Domestication of the Ivory Tower: Institutional Adaptation to Cultural Distance

Several years ago, a student and a faculty member in our off-campus teacher education program went on a hunting trip out on the tundra of western Alaska. The student, a Yup'ik Eskimo who had grown up in the area, had completed only a few years of formal schooling but had successfully worked as a teacher's aide in the local school and had decided to pursue becoming a certificated teacher. The faculty member, who had a doctorate and several years of teaching experience, had just moved to the area as a field coordinator for the University of Alaska's Cross-Cultural Education Development (X-CED) Program and was about to begin his postdoctoral training in arctic survival. The student and the faculty member had worked out a deal in which the faculty member would help the student overcome some weaknesses in his reading and writing skills, while the student would teach the faculty member a few things about living on the tundra. Everything went fine during the first day out, as the faculty member followed closely behind his mentor, carefully staying in the track of the leading snow machine. By the second day the faculty member had built up enough confidence in his ability to read the seemingly featureless terrain that he decided to venture off the track and break a trail of his own.