Teaching in a Diverse Society - Term Paper Example

Teaching in a Diverse Society Article Summaries Article Cultural and Linguistic Diversity: Issues in Education According to Terry and Irving (2010) in their article ‘Cultural and Linguistic Diversity: Issues in Education’ cultural diversity is one among the major factors that educators and learners have a problem with in terms of comprehension of concepts, relationships between educators and learners, performance expectations, and self-assessment of both educators and learners. In this case, the article presents a number of variables that are related to cultural diversity and how such affects the performance of learners and the overall rank of a teacher. For example, factors that influence poor performance include social backgrounds in which shows that students from humble backgrounds perform much poorer than those from well off families. In addition, ethnically diverse students, within the US social landscape, have been known to perform much poorer than their white counterparts. Hispanic, Asians, American Indians, and Blacks are some examples of student groups with problematic learning experiences. Within the diverse cultural setting, it is observed that students of different races or ethnic groups are referred not with their names, but with their ethnicity. This, according the Terry and Irving (2010), is a factor that shows obvious differences within the class and therefore a student is unable to deliver his best performance in such an environment. The article presents the problems associated with cultural diversity and their influence on performance of the individual student. Article 2: Cultural Competence guidelines and protocols According to the Ethnic Communities’ Council Of Victoria (2006) culture is a set of functions that shape the lifestyle of an individual as it reflects behaviour, knowledge, beliefs, values, and customs. With regards to the article at hand, culture is described as the lens with which people view and perceive the world they live in. For example, the culture of a Chinese and the culture of a Russian differ immensely in that an individual from either culture cannot view the world in the same sense as the other. Therefore, while the article is a guideline to achieving cultural competency, various considerations are included on how one should acquire cultural competency. Firstly, the article takes a holistic approach in presenting culture as a personal factor that influences the individual at a first-person’s perspective. Therefore, a person must be self-aware of his her culture. Secondly, the article suggests that empathy is a major instalment when establishing relationships and dealing with the outside world. It is suggested that an individual must be able to understand that his/her point of view on to the world differs with that of the other person, therefore, an understanding should be cultivated to help one decode signs and elements of dissatisfaction. The influence on diversity is characterized by factors such as cultural identity, perception of time, ethnic identity, language, sexuality, education, gender, family configuration, class, literacy, social history, assimilation, religion and spiritual bias, political orientation, and acculturation. These factors are supposed to be integrated into an individual set of consideration when cultural competency is sought. Article 3: Cultural Competency According to the National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Centre (2009), children in the United States of America differ from the rest of the population in that they need to be protected from a variety of factors. For example, children are easy to bully, easy to offend, easy to convince, and require more time to comprehend things they are taught or things they observe. In this case, while children need the protection of parents from bad societal influences, they also require social support from their teachers and the government to provide policies that set their rights straight within the community. According to the article at hand in this case, children of color are at a higher risk of social issues such as homelessness or lack of parenting. In this case, black children in the USA make up for 18% of all children within the USA but represent about 34% of those seeking foster care. In this case, it means that the social welfare of the black children is poorer than those of other children. The purpose of the article is to analyze the factors that need to be taken into consideration to improve cultural competency with regards to taking care of children rights. On agenda are issues such as interagency collaboration, involvement of the family, approaches based on the community, accountability, and personalized strength’s based care, competence in culture and linguistics. In this case, the consideration of culture and language as factors that influence children welfare influence their stay in school and the transition they have to make from the school environment to the community environment. In this case, understanding the variables that take a leading role in both the school and the community settings helps teachers and parents to be culturally diverse and competent with regards to specificity of factors such as language proficiency, social competences, educational influences, societal inputs, and the specific role played by the conventional institutionalized education. Personal Cultural Conflicts Conflict 1: The USA 2012 Elections During the campaigns of the 2012 USA presidential candidates, various takes were presented by the candidates to the public. Some of the major strategies of the candidates who includes Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were education and healthcare. According to Mitt Romney, the education system had improved