The student body is becoming more diverse than ever as a result of growing global economy and new education options. This provides staff at schools with a lot of new opportunities, but also poses some new challenges. The student population includes students’ from different ethnicities and socio-economic background.
As a cultural coordinator and mentor for school culture prefects I had an opportunity to view my students in a different light at cultural events. I have taken several initiatives to recognise and celebrate the diversity at our school through the food technology curriculum, cultural activities, crafts, Diversity @ Dio show, celebrations etc. But is this enough to create awareness and improve success amongst ethnic students that are stereotyped as being unmotivated or on the other extreme those that are seen as “model” and always expected to do well?
When adults and children do not share common experiences or hold common beliefs about the meaning of experience, they are apt to misunderstand culturally encoded interchanges (Bowman, 1989).This poses several questions in my mind. How can we meet the educational needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students? Are staff members doing enough to understand that their colleagues and students from a different cultural background live in a creative tension in between two or more subtle complex and unique cultural influences on their personal identity development and world views? They face intolerance, preconceptions, lack of acceptance/understanding from others, pressures to fit in with the expectations of one culture at the expense of the other.
Understanding how differences in culture and language affect children's learning can help us understand what schools can do to improve outcomes. By ignoring the differences between children - their experiences, their beliefs, their traditional practices - schools limit their own ability to educate these children. Valdés found that teachers are unprepared to teach students who do not speak English or who come from cultural backgrounds the teachers know little about.
Understanding various perspectives is important because cultural differences can influence how teachers view the behaviors of students in classrooms, how children interact with teachers and others in the schools. Cultural differences affect the teachers' attitudes toward the children and their assessments of the children's capabilities e.g. aspire scholarship students, Maori and Pacific Island students, Asians etc. The teacher's lack of understanding of these cultural differences may cause the child to miss important learning opportunities.
The Registered Teacher Criteria identifies that teachers play a critical role in an increasingly multi-cultural Aotearoa New Zealand. Teachers need to be aware of and respect the languages, heritages and cultures of all ākonga and promote equitable learning outcomes.
These have been some of my objectives:
To establish what I am doing to raise awareness of differences and similarities between the belief systems and lifestyle of different cultures and to identify gaps
To ascertain what assistance is needed further expose students to cultural experiences in the classroom and encourage cultural and social development of each pupil
To deliver an effective multicultural curriculum where specific reference is made to multicultural activities within programmes of study through the curriculum
To confront prejudices and ways of improving class room practice and environment
To empower students to feel good about themselves, valued, positive, be involved, develop their strengths, acknowledge and affirm cultural heritage, develop language and study skills.
Link to Dio Diversity (2009)
http://youtu.be/ESjePV3yUZk