Topic 1: What do we mean by culture and cultural diversity?

The term 'culture' has many different meanings. In excerpts from his book 'Keywords', Raymond Williams (1983, p. 87) declares that:

Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. This is so partly because of its intricate historical development, in several European languages, but mainly because it has now come to be used for important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in several distinct and incompatible systems of thought.

As stated in the Oxford dictionary, 'culture' can relate to 'tillage of the soil' or 'production of organisms' or 'intellectual development and tastes'. It can be a 'form or type of civilisation' and the 'customs of a people'. In education environments, it is recognised that there is much diversity even within forms of civilization and customs of people. For example, there is diversity in respect to age, disability, gender, socio-economic status, living conditions, and even personality, all of which can impact on learning. However, for the purposes of this module, we are using the term 'cultural diversity' in relation to the broad characteristics of the ethnicity and customs of a people.

This applies essentially to international students who have come to Deakin to study, but may also apply to students who have recently migrated to Australia, and whose cultural mores reflect their country of birth.

In higher education institutions, we tend to refer to international students as though they belong to large groups, hence we talk about Asian students, African students, Indian students as distinct cohorts with particular understandings and needs. But of course, there is great variation not only across cultures, but also within cultures.

Added to that, we have large numbers of native-born students whose parents came from a non-Western, non-Anglo background. In appearance, they may look similar to students whose ancestors migrated long ago, or students who have recently arrived. Yet learning styles can vary greatly depending on where and how they received their schooling, and the home environment in which they were reared.

There is a need to acknowledge that everyone has a cultural background, and a need to try and understand how a different culture will have shaped understandings and expectations, while also acknowledging that people within a culture are different - they're shaped by the culture, but they're still individuals.

Perceptions of cultural diversity
As pragmatist... is this you?
As critical theorist... is this you?

Some staff take a pragmatic, functional approach to cultural diversity:

• They adhere to Deakin's policies and procedures
• Try to ensure that their study materials and teaching processes are not overtly exclusive of anyone
• They present information in a variety of ways and in different media and contexts.
• Their aim is to avoid teaching approaches that make it hard for people to understand what is being asked of them, and they also try to avoid offending people.
• At the same time, they expect students to engage with the curriculum and meet expected standards.

Other staff examine cultural diversity through the lens of critical theory which sees education discourse as being predominantly produced by white western beliefs. These discourses are taken for granted across western culture and need to be interrogated through the generation of a counter discourse in order that other voices are heard. The purpose of discourse and counter discourse is to demonstrate that there can be 'two different constructed versions of the same truth'.

To have culturally sensitive curriculum, the first thing you do is understand how the mental aspect of learning in those cultures manifests itself. For instance, argument construction is different, information processing is different, the nature of teamwork is different, the nature of student-teacher communication is different... if you really want to say my teaching is sensitive to this, my curriculum is sensitive to this, then you have to be able to say not so much that it is reflective of all of them, but it is not dominated by any one individual one. It's important to avoid a 'one jacket fits all' approach. Of course, it's very difficult to have an approach that reflects all the diversity, but at least if you have an approach that is not dictated by one kind of approach that was developed here and we accept as being the norm or standard, then you would not alienate as many people as you would otherwise do.

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