The Culturally Responsive Professional Development Needs of My Current or Prospective Organization - Coursework Example

The Culturally Responsive Professional Development Needs of my Current or Prospective Organization Introduction In the recent past, cultural responsiveness in the world’s education system has become an area of main interest and has raised a lot of concern to different researchers and different scholars. Cultural responsiveness has highly enhanced the level of professional development in our education systems and has on the other hand continued to be a pressing issue that has to be adequately addressed. Today, different administrators and facilitators have day in day out designed programs that adequately cater for the multicultural nature of student’s populations across the world today. Schools and other learning institutions all over the world have slowly turned into multiethnic and multicultural institutions unlike in the past centuries. This implies the fact that different schools today handle different students who come from different cultures and subcultures. These students differ in terms of cultural beliefs, moral values and even norms of behaviors and hence view things, act and think differently (Zion & Kozleski, 2005). The instructors, facilitators and the administrators have therefore been tasked to develop curriculums that make different schools equitable by developing ethically and linguistically friendly curriculums (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). It is also the duty of the instructors to learn the unique originality of these students on the grounds of their cultures and language they speak so that they are able to adequately contribute to construction of knowledge in these students. The 21st century ushered in an era of transformation of the world’s education sector with the students’ population present in most learning institutions all over the world today becoming extremely diverse as a result of diversifying nature of major societies of the world. In a census conducted in 2000 on the US population, it revealed that the US population was already diversified as at the time and showed quite a high probability of it becoming more diversified to an extent of the ethnical boundaries among the various groups disappearing in the near future (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). This indicates that more than ever teachers, instructors or even facilitators today do not have a choice than to highly consider learning methods that are culturally responsive. Lack of cultural responsiveness has been a critical issue in the past centuries in different countries of the world and even today it is still a problem in some of the nations of global south with some s of students visiting such countries for further education studies feeling segregated and rejected by the learning institutions since such institutions have not yet responded to the issue of cultural responsiveness. This has further raised concerns to different scholars and researchers of the world who have in turn embarked on different strategies to help seal such loop holes in the world education system. This is aimed at making all learning institutions of the world ready for the future where aspects of culture, ethnicity and language difference will have disappeared in the thin air. However, despite these efforts by different researchers and different scholars, there has continued to be major disparities in our world’s education systems as a result of the emergence of a diverse society. Certain groups of individuals still feel misrepresented in different institutions both culturally and linguistically. In an effort to curb the rising cases of discrimination in international institutions, different scholars and researchers have helped advice the international educators to make necessary adjustments to their normal school’s curriculums to cater for the increasing force of diversification of cultures. This has been achieved through proper documentation of investigations and reports that have been drawn from critical researches on the changing nature of the world population and how to respond and live with these changes (Hershfeldt et.al, 2009). Discrimination in some schools and other learning institutions has been seen to have quite negative effects on some individuals’ learning outcomes since such students in schools feels like targets hence concentrate less and may even respond in a rude manner. In the past, there have been multiple cases of suspensions and expulsions from learning institutions that are highly attributable to lack of understanding. The instructors and administrators sometimes fail to understand the causes of indiscipline cases in the learning institutions that to some extent are triggered by the ethnical and linguistic differences. Some researchers have also tried to prove how cultural factors affect the conduct of students in school and also how these factors have continues to affect their performance and hence the immediate need for intervention so as to spread cultural responsive strategies of handling students in our classes across the world for increased professional development (Hershfeldt et.al, 2009). So as to achieve such a goal in King Saud University, we will have to first trace the origin of cultural responsiveness in learning institutions by reflecting on the world’s history of evolution of cultural diversity. The role played by ethnicity, race and discrimination in the American history of American society and efforts made by the American Government Today, America is one of the most diversified nations of the world both culturally and linguistically but very few people really know and understand what happened so as America could reach such scaling heights. America as a nation today is symbolized by citizens of different identities from the different ancestral backgrounds. What caused the different ancestral backgrounds? In the history of America as a nation, there is a time when America had an influx