Policies and pedagogies for students of diverse backgrounds

Abstract

Large-scale mobility and global exchanges have made classrooms more diverse than ever before. However, despite solid evidence that advocate and support teaching and pedagogy for students of diverse backgrounds, there are still high pedagogical expectations that learners from diverse backgrounds to adapt and perform in classroom activities that replicate mainstream educational and pedagogical cultures. This contribution discusses the challenges in teaching complex classrooms and calls for clearly articulated policy pedagogies for students of diverse backgrounds based on the contributions in this volume.

Keywords:

• Culturally and linguistically diverse
• diversity
• students of diverse backgrounds
• challenges
• policies
• pedagogies

Introduction

In today’s world marked by large-scale mobility and global exchanges, classrooms have become more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before. However, despite robust literature advocating and supporting inclusive education provisions for the benefits of students of diverse backgrounds, there are still high expectations that students of diverse cultural, linguistic and epistemological backgrounds adapt to and perform in pedagogical settings that are set to respond to and replicate mainstream and dominant educational and pedagogical paradigms. In other words, the ways in which teaching and pedagogy interact in complex educational settings with students of diverse backgrounds have not been fully addressed. As evidenced by the contributions in this volume, the article calls for clearly articulated policies and pedagogies that address issues in classrooms with students of diverse backgrounds.

This article is divided into three sections. The first discusses diversity and the characteristics of culturally diverse classrooms. The second identifies the major pedagogic issues faced by students of diverse backgrounds which are grouped under six major themes. As for the last section, it summarizes the seven contributions in this volume.

Classroom diversity: a challenging reality

Teaching students of diverse backgrounds has received considerable attention because of the increased diversity in classroom as well as the changes in policies and attitudes toward diversity. According to Gearon, Miller and Kostogriz in the US, Canada, Australia and most countries of the European Union, the range of diversity poses extraordinary challenges for language teachers because students of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds must engage with mainstream curriculum in a new language that is dominant at schools (2009, p. 3). According to Hammond

In Australia, as in most Western countries, student populations in many large urban schools are diverse. In cities such as Sydney, student profiles may include up to 80–90% of students for whom English is a second or additional language. These students may be drawn from 30 or more linguistic and cultural backgrounds and from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. (2009, p. 56)

The linguistic and cultural diversity as well as the socio-economic diversity of classrooms in Australia is visible elsewhere. In Canada, Levin indicated the country

accepts about 250,000 immigrants and refugees per year, which is close to up to 1% of the population, among the highest rates in the world. The vast majority of Canada’s immigrants today come from eastern and southern Asia; many do not speak English or French as a first language. As a result, Canada’s large cities are highly diverse. Toronto is nearly 50% foreign-born, while most other urban centres also have substantial immigrant and non-While populations. (2008, p. 394)

In the US, the situation is similar. As highlighted by He, Vetter, and Fairbanks (2014, p. 327), “The increasing numbers of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds attending US schools have been a phenomenon that would seem difficult to ignore”. They added that “in many communities, culturally and linguistically diverse students already comprise a majority of the population” (He et al., 2014, p. 327). Even though these are only a few selected cases on diversity in classrooms, they illustrate that diversity is an inescapable reality in many education settings that needs to be adequately and systematically addressed for better educational outcomes, social justice and cross-cultural benefits. However, given the complexity of diversity in the education context, any definition of diversity in classrooms should take into consideration the context of study as well as the education setting. For example, Addy indicated that “a classroom or school can be said to be culturally and linguistically diverse if students represents a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds” (Addy, 2015, p. 205). As for Correa and Tulbert (1991), they discussed this diversity in terms of the main characteristics of students of diverse backgrounds. The first characteristic they identify is language, the second is culture and the third is socioeconomic background. However, in responding to this the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) in America provides one of the most comprehensive definitions of diversity. It states that diversity is “differences among groups of people and individuals based on ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, gender, exceptionalities, language, religion, sexual orientation, and geographical area”.¹

Nevertheless, despite the complexities of diversity in classroom, students of diverse backgrounds share a number of common features. For example, “they bring with them to the school a diverse set of motivations and prior knowledge that significantly affect how and what they learn” (Hawley, 2010, p. 6). Another important feature is students of diverse backgrounds

come from another society where a particular educational philosophy applies and bring with them certain ideas of education and learning which they have built up from their personal experience of school or the ordinary social representations which usually describe and explain them. (Council of Europe, xxx)

