In our paper, we describe teachers' personal strategies for shifting their cultural and pedagogic paradigms to deliver teaching that is aligned to the cultural frameworks of their learners. Our research is empirical and focuses on experienced teachers in graduate schools in Thailand. We gathered data using in-depth qualitative interviews in which respondents described their strategies for making sense of novel cultural environments represented by the learners in their classrooms. In their sense-making the teachers needed to understand features of the national culture outside their classrooms and how this influenced their learners' preferred learning styles. The teachers realized that their new and evolving perceptions required them to make changes in how they conducted their classes. In this paper, we outline the concept of paradigm shift and explain how this can be used to understand the processes the teachers used to shift their own cultural assumptions. We show how the teachers developed their professional competences. We describe the fundamental changes the teachers made in their classroom pedagogies to benefit their students' learning experiences. In conclusion we indicate directions we plan for our future research.