of different immigrants from all over the world ranging from Asia, Eastern Europe and even South Europe (Perez & Hirschman, 2009). Of course such immigrants carried with them their religious and cultural believes in America. This extended the aspect of cultural diversity in America since at this juncture, the number of communities present in America expanded indefinitely. The mixing of the communities led to reborn of some other sub-communities. This trend has been in progress such that it has become hard to identify an individual belonging to a certain race or a social group. Immigration to the US did not only result into blurred ethnical group boundaries but also has resulted into emergence of groups of individuals who do not belong to any particular ethnical group of individuals today hence have no ethnical backgrounds they can be associated with. With no cultural and ethnical backgrounds issues of originality; cultures and ethnicity has slowly become insignificant in American. To show the speed at which races and ethnic groups are disappearing, a recent survey has revealed the likely hood of the non-Hispanic White who were initially the people of North America for example and who were amongst the founding communities in America declining to be the largest portion of the American population come 2020 (Perez & Hirschman, 2009). Even in the beginning, America was still a multicultural and multiethnic state. By then, the founding society comprised of individual of diverse origin too. Amongst the earliest settlers in America were the People from North America and the Europeans. The Europeans were in search of better settlement areas hence found their way into America. This took place centuries ago. People of North America then got absorbed by the Europeans since at this time the Europeans were more powerful and in a better position than the Americans. The Africans on the other hand, started to be imported to work as slaves in the European crop fields (Perez & Hirschman, 2009). This is what further led to emergence of some other sub groups having resulted from exploitation of the black African women who by then worked in the farms as slaves by the Europeans (Perez & Hirschman, 2009). Immergence of such subgroups largely contributed to the formation of even a greater American society with diverse people of different origins, skin color, languages and not forgetting the different religious beliefs. Nevertheless, with even more immigration from Asia and the Latin America turned American population a more complex landscape there is today which comprises of multiple races and ethnicities in existence and which forms part of the current American society (Perez & Hirschman, 2009). The policy of E pluribus unum and equal opportunities in America E pluribus unum, which directly translates to “out of many, one”, is a policy that has continued to remain popular amongst the American citizens for its continued use and value to the American citizens. Different leaders have in the past used the slogan as a policy to bring multiple American ethnicities together to form a ‘one’ society with the latest leader to emphasize on the policy being the current president Barrack Obama (Kinefuchi, 2008). The slogan came into being in 18th and 19th centuries and aimed at bringing the different nationalities and ethnicities together to create a society free from discrimination both ethnically or linguistically since in the early days the early America leaders had imposed a lot of sanctions on the immigrants who had settled in America making them look like outcasts (Kinefuchi, 2008). As the time passed on, such sanctions became lifted and the American government realized the need to solidify its citizens. This is when policies such as E pluribus unum were developed. It was aimed at making America a nation for all individuals regardless of color, race, language or even social group. Over the years, the government has developed several policies and more so, laws and regulations to curb cases of racial segregation on the American soil. This has not only increased the freedom of citizens who are not Native American citizens but has also contributed towards making America a country of equal opportunity for all. However, this has not been an easy task on the side of the non-Native Americans and the government as well. There have been a number of shortcomings encountered by both parties but eventually America has today become a land of opportunity for all. The journey has been long but successful. The American government today is headed by a black president. American government has as well developed adequate policies promoting cultural responsiveness throughout the land that are supposed to act as guidelines to all the American learning institutions. Impact of socioeconomic statuses on behavior, attitudes and education achievement/attainment Socioeconomic statuses of different individual go hand in hand with their attitudes, behaviors and even education achievements. The socio-economic statuses are highly determined by the occupational status of the parents and the income level of the family and not forgetting the level of education of the parents (Barry, 2006). Socioeconomic statuses adequately influence how a student performs in school and also how they behave and their attitudes towards different things and different aspects of life. The socioeconomic statuses influence where for example a family settles down and therefore dictating where different individuals are brought up. This is what defines the behaviors of the children in school since they are likely to adopt behaviors of the neighborhood they are raised in (Barry, 2006). There have been scenarios where children from poor and hostile neighborhood are also the family breadwinners following the inability of the parents forcing such children to act on their own. Such children are not expected to be good performers in school for they do not concentrate in class. Children brought up in a good, quiet and rich neighborhood are likely