when he was a governor and therefore the same tactics of putting educators on performance contracts would increase the output of teachers while at the same time allowing the government to motivate highly competent teachers with salary hikes and promotions. However, with regards to Obama’s strategy affordable healthcare was the priority as a number of low income earners are unable to cater for their healthcare needs. The two strategies from the two principal presidential candidates show that each candidate had a strategy on what to promise the public in order to secure the presidency. However, my personal conflict in this case was with Mitt Romney’s take on social needs and the relevance of rewarding best teachers. In this case, I disagree with the segmented approach to rewarding teachers with best performance records while ignoring or pushing the rest out of their careers. In this case, communities with poor educational facilities are unlikely to produce high performing teachers and this means that Mitt’s strategy was in both design and structure incompetent and inconsiderate of all factors that can lead to quality education and high performing teachers. Conflict 2: Appropriate Dress code at the Workplace The workplace is an area where people, both employees and employers, are expected to accomplish their duties with regards to their job descriptions and respect to organization policies. Some of the major policy entries include the dress code of men and women. In many organizations, the dress code for women is official attire that may include a suit, a skirt that goes past the knees, and elegant hairstyle to mention a few. On the other hand, the dress code of men within the workplace is simply a suit, a tie, and polished shoes. My conflict in this case was a result of a discussion I had with a colleague on how personal perception and organization policy differ or interact. According to the colleague, the organizations accept employees who agree with their policies on dress code and other factors, therefore, different views do not have an impact on the organizational structure on policy development. My personal perception on this issue is that organizational policies on dress codes should allow smart casual with respect to personal preferences and tastes. If the employees are to be compromised on how they dress, their performance rating may become poor and therefore they may be excluded from promotable candidates. In this case, culture extends from people to organizations and from organizations to the business sector in general, then conflicts of interest may hinder cultural competency of both the employee and the employer – in education, consider the society’s take, the management take, the personal take, and the take of the students’ on dress code. Current Events Event 1: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Debate on whether US marines should declare their sexual orientations before selection continues with Barack Obama alleging that everyone is entitled to the same level of opportunities regardless of their sexuality. In this case, Obama said that servicemen should not be judged or excluded from serving the nation because of their sexuality and therefore, such questions as ‘are you gay or heterosexual?’ should be avoided. This means that, if the prospective serviceman is not to be asked of his/her sexual orientation, then there is no policy that pressures him/her to tell. For a culturally diverse nation, the USA embraces various forms of sexual behaviors that, if revealed within the working environment may cost a considerable number of people of their employments. In this case, cultural competency of the American president, Barack Obama, shows that the nation is not built on sexuality but rather on purpose and goal. Hence fore, without the question of sexuality, personal beliefs, values, and perceptions on sexuality do not hinder the job market. Such an event shows, besides the perspective of the president, that the USA is culturally diverse in that various sexual orientations exist. In addition, the job market also presents constraints to acquiring well-paying jobs as sexuality is a major consideration to some employers. Hence fore, this means that cultural competency within the mainstream job sector lags behind. Event 2: Intrusion on Privacy: The Prism Playing double standards is a problem that has been observed with politicians or prominent persons. With reference to Barack Obama, it is observed that he was in the forefront in protecting the rights of the gay people and the US marines. This means that, to some extent, Barack employed his empathy instincts in issuing the directive of not asking and telling of sexual orientations. However, cultural competency is not a function of one variable, sexuality, and therefore involves more factors such as beliefs, education, and privacy to personal information. Recently, a system named Prism was reported by a whistleblower to have been monitoring the communications of various holders of smartphones within the USA. According to Barack Obama, the use of Prism was a strategy of enhancing national security by following the communications of various persons of interest. According to an analyst’s view on this issue, it is observed that 100% privacy cannot be achieved alongside 100% national security without a compromise on either. With regards to privacy, the culture of different people enables them to share or withhold personal information. In addition, the targeting of Muslims and people interacting with Muslims shows lack of cultural competency within the political arena. Barack Obama’s take on marine’s sexual orientations differs with his take on privacy and its association with national security. In this case, it is unacceptable to have two levels of privacy, sexual privacy and