Developing cultural pluralism through teaching and learning

1. Developing cultural pluralism through teaching and learning Caroline Walker-Gleaves School of Education and Lifelong Learning University of Sunderland

2. Evidence base • Despite students’ predispositions, once having taken a diversity course, students’ interactions with diverse peers change quantitatively and qualitatively,and such students are more likely to embrace social justice ideas. • It is the teaching environment, and the quality of interactions, that cause such change, not simply the contact with, or exposure to, diversity in all its forms. • In diversity teaching, there is very often an ‘accentuation’ effect – the people who are predisposed to being more tolerant, are made more tolerant, and people who see their identity as ‘homogenous’ do not experience transformation of values so greatly, if at all. • (Gordon, 2002; Torok and Aquilar, 2002)

3. Implications for teaching and learning • Design diversity courses which feature cultural pluralism in all its forms – race, class, gender, religious, socio-economic, ethnicity, linguistic and so on. • Make your students interview people from diverse settings, but prior to this, get them to document their feelings and assumptions about those people. • Design specific teaching strategies which force examination of value systems and ethics. • Be prepared for conflict and have good conflict resolution systems in place. • Use the process of ‘active listening’ so that everyone’s contributions are valued as objectively as possible. • Utilise reflective assessment and forms that allow individual and peer learning, such as journal writing, and blogging. • Use assessments which use writing on ethical dilemmas and performance in class as a way of comparing inclinations with actions.

4. Confronting assumptions about culture and diversity • Whilst this is not without risk, it is important activity to do. We need to be aware of course that it may be painful, breach confidentiality and so on. But using the concept of ‘people at risk of being on the margins of society in whatever way’ we could begin by asking the following questions: • Examine your own assumptions about ‘at risk-ness’. • Where do these ideas come from? • What experiences have shaped these views? • How do you personally identify ‘at risk’? Eg, by their clothing, their qualifications?

5. What should we do with such disclosures and journals? • With your students, consider the possibility that labelled people are really not too different from you and I. Ask students to imagine their lives but with at-risk experiences, and consider how things would have turned out differently, if at all. Also consider motivations – make graphical representations of each persons’ views. These are the perceptual transformations. (Listen to the Tami reading).

6. What should we do with such disclosures and journals? • Get your students to consider their roles during the interviews. Really listening to people’s voices is very different to waiting for an answer. It takes more time, but the end relationship is such that mistaken understandings are minimised, issues are better prioritised, because the relationship is no longer predicated on trying to find a solution. The patient is de-problematised and made active in the intervention. In many cases, patients (and my students!) see the issues of at-riskness far clearer than the people who are trying to ‘solve’ the problem. Such changes in your role are the pedagogical transformations.

7. What should we do with such disclosures and journals? • Such difficult and potentially vulnerability-raising topics are better handled initially, initially, if they are couched in ‘research’. Whilst there is no doubt that such topics if handled sensitively and well, contribute to growing tolerance, community relationships in your groups must foster open and trusting acceptance, otherwise the only differences observed will be behavioural and not the personal and ethical transformations which we should aim for.

8. Specific teaching strategies to promote cultural pluralism • Critical thinking – multiple perspectives and standpoint theories • Communities of inquiry • Cooperative learning • Socratic questioning

9. Critical thinking • Maybe-maybe not scenarios – case studies with no ‘right’ answers. Students must give their responses based on ethos, pathos and logos. • Breaking the code – students re-write or speak texts in different ‘languages’ – colloquialism, latin/greek/english, anglo-saxon english, other languages, symbolic language. • Standpoint exercises – students assume a mantle of gender, culture, race, and ‘see’ the world through those eyes, or whether it is indeed possible at all.

10. Communities of inquiry • Based on groups of ‘practitioners’ who are seeking to work towards an understanding of an issue or concept. • Based on the notion of shared norms, practices, and identities. • Uses democratic rights to be heard, and to be silent, in order to let inquiry progress ‘naturally’. • A facilitator can not intervene to change the course of an inquiry or to impose their views. Although it’s based on the work of Matthew Lipman on philosophy for children, it is in practice with adults, usually very much more unstructured and open-ended.

11. Socratic questioning • In simplest form, it involves: • Selection of a question or issue of interest • Production and examination of a Central Statement from some source or produced by a student in response to the question or issue • Clarification of the statement and its relationship to the question or issue • Listing and critical examination of Support, Reasons, Evidence, and Assumptions related to the central statement • Exploration of the Origin or Source of the statement • Developing and critically examining the Implications and Consequences of the statement • Seeking and fairly examining Conflicting Views (alternative points of view).

12. Cooperative learning • Cooperative Learning is a relationship in a group of students that requires positive interdependence (a sense of sink or swim together) • individual accountability (each of us has to contribute and learn) • interpersonal skills (communication, trust, leadership, decision making, and conflict resolution) • active intervention from the teacher to explicitly lay out the expectations, rules and aspirations of the group • face-to-face proactive and supportive interaction • processing (reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better).

13. Can cooperative learning develop culturally pluralistic values? • Much research (Johnson and Johnson and others) suggests that it can. • The nature of cooperative techniques (and there are many!) suggest that cooperation helps individuals assess each others’ performance for its positive and constructive capability, and also, the fact that cooperative learning is predicated on accountability and response-ability, demonstrates quite forcefully that some values and ethics are to be prized above others, such as respect, care and listening.

14. Examples of cooperative learning activities for cultural pluralism • Complex Instruction • Constructive Controversy • Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition • Cooperative Structures • Group Investigation • Jigsaw • Learning Together • Student Teams Achievement Divisions • Teams-Games-Tournaments • Team Assisted Individualization