to perform better in school than children from the poor and hostile neighborhood for the fact that the ones from the good and rich neighborhoods face little or even no difficulties in their lives hence their mind are fully concentrated on education while the ones from poor and hostile neighborhoods on the other hand face a lot of difficulties in life that adequately affect not only how they behave and view themselves before others but also their academic achievements (Barry, 2006). How linguistic and religious diversity has impacted American Society and Education Progress The last twenty years have seen diversity in aspects of religion and languages across the entire American society. More than ever children from quite different ethnicities today converge in similar schools for similar studies. This has highly contributed towards development of a common language spoken by all students and hence making them a family. As a result of close interrelation of different groups of individual, the religious beliefs have also been streamlined. The government has played quite a vital role towards linguistic and religious diversity by ensuring that all individuals are well protected by law despite their differences in originalities, color or even languages (Kinefuchi, 2008). This has not only enhanced unity amongst the American citizens for the non-Native Americans now feel like a part of the American society but has also resulted into better education progresses throughout the land. This has further simplified the work of different teachers and instructors in different schools and learning institutions since handling different students has just been made easier. There are no longer religious obstacles limiting students from participating in class and also the teachers are now in a position to talk freely in class. Instructors and administrators on the other hand do no longer need to come up with new curriculums to cater for the multiethnic and multicultural nature of the students. The task of running different schools and different learning institution has readily improved and readily improving on dissemination of knowledge. Age on education progress of students; mentally, emotionally and physically From the different researches by different scholars review that children demographics such as age and gender really determine the well being and educational outcomes of different students (Department for Education, n.d.). Children of young age when bullied in primary schools tend to perform poorly. This is a result of emotional reactions that trigger emotional feelings which makes it hard for such children to perform well in school. However, this is sustained as the child advances in age and joins secondary school and becomes a bit mature emotionally. Therefore, different individuals behave differently during their different stages in life and issue of age also varies from one gender to the other. At early stages a boy for example tend to make remarkable progress in education more than the girls who make remarkable progress in education at later stages of adolescence (Department for Education, n.d.). The difference in performance results from mental developments of the different individual through the ages. The nature of mental development triggers different emotions resulting into the different reactions by different individuals. When a child joins secondary school, he or she becomes more emotionally stable following the positive friendships acquired in secondary schools. Such aspects contribute highly towards mental development of the different children (Department for Education, n.d.). How males and females contrast biologically and socially and how the contrast is reflected in schools, places of work, in politics and socioeconomically Over the past centuries, gender has been among the factors that have highly been influenced and determined by aspects of cultures and religions. Different communities across the world have therefore had different views on issues surrounding gender. This has been reflected in schools, places of employment and even in issues of politics. In the past, women were seen as the weak gender in the communities and that their occupations were therefore limited to household chores. With time however, the different societies have come to appreciate the fact that even though women are soft and meek, they are as strong as men and can be able to handle even the political positions even in the government. This has however not been globally realized since still there are societies who still feel that women are not equal to men. Nevertheless, one being a male or a female is entirely a social decision integrated by scientific knowledge on biological nature of the being (Penelope et.al, n.d.). Biologically, male are different from females. As a result of the genetic predisposition male are biologically more aggressive and more rational than women. For the similar reason on the other hand, women are biologically more emotional than men (Penelope et.al n.d.). This has however played a vital role not only in careers of the different genders but also how these genders are handled in schools and places of work. In the past few years, it is evident that girls are handled more politely in school than boys. Also, women tend to avoid job positions that are likely to be stressful. Literally, the more stressful a job position is, the more pay it has therefore when it comes to economic statuses, men tend to be better than women (Penelope et.al, n.d.). Multicultural education: Issues and controversies in relation to multiculturalism Multicultural education has recently become of major important especially in most cultural diverse societies. Different researchers have come up with different perspectives regarding the multicultural education that have been used by the different individuals and governments across the world with an aim of creating an independent environment where the different subgroups have a freedom to choose a culture they want. In America, multicultural