The Importance of Cultural Responsiveness in Tertiary Foreign Language Education in Collectivist Contexts

Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) holds that teaching is more effective and more equitable when it draws on learners’ cultural knowledge, values and ways of participating. This systematic review, reported in line with PRISMA 2020, asks what the evidence indicates about the importance of culturally responsive practice in this setting and how far that evidence can be trusted. The evidence indicates that cultural responsiveness matters chiefly through four mechanisms: relational trust between teacher and learners, protection of face during participation, the pedagogic fit of imported methods such as communicative language teaching and group work, and the relevance of content to learners’ identities and professional futures. Importance, however, is established mainly through perceptions and engagement rather than through demonstrated effects on learning; cultural explanations are routinely confounded with institutional ones such as examination washback; and the construct of collectivism is often applied in ways that the cross-cultural literature has shown to be essentialising. The review argues that importance should be treated as a well-supported but under-tested hypothesis, and that culture is better understood as a repertoire of practice than as a fixed trait. Implications and strategies for practice are addressed in a companion review.