Our book will focus on differences in instructional styles across national boundaries; we will touch on learning styles only in passing.  (Those who focus on learning styles are engaged in an effort to reveal the unique combination of processes and stimuli that best enable a given individual to learn.)  We are aware that some trainers find learning-style information to be useful, and we observe as well that there are innumerable books and journal articles to satisfy that interest.  We, however, are doing something different: addressing formal knowledge-transfer from a sociocultural perspective, not a psychological one.  Thus, attention to each individual’s unique traits is beyond our purview.  Our focus is group-oriented: the observable patterns of behavior of trainers as they interact with learners in order to transfer knowledge.  We will offer ideas about how those observable patterns of behavior can beneficially be altered in classrooms where the instructor and her learners are from contrasting national backgrounds.

Our book will be a recognizable product of the intercultural field.  But it will not begin with that field’s classic dimensions of culture (e.g., individualism – collectivism, high context – low context), then reinterpret them in application to training across cultures.  This book will be the product of research that directly studies instructional styles and classroom cultures worldwide without reference to the classic dimensions of culture.  This research asks what values, assumptions, mindsets, and behavior patterns distinguish the various instructional styles and how the resulting classroom-specific dimensional framework, “Knowledge-Focused – Learner-Focused,” can be made useful for trainers worldwide.

Our book will be grounded in research findings, but it will not be a research report.  Each of us has completed doctoral-level research on patterns of classroom instruction in contrasting national cultures.  Each of us continues to pay attention to the work of classroom ethnographers and others from around the world.  We are not writing this book in order to compile their findings.  We are writing this book because, finally, there’s sufficient deep understanding about instructional styles worldwide to permit the writing of a synthesis of practical value to trainers and presenters who actually work, day-by-day, in cross-national classroom contexts.

Our book will be primarily for “stand-up trainers” (facilitators, instructors) who at least occasionally face trainees or other learners in or from unfamiliar national cultural backgrounds.  Our target audience comprises professionals who are employees of profit, not-for-profit, and governmental organizations as well as those who are independent external suppliers of training to such organizations.  Our target audience comprises professional trainers based anywhere in the world.  Our audience is not limited to American trainers. 

It is our objective that international trainers around the world will find Tactics for Trainers of Adults from Abroad practically useful. 
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If you have a research interest in this field or a closely related one, I invite you to be in contact with me at cornelius@grovewell.com.