Multiculturalism in Education - Research Paper Example

? Incorporating International and Multicultural Perspectives into a Diversity Workshop for Faculty at an Urban Incorporating International and Multicultural Perspectives into a Diversity Workshop for Faculty at an Urban University Introduction Diversity is all around us. Much of the beauty of the world lies in looking at our various surroundings. Remaining a homogenous society would not only become boring and mundane, but would cause us to miss out on so much that is afforded to us in this life. For far too long, the system of higher education in America has been predicated on teaching to one particular cultural construct. Diversity, in years gone by, was not embraced. In fact, it was often shunned to the point where the country saw many colleges and universities rise to the level one race, one religion, and one culture. To continue with this practice would not only be an injustice to students around the world who have come to cherish our individual freedoms and liberties, but it would service to deny faculty and the student body alike the privilege of learning in a multi-cultural environment. Understanding and accepting people of other cultures and beliefs do not have to be a daunting task. It simply requires compassion and a desire learn from and embrace others. Our university might be small in number, but we have the capacity to develop a cultural awareness that rivals institutions much larger than our own. Our own faculty is diverse, yet we have failed to tap into this reality. We should be making use of our broad range of professional and military experience in order to better understand the diversity existent around us and to use the knowledge to impact our student body as well. This training program has been developed with our faculty in mind. It will focus on the instructional methodologies inherent in multicultural education, and it will create a sense of global awareness amongst us all that we must be conversant with the latest educational issues, diversity, and multicultural theory. It is in so doing that we will truly become a global institution who can make a positive impact in the field of education, while embracing multicultural diversity and becoming more accepting of each student and staff member who passes through our illustrious halls. Purpose There is no mistaking that the world is becoming increasingly diverse, yet this same diversity has not been reflected in the field of higher education. According to Hill, et. al (2011), only 10% of earned Doctorates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are represented by minority groups (p. 20). This not only leaves a great gap in these critical fields, but it indicates a troubling trend. If universities cannot embrace multicultural education, then society will be losing out on valuable learning opportunities moving forward. This purpose of this training workshop is to reverse this trend by providing faculty members with the tools necessary to incorporate multicultural education into the classroom, thereby encouraging diversity and an exchanging of scholarly and academic ideas across cultures. Embracing the diversity amongst us, a further purpose of this workshop will be to share various pedagogical techniques with one another that will serve to enhance our own multicultural understanding. Our students are increasingly coming from a diverse background and we must work together with all students to foster an atmosphere of understanding and respect. This begins with the faculty, each of who has valuable experience to draw from in the field of diversity education. Embracing all people does require, to some extent, a shift in our way of thinking and the methods that we employ in our disciplines. It has been noted by some faculty members at other institutions that, “Fundamental and sustainable change is possible, given the right combination of vision, compromise, and commitment” (Grogan & Vaz, 2003, p. 35). It is this primary need for change that forms the basis for this particular training. It is not proper for an institution such as our to ignore the fundamental rights of universal education. Faculty and students have not purposefully excluded certain pedagogy from the university of classroom, but multicultural education has been ignored for far too long. To strengthen the diversity on campus, reduce incidences of racism and prejudice, and to promote global harmony should be our purpose moving forward. This does require all people involved in our institution to make a conscious effort to shift existing curriculum towards a more balanced and global perspective. In order to do this, facilities of higher education need to analyze both their strengths and weaknesses in order to develop attainable goals moving forward that will benefit the field of education for generations to come (Lindman & Tahamont, 2006, p. 290). The reality is the our system of higher education in America in undergoing systematic change, both from within and without. The cultural diversity that is now apparent around us has challenged liberal ideals that have held for generations. Change is swiftly moving in, however, and we can no longer stay firmly grounded in traditional ideals. To do so would be to deny all people the right to a liberally based and globally structured curriculum. We need to promoting these new ideals to undergraduate and graduate students alike in order from them to catch a glimpse of our new interconnected world. In summary, this workshop will be springboard into the new wave of American education. Each faculty member will be encouraged to consider ways that their current instructional techniques can be altered to be more inviting to students of all backgrounds. In addition, each staff member will be shown the need to an increased sense of urgency in this area as we are losing valuable ground to much of the rest of the world who has been promoting multicultural education far longer than we have (Canham & Lester, 2003, p. 37). The training will be comprehensive, but it will not stop here. This is new pedagogy that will take some time to fully implement and will not end with its successful completion. It will become a life-long process of working together to promote global harmony. Goals and Objectives The goal of the workshop is to teach the importance of recognizing the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity that is present on not only our campus, but at institutions of higher learning across the country. It is important that we no longer overlook students from different ethnic groups. It is also critical that we promote harmony and understanding