Firstly I have to say something about the similarities with the research made in Psychology between psychology of personality and psychology of individual differences because of I am currently reading a book about the psychology of personality. Briefly,

1. Psychology of individual differences deals with the differences in people, their quantification and the relationships between the differences (traits)

2. For psychology of personality the differences are based on personality's characteristics. Up to a certain extent it represents a more unitarian concept than the former one.

Just replace individual / personality by "culture" to see it more clearly.

So, the analogies that I have found are:

1. The focus of analysis: about differences themselves or about the supposed ground of those differences. For instance, it's the difference between saying "A is taller than B" and saying "A's feeding has been richer than B's". I discuss about this issue later.

2. Traits vs. Dimensions: with traits you are trying to identify which are the main stable characteristics of someone's behavior (culture) (and nothing else). Example: "this culture is open, individualistic, with respect to the elder ones". It's something that you have or not. Dimensions would be understood as "meta traits". In addition, they have a more quantitative approach. For instance in Hosftede's sense, to say that a culture is individualistic imply: people taking care of themselves (including immediately family only), self-orientation, identity based on individual and so on

3. The "danger" of defining unique elements in cultures so that they could not be compared. Or in other words, the description of cultures should be very wide and abstract to avoid being lost in "particularities".

For instance, I think the danger those particularities is well expressed in the paragraph (p. 4) that states: "[...] It is simply that they are better prepared for that situation with a cultural worldview is more consistent with the worldview of the teacher and school than is the cultural worldview of the learners from a minority culture".
In my opinion this sentence partially expresses the contrast between learning and performance. The idea is that the only way to measure learning is to observe what an individual does. And that can be influenced by knowledge acquisition as well as by performance itself. In other words, in the former sentence "better prepared" would mean better knowledge acquisition or better level of performance (independently of how knowledge is acquired. For instance the practices used would be more familiar for a given group than to another).

In my case, I reckon that if I do not have in mind this fact, it is quite natural for me to think that differences are more representative than they really are. In this sense I also reckon that it would be easier to find unique aspects in different cultures leading to a huge difficulties in how they could be compared. On the other hand, I must say that culture affects both sides: how knowledge is acquired (more specifically: which knowledge is acquired) and the level of performance (how things are done).

4. Nomothetic vs. ideographic. In the paper is also reflected both ways of researching. Nomothetic stands for generalization: the study of a lot of cultures / individuals in order to find general characteristics or traits. More or less what Hofstede has done. Ideographic reflects the study in depth of something (personality or culture). For instance, psychoanalysis is ideographic. Or when an anthropologist submerges herself in a tribe.
It seems that in the former history of psychology - which up to a certain extent deals with problems similar or related to the ones stated in the paper - was quite easy to narrow your focus and get stuck in one of the research trends and forget the other one and leading to endless discussions about which methodology is the best one. (Apply that to Hofstede's methodology and its critics).

5. The critics made by Lamiell [look at the file attached] which deepen the former aspects and have quite sense to me. I have attached an article where he explains in length his thoughts. Summarizing:

5.1 The knowledge of the individual differences is not the knowledge of an individual. It only has sense if the variance is 0. In other words, what is true for a group is not necessarily true for individuals. Up to a certain extent what is measured for a group are adjusted values or emergent properties.

5.2 The individual behavior is not caused nor can be explained by the differences between individuals. It's just a statement of the difference. Dot. Differences are just relative measurements. It's like two cars crossing in opposite directions. The relative speed of the cars (from the point of view of the passengers) is bigger than the absolute speed of the cars.

Besides of the similarities I have more issues to discuss, specifically with the idea of Communities of Practice (CoPS) by Etienne Wenger and more specifically with the last of the recommendations for future research: "how do online learning platforms and online learning communities get structured in a way to better understand and respond to cultural diversity and even gain from it?". I think that the concept of CoPs is very useful for the following reasons:

1. Because of the idea itself. CoPs can be explained in this way: We do different things in order to accomplish certain enterprises. This process relates us with others and the world (the environment and even ourselves). These relationships are tuned as long as the interaction lasts. That is: there is learning. We learn.

The interaction (with the people and the world) and the pursuit of enterprises crystallizes in practices. Practices belong to a group of people (a community) in a continual pursuit of a shared enterprise. Practice is social (or at least it seems to be). That's why the name of communities of practice.

2. How learning is understood as something that happens anywhere at anytime. Wenger expresses it in this way:

"1. We are social beings
2. Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises
3. Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of those enterprises
4. Meaning is what learning is to produce"

3. The level of analysis. Firstly, in a theoretical level CoPs are in the between theories of social structure (which emphasize cultural systems and give primacy mostly to institutions, norms and rules) and theories of social experience (they focus on the experience and the local construction of individual or interpersonal events such as activities and conversations).In other words, learning would be between something BIG such as culture and the individual or interpersonal interactions.

Besides, in my opinion sometimes the term culture is far too big and its prone to an inadequate analysis. I think that sometimes, if difficulties challenges arises from culture, a possible solution would imply to change the culture itself (as a whole). CoPs would allow a most accurate level of analysis: the culture as a whole should not be "changed". With the community - their systems of meanings and values - the problem is scaled down.