LR handout

1. Evaluate the following paragraphs taken from Master’s literature reviews from a range of
subjects. Can you see where these students are showing their critical thinking? How are
they showing criticality?
Paragraph one
It is within the context of perpetual racial injustice in Britain that a wealth of migrant studies
literature has been focussed. This began in the 1960s with the emergence of bodies such as
the Institute of Race Relations (1958), Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1964) and
Runnymede Trust (1968). Early studies focussed largely on racial minorities’ structural
disadvantage and reflected a so-called ‘assimilationist’ model of thought. Two local
examples are the Marxist surveys of John Rex and Robert Moore in 1969, and John Rex and
Sally Tomlinson in 1979, which observed the existence of a ‘coloured underclass’ in
Birmingham. 1 They theorised that racial minorities faced continued exclusion from
mainstream employment, housing and welfare – ‘systematically at a disadvantage
compared with working-class whites’ – and so ‘in effect a separate underprivileged class’.2
This conception of a racial ‘underclass’, however, reflects the dangerous homogenisation of
‘black’ migrants common to migrant studies prior to the late-1970s, which fails to account
for differences in experience and the effects of intersectionality. Additionally, their Marxist
methodology may be criticised for resulting in a narrow interpretation born of a clear
political agenda. Since then, encouraged by the thought-provoking racial theories of Stuart
Hall and Paul Gilroy, scholars have increasingly recognised not only the diversity of minority
racial groups, but each group’s heterogeneity in terms of ethnicity and religious affiliation,
resulting in richer analyses. As Roger Ballard and Geoffrey Driver observed: ‘We have ethnic,
not just racial diversity in Britain today. The minorities are not simply black or brown
skinned individuals in a white society; they possess, in each case, a distinctive community
and cultural life as an integral part of their being’.3 Ballard himself has contributed greatly to
the ever-flourishing field of ethnicity studies, particularly that of Punjabi Sikh migrants to
Britain. Other important contributions to this field are Gurharpal Singh and Darshan Tatla’s
study of Sikhs to Britain, Parminder Bachu’s work on East African Sikhs, and the smaller and
locally focussed accounts of Alan James, Kitty Fitzgerald and Raminder Singh on Sikh
children, Manchester Sikhs and Bradford Sikhs respectively.4
1
See J. Rex and R. Moore, Race and Community Conflict: a study of Sparkbrook, (London: Oxford University
Press,1969),and Rex and Tomlinson (1979).
2 Ibid,p.275
3 R. Ballard and G. Driver,‘The Ethnic Approach’, New Society, 16, 1977,p.543.
4
See G. Singh and D. Tatla (2006); P. Bhachu, (1985);A. James (1974);K. Fitzgerald (1986);R. Singh (1992)

2. Paragraph two
To first consider the use of the verb acquisition in a metaphor of learning, it suggests that to
learn we acquire something like an object or entity exemplified in the abstract form of
knowledge, experience and skills. Sfard (1999,p5) affirms that the idea of ‘concept
development’ as suggested by Vygotsky and Piaget prescribes that concepts can be
understood as basic units of knowledge that are accumulated, refined and combined to form
richer cognitive structures. The focus here is on the verb ‘accumulation’, as it is conducive to
the principles of the acquisition metaphor of learning. Though not cited, Sfard (1999, p5) uses
Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) metaphor of the ‘human mind as a container’ to be filled with
certain materials. Elaborating further on this metaphor, Bereiter (2002, p179) likens the
human mind to a ‘mental filing cabinet’. If we are to consider this metaphor in terms of
lifelong learning in F.E colleges, it becomes apparent that the underlying principle of
knowledge and skills acquisition is saturated in the framework of curriculums that depend
upon the assessment of these acquisitions to enable a qualification to be awarded. Sfard
(1999, p6) observes the language used in education frameworks: “attainment, construction,
accumulation” are to name but a few, and clearly exemplify the principle of the acquisition of
something.
Paragraph three
Firstly, it must be noted that the literature evidenced significant criticism of Hofstede’s
dimensions of national culture, and there is much debate about the validity of the Hofstede
and GLOBE data, with regards to the methodology used and the validity of the data. Imm,
Lee & Soutar (2007) argue that that Hofstede’s framework could be obsolete because the
data was collected many years ago. In agreement, Magnusson et al (2008) states, ‘the
contemporary relevance of Hofstede’s data has been questioned given that the data was
collected in the late 1960s’ (pg. 185). More recently, Migliore (2011) challenged Hofstede’s
data in terms of date relevance, in particular for the PDI scores, arguing that ‘significant
changes in new technologies enable people all over the world to gain greater access to
information and data – all which seem to represent a new type of power distribution […]’
(pg.50). However, more importantly, and despite all prior criticism, Hofstede’s dimensions
are being used and updated, with data for new and existing countries being added all the
time. For example, Migliore (2011) offered updated scores for USA and India, whereas Taras,
Steel & Kirkman (2012) present updated scores from their findings for 49 countries,
comparing scores over the years and against various other meta-analytic scores including

3. GDP/Capita, Human Development Index and Inflation, in order to explain the changes in the
scores suggesting that, ‘the change is certainly not rapid, but it appears to be occurring faster
than expected by Hofstede’ (pg.330). Interestingly however, none of the 2012 literature
mentioned Hofstede’s additional dimension which was added in 2010; Indulgence versus
Restraint (IVR), but this could be due to the limited data collated for this dimension to date.