Thus, importantly, the contributions in this volume echo this quote in its highlighting of the education experiences of students of diverse backgrounds from the standpoint point of differences and specificities in relation to epistemologies, cultural paradigms, and dominant traditions. In other words, students of diverse backgrounds join mainstream education with their own cultures of learning. Therefore, addressing learners’ educational cultures is crucially important since mainstream discourse and education practices expect learners from diverse backgrounds to adapt and perform in learning activities that are couched for specific educational cultures (Bouvier, 2003; Charbonneau, 2006, 2008; Cortazzi and Lixian, 2011). This situation can also occur in contexts where particular pedagogical approaches are transferred and implemented in the new and different context (Diallo, 2014; Hu, 2002). Given the intricate relationship between classroom diversity and learners’ educational culture, these are now becoming incorporated into initial teacher education programs (for example, for teaching of French as a foreign language, see Cadet and Causa, 2005). The goal is to have these would-be teachers able to “identify and analyse the models, representations and educational culture that they already possess” (Cadet, 2005, p. 37).

Challenges of diversity in classrooms

The depth and scope of the contributions underscore the challenges in addressing the complex pedagogical needs of classrooms with students of diverse backgrounds. The contributions examine such challenges in two education contexts: Australia and France and at various levels of education (e.g. policy, teaching, curriculum and textbooks). Despite contextual differences and levels of education, the contributions show a number of common themes that are discussed below.

Theme 1: education policies that are silent or ignore diversity in classrooms

One overarching theme is that education policies tend to be silent or to ignore diversity in classrooms. The contributions in this volume attest to this view. Even though there are education policies that clearly address issues identified in the past, there are some which simply ignore, or at best overlook diversity in classrooms. The article by Diallo, Ben Abdallah, and Embarki describes the educational policies established since 1970 in France in support of allophone students and highlights the achievements of these provisions and the challenges they have encountered. The main issue identified by the authors is the failure to recognize the cultural and linguistic diversity of the learners. Their linguistic and cultural background is simply ignored because, as the authors see it, there is a “strong attachment” with providing French language skills to the allophone students. The authors’ analysis emphasizes changes in policy settings over the years following critiques from several directions despite efforts to integrate the allophone students in mainstream classes and provide classes that are tailored to their needs (especially since 2012). The evidence suggests that, despite robust studies emphasizing their crucial role, the plurilingual resources of learners are not valued. To some extent, this conservative position resonates with issues mentioned by Falkert in the area of language pronunciation where the norm is strongly dominant and where French accents and variations are mostly ignored in pronunciation textbooks (see Falker in this volume).

Theme 2: policy/curricula reinforces the dominant ideologies

The second theme focuses on cases where policy or curricula reinforces the dominant ideologies. In their article Liyanage, Singh and Walker show that Australian policies, which make an extensive use in their discourse of ethno-linguistic categories to describe the learning styles and other characteristics of learners, can be counterproductive as they may position teachers as “non-participants, as observers of the diversity picture”. They also note that such discourses may encourage the perpetuation of deficit discourses and that, in the Australian context, very few teachers have a non-monolingual English background. The authors therefore recommend responding to diversity within teacher education so that policies responsive to ethno-linguistic diversity can be enacted in schools and classrooms through teachers’ daily practices. Some shortcomings such as the fact that “there is little appreciation of the advantages of bi- or multilingualism in learning, and scant regard for the established resources for learning of possibly already successful learners” should be attended to.

In some ways Liyanage, Singh and Walker’s article intersects with that of Diallo, Embarki and Ben Abdallah. Both articles are concerned with the integration of students of students of diverse backgrounds in two Western education systems, Australia and France. In Australia, policies are specifically aimed at taking into account student diversity. In classrooms, however, teachers are not necessarily able to respond positively and fruitfully to the concepts they are encountering. In France, policies fail to effectively recognize the benefits of students’ epistemological background while focusing mainly on the teaching of French language (Diallo, Ben Abdallah & Embarki, 2017).

