If you are teaching mathematics or physics, perhaps the problem will be only related to the simplicity with which the teacher must deliver his sessions. More problems will be there in teaching social sciences and management. The teacher needs to develop extreme tolerance to diversity of views. His  job should be to thrash out and help articulate the issues, rather than being judgmental in such cases so that everyone has the courage to speak up. this will help contribute to better learning. That is what I do when I teach HRM in Denmark, where students are from about 8 to 10 different cultures. .

Teaching culturally-diverse classes has been very easy for me because I think sincerely that all humans are equal & I very much detest any discrimination according to color or race or gender or ethnic origin. My students, through the years, found out that I never acted but it was my true attitude.

However, there are places where there is deep-rooted racism in which generation after generation was brought up to think of itself as a "super race". In such places, life is very difficult indeed everywhere not just in the classroom. 

Dr. Saini,

Thank you for the insightful comments.  Indeed, there may be a lot of differences among students but when we treat them with commonality and tolerance, then the job becomes easier.

Dr. Matar,

I fully understood what you mean.  Perhaps, academicians should be on the forefront of instilling the idea of equality among different nationalities or culturally-diversified race.

I agree with Dr. Nizar Matar that teaching a cultural-diverse class offers no problems.  It is important for one to understand their background environment and life styles, religion and so forth in order to learn to communicate and build up friendly relationships with them.

Thank you, Prof. Camilleri.  Class management, indeed, directly influences teaching, and that the socio-political, economic and cultural background of students, with individual interaction a source of motivation for classroom dynamics, is of utmost consideration to make learning sessions successful.

I also agree with Dr Matar. in Nursing we try and I believe succeed teaching cultural sensitivity by researching the culture, but also to ask the patient/client what would make their experience better since we do not necessarily know and understand. Treating people equally also means stepping up when someone is not as well as being that example.

Sometimes cultural diversity in a class can be used as a resource - it depends on what is to be learned/taught during the course. Students can present on distinctive features of their own cultural background and answer questions. Where the 'difference' between groups of students in a single class is primarily religious, I think it helps to draw attention to the difference between knowledge (episteme) and belief (doxa). Our religious beliefs (including a belief that there is no God) are just that - beliefs. What we believe cannot be proved or disproved. Therefore there is little point in heated disputes about which set of beliefs is 'right', even though we may hold our own beliefs fervently and feel that they are a strong part of our cultural identity.

Dr. Poole, your opinion is somewhat a reflection of what some of our countrymen are experiencing.  We have different religions, and in a class, the students' individual dogmas oftentimes play a role in explaining social phenomena.  Hence, you are right in saying that these heterogeneity could be a source of additional insights, and that's what a lot of teachers emphasize in order to make the students understand each other's beliefs and learn how to respect each other's personal opinion.

Professor,

You ask three questions: How to mitigate between language differences; How to reconcile differences in belief; And how to develop an alternate strategy.  The last topic is interesting, as I am drawn to the question "alternate to what?"  The implication is that whatever is being done is not effective, and the alternate strategy would remediate those outcomes.  Diversity is both a factual challenge institutionally, and a matter of identity on many levels, institutional, cultural and individual.  To the latter I submit perspectives from identity control theory (Burke, 1991), particularly the feedback loop within which, simplistically, individuals seek to verify or fail to verify identity behaviors and beliefs. When differences in expectations of feedback occur, the individual moves behavior (perhaps belief) towards the input.  The problems with reception by diverse individuals of the inputs they obtain from the classroom (peers), from faculty, and from the identity expression of the institution either work to serve inclusion, or to create further divisions.  I am always concerned about how students hear the intention of the communication offered.  It is important to uncover discrepancies in the intention:reception dyad in order to foster the shared meanings which are fundamental to an effective learning community.  Great question...

Dear Prof. Gerry B. De Cadiz,

I teach entomology, ecology and biological control. Conciliation of religion and beliefs of students cannot be my job. Even I must not do it. A teacher at a university should be toward students wholly neutral regarding this question.

Dear Andras

Coming from a nursing background where our students need to learn to care for the patient, it is important to integrate this area of knowing about various religions and cultures because it is essential for the nursing students to understand and tolerate every patient under their care. Therefore I think that teaching nursing is different from teaching other subjects.  Even their curriculum should be based on a Human- Being Element of care.

Coming from the engineering side, I agree with Andras.

While it is important as faculty to be culturally sensitive to the diverse background of students, a basic component of this cultural sensitivity is to know what to discuss and what not and in what context things are appropriate.  I like to very openly take on this behaviour, with the intention of avoiding conflict, but also so that the students can learn the basics of working in a diverse environment. In my opinion in engineering discussing religion in class is just not appropriate.  Ethical considerations yes, but not religious beliefs.

Another topic is how to create effective teamworking experiences with diverse groups of students.  In my experience there can be very substantial differences in students autonomy of thought; while some pre-university academic environments focus on instilling into students a strict respect of authority and not questioning instructions, others do the do just the opposite by rewarding independence and critical thinking.  Mixing these schools of thought can create teams with internal divisions and hierarchical organisation, and not mixing them diminishes the learning experience.  I have been successful in the mixed team approach, but with more guidance than in a homogeneous group.  the intention - aside from academics - is for the students to recognise thee validity and learn to work with other viewpoints; this requires placing them into unfamiliar roles to so that they can recognise these differing viewpoints by experiencing them.  Thus a higher level of guidance and assigning roles becomes a crucial component of successful diverse teams.  Another important ingredient is awareness of the team dynamics, and some instruction to the respect(i.e. forming, storming, norrming and performing) to allow the students to gain a more emotionally detached viewpoint and open their mind for learning.

