Teaching, Learning and Working in Cultural Diversity

This article explores the impact of cultural diversity on teaching, learning, and working. It discusses the importance of social identity and intercultural interactions, as well as strategies for effective communication and interaction in multicultural environments.

Running head: TEACHING, LEARNING AND WORKING IN CULTURAL DIVERSITY
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Teaching, Learning and Working in Cultural Diversity
Name
Institution

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Introduction
Culture refers to the social character and norms that guide an individual in a society.
Culture is considered an essential concept in anthropology. Culture different differs from one
community to another (Richardson et al 2017). Generally, culture refers to the way of living
ranging from dance, music, eating, ritual, religion and clothing.
An identity is a sense of belonging to a defined group of people. According to Tajfel,
1979) he proposed that the groups (such as social class, clan, and hockey team) individuals
are related to were a valuable source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of
social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.
Cultural diversity refers to the existence of two or more cultures in one society. The
different cultures should integrate and respect each other religion is paramount. Cultural
diversity occurs in places where people from different ethnicities come together to do a
particular activity. For example learning institutions, churches and meetings
Culture, Identity and Cultural Diversity
Migration or rather movement of people into different places results in cultural
diversity. When people migrate from one place to another, they carry with them their way of
life and the norms in their homeland (Geddes and Scholten, 2016) .For example, one might
migrate from Australia and work in Canada in which the person will develop other cultures in
the new working place, and it would have led to multi-cultures existing in the same
community or a society. Culture is never permanent since people interact in all aspects of life.
Identity of an individual usually develops when one has mastered the culture of a
place. The sense of belonging to a particular group or society generally means that there are
certain characters or behaviour in a person that can be identified to be belonging to one

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specific group or a community. A good example is for those students who take their further
studies in Australia. You find that the student in the initial stages may feel isolated from the
significant population because of not fitting the current culture in Australia. As time passes
the student adapts and adapts in the new culture, and hence the sense of belonging is
developed.
Even though culture is ever changing in nature and presence of cultural diversities in
our working, learning and teaching environments, one should learn to coexist with each other
so that the sense of belonging can develop hence peaceful co-existence between cultural
diversity (Zembylas, 2011).
Culture, acculturation and intercultural interactions
Studying or working in an environment whereby a person is from a 'small' culture
may be challenging and encouraging at the same time. The challenges come with adapting to
the new environment, but encouragement comes when one invents ways of tackling them
more effectively and efficiently, which the great culture may not be expecting. For example,
a person may have a job transfer from a car assembling industry in Nigeria, and land in
German in a similar industry. The worker may be stereotyped by the notion that Africans are
primitive and incompetent and cannot work with the new machines competitively. However,
the worker may even perform better than some of the longs serving workers in the company
and disapproves the thinking of the large culture.
Van Oord (2008) argues that international and intercultural belonging of the students
cannot be used to determine the fundamental values and character of the learning institution.
For Von, changing from global to cross-cultural view for learning purposes may fail to shed a
light of knowledge to students, and mislead them instead. He suggested that a more
comprehensive ground of handling linkages between the groups, such as social identity

TEACHING, LEARNING AND WORKING IN CULTURAL DIVERSITY 4
approach, can be more productive as it avoids the fundamental elements such as ethnicity and
race of individuals.
Foreign students are considered “small culture” whereas the native students are the
“big culture” in Australia. The student may find it challenging to adapt to the new
environment in terms of language, education system, learning and teaching styles. Since the
student has become a member of the class, he will have to adhere to the rules and the correct
procedures that should be followed in the course to achieve the education goals.
The trainer can enable the group to understand the beauty is cultural diversity by
focusing on positive elements of different cultures. When they can understand that each
culture is unique in its way and there is no better culture than the other, the group can be able
to embrace their diversity and appreciate each other. The trainer may encourage the trainees
to learn each other's culture and learn from them. Through an understanding of other people's
culture, the group's cohesiveness may grow as the individuals may even adopt some positive
practices from their partner's cultures.
Social identity and the negotiation of multiple identities
Personal identity is how one thinks about their self and not necessarily what others
think of you. It's a common phenomenon, for one to say about oneself which can be positive
or negative depending on the situation. According to Verkuyten (2018), Social identity refers
to the idea where one is connected to a group of people and temporarily keeps aside the
uniqueness in character and behaviour from the origin country. Usually, social identity
develops once a person's character fits in the new culture. Living in a multi-cultural society
sometimes leads to the negative social status of an individual, especially when it's a new
culture.

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Through working, learning or teaching in a country with a different culture from one's
culture, social identity has to be developing for peaceful and comfortable living within the
new culture. Such cases usually affect students who study in different countries, and such
students may feel embarrassed and affected by low self-esteem.
Even though living in a different society with different culture leads to positive social
identity, one must not forget the original culture back at home. The retaining of the home
culture and maintaining of the new culture bring the idea of different identities of an
individual. Multiple-identities are a situation where one has two distinct cultures and living in
two different countries. It might be due to work, learning or teaching in another country and
still maintaining contact with the home country.
Impact of social categorization process on inter-cultural communication and interaction
The attitude of the university student in an internationalized university may change
depending on the group the individual is. For the ones in the multilingual groups, the
individuals reflect an increasingly positive performance at the end of the learning
assignments period compared to the beginning of the period. On the other hand, the IB
diploma curriculum students may be having a positive attitude regarding studying in a mother
country outside Australia as they admire to study in an international school. The study reveals
that such students can build a healthy and productive relationship with their peers from
different cultures.
(Barnes, 2006) Argues that cultural diversity in working place encourages the group
members to improve in their decision-making abilities, the members become more creative,
and they can learn more from each other. Diversity can also bring about negative impacts
whereby it can lead to an increase in conflicts between the group members.

TEACHING, LEARNING AND WORKING IN CULTURAL DIVERSITY 6
In the multilingual learning environments, there can be misunderstandings as to the
information that reaches the receiver might get misinterpreted, incomplete or modified and
changed on the way, which nay alleviates conflicts (Argyle, 1982). The reduction of the same
can be by the individuals adapting skills that will enable them to communicate and balance
effectively between their culture and the new culture to avoid miscommunications.
(Guirdham, 1999).
Cosmopolitan learning and a shared sense of ‘we’
Cosmopolitan learning refers to a situation where an individual can learn or study
anywhere in the world. Many countries have implemented this idea (Ippolito 2007). The
same is evident in Australia where there are thousands and thousands of students from all
over the world undertaking their studies in Australia. Through cosmopolitan learning,
students from different societies come together and interact. These interactions are
multicultural because the students came with them different cultures, but at the end of it, they
must develop a social identity for a peaceful and comfortable learning environment through
the cultural diversity (Reid, Sriprakash, 2012).
Cosmopolitan learning has to exchange economic and cultural activities all over the
world. Through learning in different countries, the student not only take home culture to
another country but also brings back a new culture from other countries, there is the
development of a sense of unity in the whole world because the world now is like a small
social society (Rizvi,Lingard,2009).
This type of learning has led to globalization which has driven culture towards mutual
relationships and interaction.
Conclusion

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In conclusion, before one decides to teach, work or learn in cultural diversity, there is
a need to accept to the surrounding culture and not necessarily sticking on the aboriginal
culture. The main aim of being flexible is for peace and comfortable interaction in society
(Zuber-Skerritt, & Passfield, 2016).

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