Uncertainty Avoidance

Chap 3: Uncertainty Avoidance

Uncertainty avoidance refers to the extent of which members of a culture do not mind conflicts or uncertain situations and the extent to which they try to avoid those uncertain situations. There are 2 types of uncertainty avoidance: Weak (low) and Strong (high). While people with weak uncertainty avoidance are encouraged to take risk and courage, people with strong uncertainty avoidance prefer clear procedures and try to avoid conflicts as much as they can.

There are many fields to compare the difference between low and high uncertainty avoidance such as family, workplace, school… but in this text, we only focus on “school” field, which I will talk later in my actual example.

In general, weak uncertainty avoidance environment in school encourages students to take challenges, try new things, new ways in learning and be more creative. Whereas in strong uncertainty avoidance environment, students intend to follow the old way but much more safety. They just need to be as much as close to the routine because it is welcome in school.

At my university, I had a chance to experience the uncertainty avoidance in my Statistics class. When the professor finished the lecture, he had a question for the students and I had thought I could answer this question so I raised my hand to answer, but I made a mistake so I got the wrong result. After I got the wrong answer, some of my friends laughed at me and said: “Shut up! Don’t try to be stupid” and that made me very upset and angry.

I think this problem results from secondary and high school education where strong uncertainty avoidance is much prefer. In class, teacher keeps talking about the materials and students keep writing not to miss any word from the teacher. Moreover, discussion is rare in class and only teacher can make questions, not student. This is the routine of Vietnamese education from many years ago so people prefer following to breaking the rules. If a pupil asks teacher a not...