Author

Cornelius N. Grove, Ed.D., is America’s leading practical ethnologist of education. To quickly gain awareness of the nature of his work, explore either (a) the links in the narrow column to the right or (b) his 18 publications available at no charge at Academia.edu.

A definition of the term ethnologist appears at the bottom of this column.

Cornelius completed an M.A.T. degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1964, then served for four years as a high school teacher in White Plains, NY. From there he moved into educational publishing at two houses in New York City. During 1971-73, he and his English wife devoted two years to sojourning in rural Portugal and traveling in Europe and across Africa. He returned to graduate school at Columbia University.

While completing his Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree, Cornelius became fascinated with the non-linguistic cross-cultural factors that undermine children’s ability to learn in classrooms. For his dissertation project, he examined the cultural challenges affecting immigrant Portuguese students in a Massachusetts middle school. After graduating, he became Director of Research for AFS, the international student exchange organization. He also held adjunct teaching posts at New School and Columbia Universities, where he taught a course of his own design, Cross-Cultural Problems in Classroom Communication. During the spring term of 1986, he taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University and joined the University’s vice chancellor in co-authoring Encountering the Chinese.

During 2006, Cornelius delivered a paper on instructional styles across cultures at a conference held in Singapore. Soon thereafter, he adopted as his professional mission this commitment:

To gather together the practically useful findings of global educational researchers (such as anthropologists) and make this knowledge available, in readily understandable language, to teachers, parents, and other citizens concerned by American students’ inadequate learning.

His first book explores the historical reasons for most Americans’ belief that students master academic learning well, or not so well, largely because of their inborn (fixed) intelligence.

The Aptitude Myth: How an Ancient Belief Came to Undermine Children’s Learning Today

Cornelius’s second and third books are closely related. Together, they reveal the explanation for why students in East Asia master academic subjects more thoroughly, and are able to apply their knowledge more successfully, than American students. His second book investigates East Asian youngsters’ upbringing by their parents at home. His third book discusses how pupils are engaged by their teachers in East Asian kindergartens and primary schools.

The Drive to Learn: What the East Asian Experience Tells Us about RAISING Students Who Excel

A Mirror for Americans: What the East Asian Experience Tells Us about TEACHING Students Who Excel

Around the same time, Cornelius authored an entry on “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy” for the Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence (2015). And for the International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (2018), he authored a lengthy entry on “Pedagogy across Cultures”.

After completing A Mirror for Americans, Cornelius took a fresh perspective on children’s learning. He asked this question: How do young children learn in indigenous and traditional societies where schools play little or no role in anyone’s life? This led to his fourth book:

How Other Children Learn: What Five Traditional Societies Tell Us about Parenting and Children’s Learning

After completing How Other Children Learn, Cornelius returned to the topic that had fascinated him at Columbia University: the non-linguistic cross-cultural factors that undermine children’s classroom learning. He decided he would share with American teachers and corporate trainers practical applications of anthropological research into the varying cultures of classroom learning around the world. He’s now finishing this book, which probably will be published in early 2026:

Misaligned Minds: How Cultural Differences Complicate Teaching. With 76 True Stories of Misaligned Minds from E.C.E. to Ph.D.

Beginning in January 1990 and continuing through December 2020, Cornelius’s day job was as managing partner of GROVEWELL LLC, which delivered executive coaching and cross-cultural services for corporations worldwide.

Cornelius shares his publications not only on Academia.edu but also on ResearchGate.net, where anyone can access several dozen of his publications at no charge. Some concern the ethnology of education while others (written during his 30 years at GROVEWELL) address cross-cultural hurdles in global business relationships. Visit ResearchGate.net.

ETHNOLOGISTS use the research findings of anthropologists to compare parallel features of contrasting societies. As a practical ethnologist of education, Cornelius Grove compares the cultures of learning in contrasting societies, gaining insights into the varying characteristics of knowledge transmission worldwide. He uses those insights to develop actionable suggestions for American educators. Ethnology is based on the Greek words ethnos, nation, and logos, reason or discourse. Don’t confuse ethnology with ethnography, the principal research method of anthropologists, nor with ethology, the study of the behavior of non-human animals.