcovitch, 2012). Finally, the second author was a Visiting Scholar in the United States, working with the American professor and her colleagues. The plans are to continue this collaboration while the longitudinal data-collection continues.

In other words, this collaborative venture did not occur in the typical fashion, with a scale or instrument being developed in the United States and then imported, suitably translated, for use in Brasil. Instead, vignettes that had been developed for one purpose in the United States were adapted and modified for a different purpose in Brasil, were then exported back to the United States for use in research there. Both researchers have entered into a truly collaborative arrangement, and the vignettes themselves have undergone a dialectical transformation, with the resulting synthesis benefitting from the cross-societal exchange of ideas.

Conclusion

Our goal in this paper has been to contribute to the debate about internationalization by putting it into a broader theoretical context. Although internationalization is considered to be a positive goal in many universities there are clearly different ways of thinking about it. On the one hand the word has been used to describe a process of globalization or homogenization, in which one culture's notions of what constitutes "best practices" come to be viewed as relevant across the globe. A single measuring stick can then be used for quality, in which this culture's views are treated as best and other cultures' practices, if different, viewed as not measuring up or as being deficient in one or more ways. From this neo-positivist perspective it is only right that the best research ideas and practices should be spread as widely as possible. The results of research conducted in the United States, for example, should be propagated and applied around the world, and if one or other group is viewed as having a deficit, by comparison to those studied in the United States, North American research is available to suggest how that deficit can be overcome (namely by taking to heart the research results).

On the other hand, internalization has been used to describe attempts to make available to a wider audience ideas and insights, values and beliefs, and current practices from cultural groups different from our own, placing them into historical and contemporary context. Non-positivists, who take a completely different ontological, epistemological and methodological position to their neo-positivist peers, are more likely to hold that the results of research conducted in one society may be adapted for use in another, but only after appropriate consideration is given to the different historical traditions, values, beliefs and practices of the societies in question. From this perspective, the goal of internationalization should not be to spread the values and practices of one group to other places around the world; missionary zeal may have been thought appropriate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but we need to avoid it now. Thus, in terms of research collaboration, internationalization should foster the bi-directional exchange of ideas, concepts, and approaches, rather than the one-way spread of North American views to the rest of the world.

As we have made clear, neo-positivist ideas are widespread in both the United States and Brasil. Research in developmental psychology involving the two countries almost exclusively consists of methods, scales, or questionnaires developed in the United States and then translated and used in Brasil. Similarly, research results are spread almost exclusively from the United States to Brasil and have their effect there rather than the other way round. We have therefore provided examples of non-positivist approaches to comparative research and to the cross-fertilization of ideas across the two countries.

There are a number of objections that could be raised to our discussion. First, it might appear to be too dichotomous—either scholars in psychology treat internationalization as globalization or they focus on the many links between different cultures' specific contexts and the particular values, beliefs and practices that have developed in each. Is it not possible to do both at the same time? Not according to Pepper (1942), who argued convincingly that these paradigms are non-commensurate. In other words, they simply cannot be combined. This of course makes sense, given the different ontologies and epistemologies of the different paradigms about which we have written; not surprisingly, they lend themselves to quite different methodologies.

A second objection is that we have written only about the situation in psychology. Might it not be the case that scholars in other social science disciplines (sociology, anthropology, political science, etc.) have different approaches to internationalization? This is, of course, a possibility, and we have restricted our discussion to just one limited area. However, our conviction is that if the same type of analysis is done, the results will show that the more proponents of a discipline fit within a non-positivist paradigm the more likely they are to think of internationalization as a way to gain greater understanding of the differences among different cultures. Conversely, the more scholars accept a neo-positivist ontology and epistemology the more they will use methods that encourage the use of a single measuring stick for quality and the more likely they will favour the spread of ideas from "more developed" to "less developed" societies.

A final objection is that this paper is written in English, which is surely the current most imperialist of languages, pushing ever further the boundaries of globalization and homogenization. It is the case, fortunately or unfortunately, that throughout history one language has been the most widely used across the known world for the exchange of ideas among people of different societies. In ancient times it was Latin and Greek that had this role; for several centuries from the Middle Ages onwards French served that purpose. Currently English is the most universal of languages; in the future Chinese or some other language may occupy that place. Our aim is not to contribute to globalization, but simply to give our ideas the widest possible audience.

Note

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the many participants and collaborating colleagues who took part in the two studies discussed in this paper. Our thanks are also due to Pooja Vadehra for assessing the American journal's articles and references. The second author acknowledges the financial support provided by CAPES to facilitate her senior postdoctoral position at UNCG, and is also thankful to her colleagues on the STAR project.

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Recebido em: 07/01/2011

Aceite em: 07/04/2011

Jonathan Richard Henry Tudge é Doutor em Desenvolvimento Humano pela Cornell University. Atualmente, é Professor Titular da University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), no Departamento e Programa de Pós-Graduação em Human Development and Family Studies. Adress: Department of Human Development and Family Studies The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA. Email: [e-mail]

Lia Beatriz de Lucca Freitas é Doutora em Psicologia pela Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Atualmente, é Professora Associada da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), no Departamento de Psicologia do Desenvolvimento e da Personalidade e no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia. Email: [e-mail]

Datas de Publicação

• Publicação nesta coleção
  10 Jan 2013
• Data do Fascículo
  2012

Histórico

• Recebido
  07 Jan 2011
• Aceito
  07 Abr 2011