Working with diverse students is a highly enriching experience, both for the faculty and for the students, and the resulting global competency is a necessity in todays world.

Professor Camilleri,

I agreed with you 100%  We as Nurse educators have to prepare our students to care for all patients and accept them as they are. It is important not to press our values and morals upon them - which is a struggle for new nurses as well as some of the older nurses.

Dear Gerry,

I think to best answer your question, we would need to look at the context first: where do you teach, what kind of school, age of the students, etc.?

I teach in France, in a graduate school of enginnering, and I have sometimes classes of 15 students, between 20 and 23 years old, with 5 or 6 different nationalities.

The first uniting element is that I teach English, which is not their first language, so that helps. 

The second aspect is that I work on 'how to act professionally?', and that's the seonc uniting element.

Of course, cultural differences do come into play, but quite early in the semester we work on beliefs and differences and explore the necessity to broaden our minds and accept differences : being an engineer means finding simple solutions to complex problems, so being able to take a different approach looks very positive to them.

Not sure your context is the same similar, buit... hope this helps.

Erick

Mathematics and other physical sciences are  culture independent and hence teaching them in any diverse or homogeneous class has no problem. The validity of a mathematical theorem or a scientific proposition and their proofs do not require any cultural baggage. Therefore we mathematicians and other scientists have one benefit to be happy from those who teach social sciences in which some of their historical teachings might have to touch and discuss ugly pasts of the human society. 

Regarding contradictory views of religions in class - first if the class is a about religions, then the  theory of the study should dictate that all religions are human constructs and therefore are all valid only to those who believe in them as there is no logic or reason to prove and validate one. It is from that premise the class begins and students should prepare to learn ( different views are welcomed as they are learners). If the class is conducted in religious schools, then there will not be contradicting views rather there will be one view of that particular religion in which all students follow.  

But above all  education is a process of enlightenment and augmentation of our brain in which alien and foreign things and thoughts can get place in our cognitive space so that tolerance and acceptance are developed and welcomed to create a better and civilized human society that is much loosened and weakly connected from threads of religions and more strongly attached to reason and science.  

Dr. Lakew,

Thank you for the well explained premise. Professors has to be on guard of not being carried out of the topic at hand.  It's only in class management that we have to be aware of the sensibilities of each of our students.

The need to be aware of each individual difference, both interest and needs is important. This goes with both planning and delivering the content. The more rich data you provide considering the above issues, the more interaction and communication will be shown.

In certain cases sensitive issues of religion or race differences needs to be neglected especially when the key task is to learn a language.

Dear Carmen,

I agree with you (I think so do everybody). Caring people, nursing them needs obviously maximal attention and one should take into consideration their cultural and other backgrounds and spiritual demands.

The age of students is also a factor- for young learners its not easy to recognize their reactions towards teachers unawareness of their cultures and could be religion especially with teachers not from the same context. However, for higher level, students intend to articulate this clearly and then a clear conversations need to be developed.

Culturally responsive practices are specific educational practices, instructional strategies, team processes, and curricula content which have been established by research to increase the achievement of culturally diverse students. We are culturally responsive when we adjust how we teach to the needs and experiences of our students.

http://www.indiana.edu/~equity/docs/Strategies_for_WOrking_with_Culturally_Diverse_Students__Renae_Azziz.pdf

IF  you are teaching grade 7 science, it is the language and the foundation of mathematics is the difficulties of the students that is why they failed to understand science because they lack the basic and prerequisite skills, more over their superstitious beliefs could corrected by simply let them understand that science has no moral judgement and if follow scientific proc3dure

I use role-playing games which force students to put themselves in the perspective of persons quite different from themselves. Let me give two examples. When I teach philosophy of law, I have four mock trials spaced evenly throughout the course of the semester, such that each student in the seminar gets to be either a prosecutor or a defense attorney once in the term. When I teach the history of Christianity, I have a mock "Second Diet of Worms" fictionally held in 1540 where I play Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and each student plays a different reformer and has to convince me that their religious convictions should be the official position of the Holy Roman Empire. These games cause students to take part in the learning process, to appreciate diversity, and to permanently absorb knowledge.

You have to use culturally responsive teaching as I discuss in these articles that include using varied teaching styles and culturally diverse content by authors from the students' cultural or geographic region.

Article Workforce Education and Development (WED): Graduate Students...

Data Generation I: International and invisible in a workforce edu...

Data Curriculum Inclusiveness Challenge: Responding to Multicultu...

Article Cultural Sensitivity Needed in Online Discussion Rubric Language

Best regards,

Debra

as the world is moving towards hybridity, this topic in teaching languages makes sense more than ever before. I believe what matters most in the face of this issue is to inculcate the spirit of openness to others and solidify the intercultural competence/responsive reflexes of the students. One there is an advance in this matter, all the communication obstacle would turn into meger details.

in my point of view, mentors take care about individual differences , because in diverse classes their may be a lot of difficulties for a teachers but my suggestions are;

Choose culturally relevant curriculum and instructional materials that recognize, incorporate, and reflect students' heritage and the contributions of various ethnic groups.

Maintain high standards and demonstrate high expectations for all ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students.

Show students you care by getting to know their individual needs and strengths and sharing their concerns, hopes, and dreams.

Understand students' home cultures to better comprehend their behavior in and out of the classroom.

Encourage active participation of parents or guardians.