Early Childhood Education: Culture, Language, and Diversity

This essay delves into the complexities of early childhood education within diverse cultural and linguistic settings. It addresses the impact of multilingualism and cultural diversity on children's learning, highlighting the crucial role of teachers in fostering inclusive classrooms. The essay emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting diverse backgrounds, providing practical strategies for teachers to support children and families from various cultures. It examines the influence of teachers' attitudes and beliefs on their relationships with children and families, advocating for culturally responsive teaching methods. The discussion includes various teaching techniques, such as using diverse learning materials, encouraging conversational classes, and utilizing collaborative learning environments to enhance children's understanding and appreciation of different cultures. Furthermore, the essay underscores the significance of acknowledging children's first languages and adapting curriculum planning to accommodate diverse needs, ultimately promoting a more equitable and effective learning experience. The essay also references various scholarly sources to support its arguments.

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Early Childhood Teaching from Diverse Culture and Language
Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Early Childhood Teaching from Diverse Culture and Language
The following essay discusses the diversity in language and culture amongst the
children and describes a teacher’s role in handling the same. Diversity is a typical structure in
today’s world, be it in schools or colleges. Nowadays, Families from diverse backgrounds
shift to new places, and their children end up studying in schools with a variety of other
children who might not belong to the same culture or speak the same language.
Many factors add to the language diversity of a country. Few of them are-
geographical factors, cultural history, social settings, historical factors, and political reasons
(Luke & Kale, 2017). The language problem is a significant problem for the integration of a
nation and hence, affects the medium of expression amongst the teachers and children
(Durden, Escalante & Blitch 2015). Different races, religions, and cultures make up
multilingualism as a problem for the school going people to deal with each other and also
make education less effective in a diverse society than in a homogenous culture (Thomas, Ny
Mia Tran & Dawson, 2010).
The concept of multilingualism involves different cultural habits, national and
regional languages, which can be characterized by significant intra-cultural and inter-cultural
sensitivities (Gort & Sembiante, 2015). The nature of multilingualism amongst the child’s
carry- diverse religions and cultures, ancient historical foundations, complementary and
informal regional languages, growth, and technological assistance (Durden, Escalante &
Blitch, 2015). Multilingual speakers have outnumbered the monolingual ones with growing
trends of cultural openness and globalization. Hence, it is crucial for the masses to learn new
languages and accept a variety of cultures to avoid problems arising due to the difference in
languages (Ochocki, 2017).
Diversity in culture amongst the children can lead to the forming of groups within the
children on a cultural basis, decreases the learning performance of children. It creates a

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mental block in mind of a child to take the other one as a different person (Legare, 2017).
But, teachers can make them understand about the importance of learning about new cultures
through various cultural performances, stories, and seating arrangements to develop a
friendly relation amongst the children in a classroom (Genishi & Dyson, 2015).
Understanding the art of handling a multicultural classroom is not just being about a
politically correct teaching style; instead it is the job of an educator to provide education to
all the children and treat them with equity. This is the central role of teacher towards the
children and their parents (Ochocki, 2017). It is the role of teacher to consider all the cultures
with the same equality while keeping away natural instinct (Layne & Lipponen, 2016).
By following proper activities and concepts, a teacher can serve the needs of all the
children and make classroom, an exciting place for them to meet people from different
backgrounds and learn about various cultures (Devillar, Faltis & Cummins, 2013). Comfort
level of children indirectly helps the parents to be satisfied with the role of teachers in the life
of their children and families (Banks, 2015). Child development at early stages occur in
schools, so early childhood teachers have to demonstrate a more welcoming, warm, and
appreciative classroom culture for developing the same within the children (Marcellino,
2015). Using several teaching methods and tools help in the process of dealing with a
multilingual and multicultural society (Forrest, Lean & Dunn, 2016).
The teacher must acknowledge the first language of the classroom to form a valid
communication from among the children. Patience plays a vital role in evolving the
classroom and the children to accept cultural variations (Durden, Escalante & Blitch 2015).
There must be opportunities for children to have conversational classes to gain insights into
all the cultures (Paris & Alim, 2017). The suitable study material for the children must be
developed by the teachers to help children from diverse backgrounds. Activities like rhymes,

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songs, and plays should be used for the production of stimulus to the children for filling the
gap in a multicultural society (Bhushan, 2016).
In the case of multi-linguistic classrooms, teachers must try to learn diverse languages
for facilitating active learning of children (Genishi & Dyson, 2015). The process begins
language identification and proceeds to an analysis of the speaker and adjudging the extent of
sociolinguistic as well as socio-cultural knowledge with children to learn novel languages
Makalela, 2015. The third step is providing children the basic vocabulary of different
language by displaying pictures of the following words as well as videos with correct
subtitles. Step 4 is for the teacher to utilize a graphic organizer in explaining new activities to
children. The next step is for the teacher to teach the children pronunciation, pitch, style,
variations, and accent to provide precise knowledge of following novel language (Durden,
Escalante & Blitch 2015). The last step is for the teacher to utilize successive, receptive, and
simultaneous strategies to teach to deal with multilingualism problem in the classroom
effectively.
The teacher has various initiatives to address socio-cultural classroom problems
amongst culturally diverse children (Ochocki, 2017). The teacher can use a collaborative
means to deal with children by filling the cultural disparity between children. The teacher can
also make children understand that classroom remains more like cooperation rather than
competition (Layne & Lipponen, 2016). The teacher can further make children study the
relevance of diverse cultures via art, languages, music, and workshops (Pinter, 2017).
Children should also be given desired opportunities to talk, laugh as well as enjoy one
another. The teacher can also use demonstrations and oral language representations to help
children earn extra credits. The children will also benefit from the reciprocal teaching
(Durden, Escalante & Blitch 2015).

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According to Layne & Lipponen (2016), socio-cultural variations in language and
culture have primarily been caused by cultural diversity and the increase in modernization.
These variations may mainly be found in a classroom amongst the children with diverse
ethnicity (Thomas, Ny Mia Tran & Dawson, 2010). Curriculum planning must integrate
provisions of dealing with such differences (Genishi & Dyson, 2015). Teachers must use
suitable strategies for enhancement of understanding of different languages and knowledge
(Pinter, 2017). The essential communication must be enabled amongst the children from
various cultures for a better learning and conducive teaching experience (Durden, Escalante
& Blitch 2015).
Multiculturalism and multilingualism must be treated as an opportunity to learn new
diversities in language and culture (Souto-Manning & Martell, 2016). It must not be taken as
a drawback for a teacher to create knowledge and information in classrooms (Oxford, 2016).
In the world which is moving ahead towards growth and development, it is essential for the
children to learn the importance of culture and diversity in our society and respect the same
for attaining futuristic goals of success (Makalela, 2015).

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References
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Bhushan, N. (2016). The Real Challenge of Cultural Diversity. Teaching Philosophy, 14(2),
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childhood language socialisation. In One child, many worlds (pp. 11-29). Routledge.

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