communication privacy– human privacy should be an equivalent undertaking protected by the same law as it affects the same entity. Parent’s Interview The following interview assumes a dialogue approach in which I engaged my father on questions related to the quality of education within the American system with regards to culture and cultural conflicts. The interview takes a dialogue structure in which a question is stated and corresponding answer is stated Interviewer (I): Question The American quality of education has deteriorated since the 1970s while Asian students continue to flock into the country to excel by using the facilities that are not benefiting the local citizen. What influences this trend? Interviewee (Father): Answer This is not a trend. The American educational system is segmented in two major segments, the conventional education and the higher education. The higher education segment differs from the other segment in that it is governed by other policies that do not apply to the conventional segment. For the conventional segment, quality of education differs from one area to another, for example rural to urban. Society input and financial statuses of the users of this segment differ remarkably and therefore brings about a deficit in the number of students getting into the system and those graduating from it. With regards to the higher education segment, qualifications do not care of nationality, race, or ethnicity and therefore, qualified students from Asia have equal opportunities of joining the higher education system with local students who choose to drop out of school before graduating. Interviewer: Question Does culture play any significant role regarding the choices of dropping out of school or continuing? Interviewee: Answer The culture of the American citizen is a function of how that individual sees the world and what priorities that person has in life. For most students required to graduate from high school and into the higher education system have been influenced to continue or quit schooling by factors such as community take on education, social background of the student, and the balance between school and family life. Therefore, culture has everything to do with the outcomes of the educational system as well as the dropout rates of students. Interviewer: Question In your personal view on the quality of education within the American setting, how can quality of education improve with more focus allocated to culture? Interviewee: Answer There is no way that education can be improved without the definition of what variables need to be considered and the entities able to accomplish this. For education to improve in quality, teachers and parents must create balance within the school and the family settings. This is to ensure that students whose perceptions differ with those of colleagues due to cultural diversity may maintain a uniform take on education and how they perceive the educational setting which they intent to thrive in. Cultural competency is a function of many considerations influenced by a couple of variables that must be taken into consideration – parents and teachers can influence this interaction. Knowledge Acquired Religion Self-awareness is the root of all cultural and personal competencies for the case of humans. In this case, as a person, it is the duty of oneself to understand what or who one really is with regards to all forms of life. These forms of life include spiritual life, career life, political life, and position within the society as a male of female. On a personal account, religion is one among the various forms of input that is valued within the community and therefore requires an understanding of what religion to various other people means. Personally, religion has come of age to be the measure of choice. In order to make decisions, a person is required to gauge the outcomes of the decisions made in terms of how they compare to the expectations of other people who share the same mentality or differ in terms of thought. Hence fore, as an educator, a teacher is required to emulate the different perceptions of the society as well as the obligations of teaching. In some societies, it has been identified through research that teachers are unable to teach evolutionary biology because the communities protect their students from having corrupt views with regards to religion. In this case, whether it is an obligation or a choice to teach evolutionary biology, the perspectives of the society should be respected under the sense of diversity – different people view the same things differently as values or norms may prevent them from venturing into different points of view. Nationality From a social perspective, nationality can be equated to race as it marks the roots of an individual in terms of origin. Given that culture is a way of life that a certain group of people under a certain set of circumstances adapt as its way of living, input from a certain community is different from input supplied to another person by a different community. To be culturally diverse, the nationality of oneself should be a priority that defines who they are. In addition, when considering factors such as social ties the other people’s nationalities should be treated with much respect they perceive it. However, areas of conflict between different nationalities include the lack of appreciating one’s personal nationality and differing in terms of perception with respect to beliefs, values, and customs. In my ambitions to a successful learner and implementer of cultural competency, I have learned that nationality is part of the variables that make up the cultures of different groups of people. Language Different people around the world speak different languages and for those limited to a smaller number of languages find