Cultural influences on self-directed learning readiness among selected university students

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of culture on self-directed learning readiness among international students. Comparison is made based on four Hofstede cultural dimensions; namely power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. This study adopted the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS) developed by Guglielmino (1978). Data was collected from questionnaires personally distributed to the purposively selected international students. Sample for respondents is targeted on international students from various countries who are currently studying in the International Islamic University of Malaysia. The sample size is aimed to be sufficiently large and represents every country available in Hofstede Cultures Index. In total, 246 respondents from 13 countries panicipared in this study. The findings ofthis study revealed that Hofstede cultural dimension holds true for power distance in an educational setting in various Asian and Middle-Eastern countries. For individualism cultural dimension, the findings revealed that that the respondents are collective in nature and they tend to exhibit low SDLR. They prefer to work as a group, not individually. However, it is found that there is no difference between high and low masculinity cultural dimension. Uncertainty avoidance cultural dimension is also unable to support the hypothesis postulated, thus the results could not show the differences between the two categories that exist in Asian and Middle~Eastern countries. The implications ofthe study are discussed