Addressing Student Diversity

Considerably diverse are the classrooms during this modern times.

Today there are many definitions of and disagreements about multiculturalism. Multicultural education is one response to the increasing diversity of school population as well as to the growing demand for equality for all groups.

James Banks (2002) suggests that multicultural education has five dimensions; the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, empowering schools and social structure, an equity pedagogy and content integration.

Cautions in interpreting cultural differences.

Social class differences: being poor?

The term used by sociologists for variations in wealth, power and prestige is socio-economic status (SES). In modern societies, levels of wealth, power, and prestige are not always consistent. Some people – for instance university professors are members of professionals that are reasonably prestigious but provide little wealth or power. Other people have political power even though they are not wealthy.  In spite of these inconsistencies, most researchers identify four general levels of SES; upper, middle, working and lower classes. Social class is a significant dimension of cultural differences, often overpowering other differences such as ethnicity or gender.

SES and achievement

There are many relationships between SES and school performance. What are the effects of low SES that might explain the lower school achievement of some students? Many factors maintain a cycle of poverty. Poor health care for mother and child, limited resources for the family, interruptions in schooling, exposure to violence, overcrowding, homelessness in other countries, and other factors like low paying jobs.

Ethical, racial and cultural differences

Ethnicity is used to refer to groups that are characterized in terms of common nationality, culture, or language. This shared sense of identity may be based on geography, religion, race or language. Sociologists use the term minority group to label group of people that receives unequal or discriminatory treatment. Cultures differ in rules for conducting interpersonal relationships for example ‘uh huh’ to indicate they are listening carefully. But members of other cultures may not be able to give acknowledgement as a sign of respect. Cultural influences are widespread and pervasive. The differences between cultures may be very obvious such as holiday customs, or may be very subtle such as how to get your turn in conversations.

Ethnic and racial differences

A major concern of schools is that some ethnic groups consistently achieve below the average for all students. Although there are consistent differences among ethnic groups on tests of cognitive abilities, most researchers agree that these differences are mainly the legacy of discrimination, the product of cultural mismatches or a result of growing up in a low SES environment. This may be true for some of the students who have grown up in the atolls and who have come to Male to get their education.

Stereotype threat

This is an apprehensiveness about confirming a sterotype. The basic idea is that when stereotyped individuals are in situations where the stereotype applies, they bear an extra emotional and cognitive burden. The burden is confirming the responsibility of confirming the stereotype, either in the eyes of others or in their own eyes. In the short run the fear that you might confirm a negative stereotype can induce test anxiety and undermine performance. All groups not just minority group students, can be subject to stereotype threat. The long term effects are that students often develop self-defeating strategies to protect their self-esteem about academics. The withdraw, claim to not care, exert little effort, they disquailify or psychologically disengage from success in the domain.

Gender-role stereotyping in the schools.

There has been quite a bit of research on teaching treatment of male and female students. This is true for preschool to college students. The effects of these differences is that from preschool through college, girls on the average receive fewer hours of attention and instruction than boys. Some boys, generally achieve high whereas high achieving girls receive the least teacher attention.

Culturally compatible classroom are what we want.

Luckily this level of diversity is seen rarely in a Maldivian school. We have little to bear in our minds in this line of thinking.

This means to eliminate racism, sexism and ethnic prejudice while providing equal educational opportunities for all students. When cooperative work groups of four or five boys and girls were established in a study done in Hawaii, classroom participation increased but when the same was tried in Navjo students did not work. These students are sociolzied to be more solitary and not to play the opposite sex.

We need to be focused on learning styles of children as well. It is wrong to assume that every individual in group shares the same learning style. The best advice for teachers is to be sensitive to individual differences. Other differences that need to be considered are the languages or the dialects if we are applying them in the Maldivian classrooms. A knowledge of socio-linguistics will help you understand why communication sometimes breaks down in classroom. We could also use culturally relevant pedagogy. This is teaching that rests on three positions: students must experience academic success, they should develop their cultural competence and also develop critical consciousness to challenge the status quo.