themselves having communication difficulties at times. Within the education system, language is a vital variable that is needed to enable communication and understanding between the learner and the educator. There are various forms of languages that bear the same messages but with different meanings hence the relevance of having common language. Body language is one among the factors that can measure cultural diversity. This is because, social matters affecting an individual affects the body language of that individual. In this case, it is observed that language does not only end at the teacher-learner setting alone. Among the characteristics of language is understanding and stands as the means to effective communication. Understanding rationalizes the use of shared language, whether literal or figuratively. Within the school setting, body languages of students can be observed by the teacher to tell students with personal issues or uncomfortable in class. With regards to cultural diversity, the school setting is regarded as a social gathering in which the teachers and social workers look out for students without discrimination and with equal enthusiasm. Gender The question of how gender affects culture can be answered by the consideration of a business setting that prefers to employ male employees to limit the maternity leaves that may be associated with female employees. The lens of viewing the world has been identified as culture in this essay. Hence fore, the perspectives with which different cultural groups view the world with involve gender division. For example, the fact in some traditional settings, females are supposed to get married and have families. However, the contemporary expectation from women is that they should study, get jobs, and secure the means of sustaining oneself. Within the education sector, it is understood that the family teaching regarding gender influence the manner with which the two genders make decisions. Therefore, with regards to community and family input, students choose the number and nature of the subjects they intend to take. For traditionally nurtured female students, technical subjects are mostly out the question as the community norms and expectations do not sync with academic excellence. The application of gender knowledge at the work place or while interacting with scholars is to understand that the perspectives of two entities from two different generations may not compare in terms of considered variables. For example, the current generation assumes it is ‘cool’ to carry supplementary gadgets into class in place of the standard items – for instance the substitution of a calculator with a smartphone. My understanding regarding the knowledge I have acquired from this unit has transformed from the initial closed-mindedness in reasoning how different generations can have such diverse differences. Employment The manner with which people are represented by their body languages can tell how much they earn and how their personal careers resemble. In this case, the lack of employment is a function of increased population, limited resources, and financial economic crises. The lack of employment in the contemporary world is the cause of most crimes such as murders, burglary, and drug peddling and therefore affects the number of students coming from poor backgrounds in terms of how they attend classes. To achieve excellence in a culturally diverse community one should involve open-mindedness to understand the difference between students from poor families and families from rich backgrounds. While studying cultural diversity, I have come to learn that race and ethnicity are not the only components that affect diversity of our national, personal, and organizational culture. Hence fore, employment is a factor that I could not associate with cultural diversity prior to studying cultural diversity. Ethnicity Ethnicity and race can be considered to mean the same thing under varying conditions. For example, the ethnicity of the Chinese people is influenced with respect to the Chinese race. The race connects the people while ethnicity divides the race into smaller social groups with different beliefs, values, and even origins. Hence fore, ethnicity and race mean the same thing when considering racial profiles of different people categorized nationality or regionally. However, with regards to the knowledge I have acquired from studying cultural diversity, it is now clear that ethnic groups are smaller components that make a race and they are not equivalents of race. In this case, the different religions in existence in China and their social influence affect the cultural footing of the various ethnic groups within China. To apply this in class requires the teacher to apply individualism to deal with the class appropriately by observing cultural footprints of each student. Socioeconomic Status Within the educational sector, school dropouts and truant students are mostly from poor backgrounds. The socioeconomic status of a household affects the manner with which students from that household attend class. With understanding of the variables that define culture and behavior, teachers can be classified as propagators of cultural diversity. In addition, teacher expectations on students should consider socioeconomic status of the student as many are times when such a variable impairs the students’ concentration rates or their attendance frequencies. Works Cited Ethnic Communities’ Council Of Victoria. Cultural Competence guidelines and protocols. National Centre for Cultural Competency, 2006. National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Centre. Cultural Competency. Children’s Bureau, 2009. Terry, N., and Irving, M. Cultural and Linguistic Diversity: Issues in Education. Kendall Hun Publishing, 2010. Read More