An Analysis of Ethnicity, Culture, and Their Influence on Schooling

This essay delves into the intricate relationship between ethnicity, culture, and their effects on the educational experiences of students. It examines how cultural factors, including language, social class, and racial biases, influence student success and academic performance. The essay highlights the impact of teacher expectations, racism, and language barriers on students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It also discusses the challenges faced by ethnic minorities, such as those with English as a second language, and the importance of considering these factors in creating inclusive and equitable learning environments. The essay references several academic sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive analysis of the complex interplay between ethnicity, culture, and schooling outcomes.

Running Head: ETHNICITY, CULTURE AND HOW THEY IMPACT ON SCHOOLING 1
Ethnicity, Culture and How They Impact On Schooling
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ETHNICITY, CULTURE AND HOW THEY IMPACT ON SCHOOLING 2
Introduction
Culture refers to varying nature of the experience of social nature that comprise of class,
gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality among other factors. Culture remains to be social
behavior along with norms that exist in human communities. Besides, ethnicity continues to be
cultural phenomena that relate to the race of people in the society (Apple, 2012). Therefore,
ethnicity in society is just a large group of individuals that have shared national, cultural origin,
racial, or the state of belonging to a given group of individuals. These people considered to be
from same ethnic background remains to be the category of individuals that identify one another
with each other based on similarities. According to Apple (2012), “these similarities include
common language, ancestry, history, culture, nation, or society.” The success or failure of every
learner within the school can be impacted via ethnicity and culture inside school as well as
classroom. Although most schools around the society remain to be multicultural, there is a clear
difference between ethnic minorities and those of different cultures (Watkins Lean, & Noble,
2015). Statistics from various investigators indicates that some cultures along with ethnicities are
performing poorer compared to others in school. For instances, Black boys from Caribbean are
always achieving most better grades while at least fifty percent of girls from China are attaining
low grades. There exist several elements why various people from different cultures and ethnical
backgrounds perform well than others. Boutte et al., (2011) stated that, “ethnicity and culture in
society can have the significant effect on individual achievement, but other factors such as social
class, location, as well as gender can also play a part in how well an individual can perform.”
Therefore, the primary focus of this investigative paperwork is to examine the correlation that
exists between ethnicity, culture, and schooling of different individual around the society.
Impacts of Ethnicity and Culture on Schooling
Ethnicity along with culture results in success or failure of the student as they dictate
what happens in different schools and classrooms. For instance, if teachers have low
expectations on a given group of students from specific ethnicity it may affect the actual progress
of such pupils (Watkins, 20110. The act by such teachers refers as the self-fulfilling prophecy.
The poor performance of such pupils will decline as the teacher will have already labeled them
and made a fixed prediction concerning their progress (Francis, Archer, & Mau, 2010). Since
most teachers have low expectations from students from particular races in well-established

ETHNICITY, CULTURE AND HOW THEY IMPACT ON SCHOOLING 3
schools, they always expect students to submit below average homework that they do not care to
guide such students to understand the requirements for every work issued.
Cases of the existence of racism in schools and different classroom have the significant
impact on performance and well-being of learners. Instances of racism among people from
different culture and ethnicity exist in school even when a nation might have twisted to become
politically right (Keddie, 2012). Learning sectors are currently lawfully appreciative to have the
anti-racialist plans. However, various if not all teachers receive training about equity legislation.
The conflicts that exist between teachers and learners from different communities have slowly
decreased the performance of stakeholders in different schools. As such discrimination of race
happens in school, Black students may fail to work by putting more efforts as they might believe
that there is not one spot in education if their instructors remain to exist as ‘racist’ in their
operations (Watkins, Lean, & Noble, 2015). It, therefore, means that ethnicity that relates with
race make other pupils to be anti-school subculture where there is collection of attitudes, morals,
as well as action in resistance towards primary aims of learning sector. Besides, when students
are not concerned with learning because of various actions of tutors, this might indicate that they
can endeavor high, although it can remain tough to attain their purposes of attending school
exclusive of getting encouraging words from their teacher.
Other ethnic minorities in the global community have very diverse cultures and ethnic
backgrounds. For instance, individuals like Pakistanis and Bangladeshis that have the English
language as their second language find it hard to study English medium schools. The culture of
having English as a second language make people from these communities find it slightly harder
learning in schools that only deal with English in their operations (Apple, 2012). Difference in
language might result in complexities in performing or conducting a range of learning
institutions’ assignments and other regular routines. According to Watkins (2011),
“communication with teachers also influences the achievement of pupils.” Furthermore, young
learners from ethnic settings always face drawbacks in social situation like congestion,
insufficient housing, together with residing with jobless family associates that make them unable
to access the necessary education due to lack of knowledge on the importance of schools and
funds for enrolling in different schools in some cases.

ETHNICITY, CULTURE AND HOW THEY IMPACT ON SCHOOLING 4
References
Apple, M. (2012). Rethinking Education, Rethinking Culture, Rethinking Media. Educational
Policy, 26(2), pp.339-346.
Boutte, G., Lopez-Robertson, J. and Powers-Costello, E. (2011). Moving Beyond Colorblindness
in Early Childhood Classrooms. Early Childhood Education Journal, 39(5), pp.335-342.
Francis, B., Archer, L. and Mau, A. (2010). Parents’ and teachers’ constructions of the purposes
of Chinese complementary schooling: ‘culture’, identity and power. Race Ethnicity and
Education, 13(1), pp.101-117.
Keddie, A. (2012). Pursuing justice for refugee students: addressing issues of cultural
(mis)recognition. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(12), pp.1295-1310.
Watkins, M. (2011). Complexity reduction, regularities and rules: Grappling with cultural
diversity in schooling. Continuum, 25(6), pp.841-856.
Watkins, M., Lean, G. and Noble, G. (2015). Multicultural education: the state of play from an
Australian perspective. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(1), pp.46-66.