amongst the entire university community. If these goals can be met, then the workshop can be seen as a success and we can move forward as an institution. Objective 1: By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to develop activities that are inclusive of all ethnic groups and promote an atmosphere of multicultural education in both lecture and theory. Objective 2: By the end of the workshop, participants will understand the changing linguistic needs of their students and be able to accommodate second language learners by adopting a more multi-cultural curriculum. Objective 3: By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to identify signs of prejudice and discrimination and will develop an action plan for dealing with such manifestations of behavior. Syllabus This workshop is designed to take place during five, two-hour blocks over a period of one term. This affords the participants time to digest the material, while not discounting any part of the curriculum as being unimportant. The training is required of all faculty members and is intensive, so to meet the needs of a busy university staff, the sessions are broken up over the course of the term. Following is a syllabus that outlines the content of the training, followed by the actual curriculum, instructional strategies, and assessment activities. Workshop Description – This is a ten-hour workshop designed to develop and integrate a complete plan for better implementing program of cultural awareness and multicultural education on campus. Through an understanding of this diversity, we will promote more of an international perspective in our teaching methods and curriculum design. Through the presentation of various case studies, we discuss what we can do, as a faculty, to make our institution more globally minded and diverse. Workshop Objectives Upon successful completion of this training, participants will be able to: 1. Develop activities that are inclusive of all ethnic groups. 2. Promote an atmosphere of multicultural education in both lecture and in theory. 3. Understand the changing linguistic needs of their students. 4. Accommodate second language learners by adopting a more multi-cultural curriculum. 5. Identify signs of prejudice and discrimination. 6. Develop an action plan for dealing with manifestations of prejudice and racism on campus. Five Required Meetings Meeting 1: Learning how to integrate multicultural topics and international awareness into current course content. Meeting 2: Discovering resources and materials that can be implemented into current curriculum in order to better meet the needs of a globally minded student body. Meeting 3: Understanding differing worldviews between faculty and students and how to match this with the various learning styles present on campus today. Meeting 4: How to implement diversity into instruction strategies, facilitation techniques, and classroom dynamics. Meeting 5: Analyzing current assessment activities in each discipline to determine how they could better represent the diverse learner in an international and multi-cultural setting. Curriculum Each session will be divided into lectures, case studies, discussions, and assessments. Each session will last two hours and participants will be encouraged to be involved in all facets of the training in order to attain maximum benefit. The information that follows is an overview of the curriculum that will be covered in each workshop. Workshop 1: Integrating multiculturalism into current course content This two-hour session will focus on issues of diversity, social justice, and global issues. These three areas will be examined in the context of higher education. Workshop 2: Discovering globally inclusive materials and resources This second, two-hour workshop will shift the focus towards implementing a more multi-culturally friendly curriculum. Workshop 3: Meshing together the worldviews of faculty members and students This training session is two-hours in length and will involve the examination of the different worldviews represented in the varying generations of students and faculty resident on campus. Workshop 4: Diversifying current instructional strategies to reach a more global audience. This is the fourth two-hour workshop and focuses on instructional strategies. Traditional teaching methodologies will be discussed, and then new pedagogy will be introduce that provide a more global perspective. In addition, teaching strategies will examined that embrace members of different diverse groups, such as the LGBT community. Workshop 5: Creating more multi-cultural and diverse classroom assessment This final session will discuss how tradition assessments may be biased towards the diverse learner. Participants will learn how to create activities that embrace all learners, regardless of ethnicity or personal values and systems, and learn how to incorporate different global perspective in their classroom. Instructional Strategies The workshop itself will be designed with a forum-type atmosphere available in mind. Colleagues will be encouraged to interact with one another and share their successes and failures in terms of the material being discusses. An open dialogue will be encouraged and the role of the trainer will be that of a facilitator. Once presenting the material for any given session, the facilitator will then lead the participants in activities designed to dissect the information and to determine its applicability in terms of daily life on campus. By incorporating discussions, debates, case studies, and worldviews into the five training sessions, this strategy will enable all participants to critically analyze their own desire to more multi-culturally aware. We will explore the role and responsibility that all faculty members have in making this transformation change within our organization a reality. Adjunct and residential faculty have an important part to play. Since faculty members are the voice of the university, the instructional strategy of this workshop will reflect that. It is important the participants get involved. Each session will involve breakout groups designed to give members more of a chance to interact with one another and to apply the information specifically to their own discipline and department. The needs of the students are the focus, but the specific needs of faculty members will not be discounted. Through it all, the focus of the training will be to present all participants with the reality of our diverse world and what we can do to educate ourselves to be more accommodating moving forward. Assessment Activities At the end of each meeting, there will be an assessment