Handling Uncertainty

What’s going on here?

A school department met to plan for an event that included multiple speakers. The lead said that many of the speakers were not selected yet and that the team needed to wait on details. Several members of the team asked the lead if they could look into any possible technical equipment and other logistics. The lead said no because the speakers weren’t finalized.

Several members of the team left feeling anxious and unclear of their role or task for the event. They felt like they couldn’t do their jobs for the event because they didn’t have enough information.

Every group of people through time has had to deal with uncertainty. This is not risk—a calculated assessment where the outcome is somewhat known. Will our crops be destroyed? Will someone come conquer us? Will I die tomorrow? Hofstede determined a cultural dimension that encapsulates the approach toward this unknown. Uncertainty avoidance attempts to control outcomes with means such as laws and rules that a group inherently feels are correct behavior. Tolerance for ambiguity has a greater threshold for uncertainty and groups tend to have guidance rather than specific rules, lean into innovation and embrace open-ended questions and situations. Uncertainty avoidant cultures are great with implementation and terrible with innovation. Tolerant of ambiguity cultures are great with innovation and terrible with implementation.

Why is this important in education? Because uncertainty avoidant cultures tend to have teachers that inform parents and are expected to have the answers. Students are used to structured environments and expectations of needing an answer. Teachers of tolerant of ambiguity cultures, however, can say "I don’t know” and involve parents, while students are used to less structured environments and are good with discussions of open-ended questions. Here in the US, where we are much more tolerant of ambiguity, we will need to not only teach students with strong uncertainty avoidant cultures the patterns of open-ended structures, but we also need to provide a lot more psychological and social safety for those students to thrive in that environment. Cultural orientations are not easy to overcome because they are values deeply embedded in our identities.