education has been approached from two view points; assimilation and pluralism. Assimilation is a situation where a subgroup decides to throw away its cultural beliefs, values and norms and in turn acquire the other people’s culture such that they become a part of the larger community. This way the micro-culture becomes absorbed by the other major culture. On the other hand, pluralism entails a process through which the subgroup retaining its cultural beliefs, values, norms and language while at the same adapting the aspects of the other bigger culture. Multicultural educations has therefore grown to embrace pluralism as the most crucial of the two perspectives for pluralism is aimed at creation of a similar society where individuals speak a similar language and have similar values and norms. This ensures that every single culture of any given group of individuals is respected no matter how small the group may be. Multicultural education therefore advocates on universalism rather than relativism since relativism prioritizes rights of groups over those of individuals while on the other hand universalism calls for universal application of human rights (Zechenter, 1997). Universalism ensures that cultural aspects of different individuals are adequately represented without marginalization as in the case of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism makes some cultural superior than others hence other people are only supposed to learn things concerning the superior culture and not the other way round. In a school set up therefore relativism is never advocated for. American Political Ideologies: influence on individual views on diversity, culture, policies and practice of American education The most common political ideologies are mainly liberalism and conservatism where obviously different American citizens have different views on aspects of cultural values and human rights. American political ideologies are different but quite similar in that most of them advocate for issues surrounding cultures and human rights of the American citizens and how the American governments affects them. Nevertheless, the different political ideologies are likely to affect how different individuals think and view things in relation to culture and other aspects of international education systems. Liberalists call for pluralism in terms of cultural aspects and at the same time advocating for the interference of the government to adequately contribute towards better education standards while on the other hand conservatisms highly rebukes any aspect of diversity and advocates for the traditional cultural values and norms with limited government interference (Zechenter, 1997).Therefore, liberalists do support pluralism of cultural aspects which in turn positively impact government education policies while conservatism is likely to damage the government education policies by its push for traditional methods of handling things. Cultural responsiveness and Professional development There are generally very many reasons as to why the aspect of cultural responsiveness has today become so important in our learning institutions. In a nutshell, it refers to the concept that revolves around accepting and acknowledging other peoples cultures and values of their cultures where culture refers to the similarity in feelings, thoughts, values, attitudes and behaviors shared across a racial, religious, social or even an ethnic group of individuals (Zion and Kozleski, 2005). The 21st century has seen cultural responsiveness become even a more popular concept across the world’s education system with its main aim being eradication of the disparities in treatment of different students across different learning institutions and hence the need to plan for such changes in King Saud University. Such disparities can eventually be attributed to cultural and linguistic differences where instructors have accused of mistreating students. Cultural responsiveness plays a vital role in professional development since it helps connect teachers and students to their families and even connects students to the school’s curriculum (Kidd, 2007). Professional development entail issues surrounding an individual desires to learn and how these desires are influenced by ones emotional reactions. Different researchers have revealed that cases of embarrassment for example resulting from an act may influence ones desire to learn. Embarrassments are likely to decrease ones learning motivation since once an individual feels embarrassed he or she tends to shy away from things. As we move from one tribe to another, causes of embarrassments also vary with the varying cultures. For example in King Saud University, there are British students. Britain and Saudi Arabia vary largely in terms of religious activities, language and even cultural norms and behaviors. It is therefore hard for an instructor of King Saud University for example to know what may result into an embarrassment and what may not in a class of students such diverse originalities. In instances of actions or utterances by the instructor that may make such a student feel offended or embarrassed, the instructor will have already interfered with professional development process. Teachers and instructors are therefore supposed to trend carefully on issues in relation to cultures and should find ways of always generalizing things to avoid scenarios where some individual student would feel as being targeted. There is therefore need to carefully review such issues as an instructor at King Saud University so as to facilitate the professional development. Professional development process is quite influenced by instructions issued by instructors on students and therefore instructions uttered by instructors needs to be free from any allegations or accusations levied on a certain student on ethnical or language background. In King Saud University, there is need to improve on instructions issued to students. Keeping in mind that there are international students