activity to allow the participants an opportunity to demonstrate and reinforce the knowledge learned during the session. Assessment Activity 1: The session participants will be divided into groups of 4-5 members each, by discipline. Each group will choose the curriculum of a current course being taught on campus and decide which components are lacking. The group will be expected to come up with a minimum of five ways that multiculturalism can be integrated into the course content. They will also need to demonstrate that the areas they chose will contribute to a more international awareness on the part of their students. Assessment Activity 2: This assessment will involve some outside of training work. Each participant will need to evaluate their own course materials and select one or two the they either feel: 1) are inclusive and representative of the diverse learner, or 2) lack any type of multicultural elements. They need to bring the material to the next workshop session and be prepared to share their findings with their colleagues in a group setting. In addition, each member of the faculty needs to locate a resource or two that they can utilize in their classroom to provide a more global focus to their instruction. Assessment Activity 3: After discussing different worldviews in the training session, two different case studies will be presented and discussed in the large group. One study will focus on traditional values and worldviews offered by a faculty member. The discussion will center around how this particular worldview might contribute to prejudice and racism on campus and what can be done to gradually shift this worldview to be more embracing and accepting of a diverse population, while still holding firm to values and beliefs that they believe to hold important. The second case study will present the worldview of an international student. Questions for discussion will involve the issues that this student might face on campus and what can be done to better assimilate the student into campus life, and allow them to thrive in the classroom. In addition, suggestions will be sought after that will help the student be ore accepting of the majorities worldview and how that information can be used to foster an atmosphere of mutual respect for one another, as well as a desire to become more globally focused in our thinking. Assessment Activity 4: Today’s assessment will be similar to the group discussion unveiled in the first training, but members will be divided across disciplines. Each member will give a summary of their current instruction strategies to the rest of the group. The group will them devise a workable plan that will enable the faculty member to diversity those strategies to reach a more global audience. Each faculty member must then prepare an outline detailing what they intend to do in the coming academic year to encompass the principles learned during the diversity workshop into their own classroom environment. Assessment Activity 5: This assessment is a wrap-up summary of the course where each participant will hand in their action plan worked on after activity 4. This plan will detail the ways in which student’s can engage in discussions that foster an atmosphere that encourages multi-cultural understanding and growth. Conclusion Becoming more aware of the diversity on campus, and embracing a more inclusive atmosphere on campus and in the classroom, requires a shift in organizational focus. As Levine (2011) notes, “We should be politicizing our curriculum rather than making it about us (faculty and students). We could institute non-western courses that introduce our students to other cultures and languages” (p. 24). This is where it begins. Focusing on diversity requires a focus on the global village. Students today are all too often taught that one culture pervades over another. Rarely are they encouraged to think outside of themselves and look at the world through the lens of a diverse learner. Suggestions given in currently literature include brining in bands from other countries, holding dances with an international focus, and doing any type of activity that allows students the opportunity to interact with and grow to appreciate our cultures, traditions, and ways of life (Levine, 2011, p. 24). The reality is that recent demographic shifts in the United States demonstrate increasing diversity. Life on our campus is not exception. Our curriculum and teaching methodologies, however, continue to be focused on Caucasians and their particular worldview. This not only creates an injustice for our international population, but it denies students from the host culture an opportunity to learn from others. In order to see incidences of prejudice and racism on campus diminish, we must begin to become more multi-culturally aware and afford the voices of all students an opportunity to be heard. Current studies support the idea that a racially ethnically diverse curriculum and experience in higher education contains numerous benefits for all stakeholders involved. This has been proven related to various subjective assessments conducted in recent years that portray the benefits that students have enjoyed by interacting with a diverse peer group (Rothenberg, 2006). The enriching experience gained in college can carry over into society, where adults who are more globally balanced and are willing to embrace others openly with a free exchange of ideas are more likely to be accepted, and accepting, of their peers (Banks, 1996). In reality, this training will not make the campus more aware of its cultural diversity overnight. This transformation will take time and commitment. The further reality is, however, that we must embrace such change. We must begin to accept other into our fold that challenge our way of thinking and dare us to be different. These differences are what make the field of higher education such an enriching experience for all involved. Our field can be an agent of change that will serve to rid society of the prejudice and discrimination that so permeates our core that many wonder if harmony can ever be achieved. It beings with an exchanging of ideas and a mutual respect for one another, which is the purpose of this ten-hour workshop. References Astin, A. (1993). Diversity and multiculturalism on campus: How are students affected? Change, 25(2), 44-49. Banks, J. (1996). Multicultural education, transformative knowledge, and action. New York, NY:Teachers College Press. Canham, R., & Lester, C. (2003). Institutional transformation at Richland College. Liberal Education, 89(1), 36-38. Chang, M. (2006). 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