Academic Help-Seeking in a Cultural Context: The Roles of Individualism and Collectivism

• In Event: Toward a Contextually Grounded and Sociocultural Understanding of Academic Help-Seeking: New Directions and Perspectives

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Framework
This research is guided by Jackson et al.’s (2000) communal model of self-regulation, which highlights how self-regulated behaviors are deeply intertwined with individuals’ sociocultural perspectives. According to this framework, behaviors such as help-seeking emerge from the practice and beliefs that comprise an individual’s cultural context. That is, one’s culturally situated perspective on the purpose and value of personal relationships can affect how support is sought when facing academic challenges.

Although researchers have shown sustained interest in understanding the motivational factors behind undergraduate students’ engagement in academic help-seeking (Bornschlegl et al., 2020), little work has explored these phenomena from a cultural perspective (Author, 2024). To this end, this survey study aimed to clarify how key elements of individualism and collectivism shape students’ academic help-seeking behaviors. Elements of individualism include recognizing one’s distinctiveness from others (“uniqueness”) and prioritizing personal achievement (“competition”). Elements of collectivism include soliciting others’ advice when making decisions (“advice”) and prioritizing group harmony over personal goals (“harmony”) (Shulruf et al., 2007). The research question was: Among college students, how does adherence to elements of individualism and collectivism predict engagement in academic help-seeking?

Methods
Participants (N = 645) were undergraduate students in an introductory statistics course at a public Midwestern university (see Table 1 for a demographic breakdown). 21 items from the Auckland Individualism and Collectivism Scale (Shulruf et al., 2007, 2011) were used to assess uniqueness, competition, advice, and harmony. Five items adapted from Pajares et al.’s (2004) Computer Science Help-Seeking Scale were used to assess academic help-seeking engagement. Table 2 contains the items used in this study.

Results
Structural equation modeling revealed that uniqueness, advice, and harmony significantly predicted academic help-seeking engagement (ps < .001), controlling for demographic characteristics. Participants who perceived themselves as distinct (uniqueness) and sought advice when making decisions (advice) were more inclined than their peers to seek academic help. Conversely, individuals prioritizing group harmony over personal goals (harmony) reported less willingness to seek help than their peers. The effect of competition on help-seeking engagement was non-significant (p = .07). Tables 3 and 4 contain the full results of the measurement and structural sub-models, respectively.

Significance
This study was among the first to take a multidimensional approach to understanding the relations between individualism, collectivism, and academic help-seeking, thus offering insights into help-seeking interactions from a cultural perspective. Notably, both individualism and collectivism may contain elements—a sense of personal uniqueness and dependent style of decision-making, respectively—that encourage students to seek academic help. This suggests that in practice, educators can foster help-seeking among diverse students in a culturally sustaining manner by developing teaching strategies that respect multiple cultural perspectives.

Additionally, the findings indicate that collectivism can both encourage and discourage help-seeking, as collectivist values related to seeking advice and preserving harmony predicted students’ engagement in academic help-seeking in divergent ways. Therefore, future research should continue to conceptualize and measure cultural orientations through a multidimensional lens, as failing to do so may obscure the complex ways different cultural elements shape students’ learning.

Author

• Amos Jeng, University of Michigan