Culturally appropriate face strategies in cooperative learning with insight from cultural neuroscience

Face, understood as public image, exerts critical influence on interpersonal communication. Incorporating insight from cultural neuroscience, a number of potential mismatches with regard to facework are revealed when methodologies originated from the West are applied in a different context. This paper examines culturally appropriate face strategies in cooperative learning among Vietnamese learners. Our results show that discussion outcomes increase when self-face and other-face are confirmed and group-face is mildly confronted in form of intergroup competition. The paper indicates that educational methods underpinned by fundamental psychological assumptions based on Western values should be adjusted to be culturally appropriate for contexts in which it is applied.