even from America and China, it would be wrong for an instructor to ask students to talk about the immoral things they have ever done. The American student may for example find it okay but the Chinese ones and not forgetting the Saudi Arabian ones may have issues with such an instruction because it directly and openly attacks some norms either in culture or religion and which may be prohibited. This is likely to cause some resistance too and therefore impairing the entire learning process since the offended student feels targeted by the instructor. Different cultures of the world are distinctively different from each other. Therefore as an instructor it is of importance to always remember that some acts may be acceptable in one culture while at the same time unacceptable in another culture. Behaviors by some students therefore may trigger different reactions amongst others depending on their originality and therefore it is up to the instructors to come with mechanisms of containing such behaviors in students. Such behaviors may for example be acts of intimacy in public very common and okay in some societies of the world such as the American society but un accepted by some religions such as Islam. It is a free world and we fighting towards establish standards where all cultural aspects of different individuals are well respected. Such scenarios, therefore shows the need for more emphasis on the need to be more sensitive as an instructor on the dos and don’ts on such things since automatically this is an issue of concern in King Saud University. Culturally Responsive professional development needs of King Saud University King Saud University being among the top ranked universities in Saudi Arabia, is located in Riyadh with a population capacity of thirty five thousand eight hundred students. These students are both national and international student. The national students form the greatest proportion of the entire student’s population with the international students forming just a part of this population. The international students are therefore the minority group of students. King Saud University offers several undergraduate courses with the main medium of conveying instructions to different students being English except for the Islam and Arabic subjects. King Saud University has come to be known across the world as a prominent learning institution though there is still need for such an institution to become more culturally responsive for better professional development especially in the field of education. This cannot just be achieved by just a word of mouth but proper actions by instructors. The field of education handles different types of students from different families across different communities with different social statuses. Therefore, instructors in the field of education need to be culturally responsive. There is need of use of learning practices which are more linguistically and culturally responsive. Such learning practices would also involve change of the curriculums currently being used to adequately cater for the needs of the international students. Also, there would be the need to add on the curriculums where the university is supposed to introduce new courses aimed at targeting the outside students coming from other nations of the world. There is also need of introduction of other media of conveying instructions apart from English, Islamic and Arabic to facilitate understanding. This would also adequately promote development of foreign languages from other parts of the world while at the same time appreciating other people’s languages and cultural aspects. As an instructor in the field of special education, also, there is need to use his prior knowledge and experience attained to adequately build on students’ linguistic and cultural resources, guides students to carefully review the curriculum from multiple dimensions and perspectives, promotes learning through varied assessment techniques and uses the classroom cultures to grow professionally. References Barry, Jenniffer. (2006). The Effect of Socio-economic Status on Academic Acheivement. Retrieved from http://soar.wichita.edu:8080/bitstream/handle/10057/616/t06115.pdf?sequence=1 Department for Education. (n.d). The Impact of Pupil Behaviour and Wellbeing on Educational Outcomes. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/219638/DFE-RR253.pdf Hershfeldt, P.A., Sechrest, R., Pell, K.L.,Rosenberg, M.S., Bradshaw, C.P., & Leaf, P.J. (2009). Double-Check: A framework of cultural responsiveness applied to classroom behavior. Teaching Exceptional Children Plus, 6(2 Retrieved from http://escholarship.bc.edu/education/tecplus/vol6/iss2/art5 Kidd, Julie. (2007). “Professional Development Plan.” Retrieved from http://mason.gmu.edu/~massaf/portfolio/PDFfiles/culturally%20responsive%20professional%20development%20plan.pdf Kinefuchi, Etsuko. (2008). Challenges of E Pluribus Unum: Ethnic and Racial Diversity and Public Policy. Communication and Public Policy: Proceedings of the 2008 International Colloquium on Communication. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ICC/2008/ICC2008Kinefuchi.pdf Penelope, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, Sally. (n.d.). “Chapter 1: An Introduction to Gender.” Language and Gender. Second Edition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Perez, Daniel, Anthony and Hirschman, Charles. (2009). The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Population: Emerging American Identities. Popul Dev Rev.; 35(1): 1–51. doi:  10.1111/j.1728-4457.2009.00260.x. Villegas, Ana Maria & Lucas,Tamara. (2002). Preparing culturally responsive teachers rethinking the curriculum. Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp 20-32 Zechenter, Elizabeth, M. (1997). Human Rights versus Cultural Relativity. Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 319-347 Zion, Shelley and. Kozleski, Elizabeth, B. (2005). Appreciating Culture and Cultural Responsiveness. 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