McGill’s article “argues for a critical examination of how the teaching/learning nexus is informed by and constrained within the paradigm of white ethics of care in schooling in the Australian context”. Beginning with the debate on ethics of care and underlining that “there has been significant input into Indigenous education and teaching and learning in diverse classrooms” but that “few challenge the paradigm of ethics of care that is located within and through teacher performativity”, McGill goes on to explore the usability of standpoint theory “as a tool to bring insight into teacher positionality and the nexus of care”. According to this author, standpoint theory provides “an understanding of marginalized voices, the performances of dominant Australian culture and the privilege of whiteness.” Somewhat like Linyage, Singh and Walker, McGill concludes with the following recommendations: “it is essential that teachers and pre-service teachers from Anglocentric backgrounds are conscientised to racialization and the power and politics embedded within institutions.”

Theme 3: curricula and textbooks are silent about or not sensitive to some aspects of the target language such as the diversity of accents

This theme is similar to the previous theme (Theme 2), but focuses on the context of foreign language teaching where important aspects of the target language such as phonetic and linguistic variations appear to be rarely taken into account in pronunciation textbooks. While “taking a closer look at objectives in L2 pronunciation instructions in order to determine whether these are influenced by teaching cultures or language ideologies”, Falkert proposes the analysis of phonetic variation in L2 French pronunciation textbooks. Noting that the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) “recognizes accents as playing a role in interactions with native speakers and considers knowledge about accents as an integral part of communicative (sociolinguistic) competence [and] admits the importance of familiarizing learners with different native speaker accents”; Falkert’s critical analysis of nine textbooks – concentrating on their content and the authors’ foreword – shows that five of those nine textbooks “do not draw attention to the fact that accents are an integral part of everyday communication” and therefore reinforce the idea of a dominant “standard” accent (Parisian variety). Falkert notices the need for pedagogical goals to change in order to “adapt the needs of societies shaped by globalization and international migration”. To raise awareness of phonetic variation, the “reception of accents should become an integral part of classroom practice”. To achieve this, there should be an increased focus “on comprehension exercises and less on abstract rules that may discourage the average language learner”. As the CEFR emphasizes, “classroom practices not only should include exposure to phonetic variation, but should also provide learners with information on social connotations of accents”. According to Falkert, “the lack of information about phonetic variation may be attributed to the persistent impact of standard language ideologies”. This author underlines the importance of these textbooks and the information (or lack of it) they carry for teachers who haven’t received formal training in pronunciation teaching. Finally Falkert concentrates on the implications of her findings for teacher training noticing that teachers themselves may have negative attitudes towards non-standard patterns of speech and that such attitudes need to change. Once again, the attitudes and beliefs of teachers are seen to be crucial and they have to be targeted in the first place in order to stimulate changes.

Theme 4: curricula as a source of tensions

In this Theme 4, it is the case of curricula as a source of tensions instead of helping resolve tensions. Despite some noticeable shortcomings in the quality of attention given to student diversity both in curricula and policies in several countries and educational systems, there are some positive innovations in this area. As shown by Kadir, the new Australian Curriculum mandates the development of critical and creative thinking in schools while being inclusive of and embracing learner diversity. However, the author suggests that, based on the analysis of previous studies and experiences conducted in other educational contexts such as in Singapore, tensions might arise between, on the one hand, the predominantly Western perspective and understanding of creative thinking and, on the other hand, students and teachers of non-Western cultural value systems. Indeed, Kadir suggests that “more conservative ideologies might find that the very premise of critical thinking to critique and interrogate previously taken for granted assumptions and beliefs unsettling.” In short, while highlighting the complexity of the notion of critical thinking and of its understanding, Kadir identifies some possible drawbacks associated with some students’ and teachers’ values, beliefs and epistemologies and considers it to be crucial “that the nature and diversity of learners’ epistemologies are accounted for and that conducive learning conditions are created”. Kadir also proposes the role of teachers in the development of critical thinkers as “a vital aim in the increasing diversity of school leavers in Australia as envisioned”.

Theme 5: textbooks and language teachers ignore language and linguistic variations

In the next theme, the authors highlight the situation where textbooks and language teachers ignore language and linguistic variation. Mullan suggests a pedagogical approach, which can be included at a B1 level of mastery of the language. This approach, which targets the learner’s acquisition of pragmatic and intercultural communicative competence, is transferable to other languages or cultures. It not only teaches a cultural aspect of the foreign language, but it is also profoundly intercultural as students become aware of such discourse markers in their first language. Mullan notices that there is a significant body of literature on discourse markers, but that very few studies explore ways to actually teach discourse markers or the variety of the language in the foreign language classroom. There is therefore a gap between what research in linguistics has suggested and what has actually been transferred from the field of Applied Linguistics and has become available more directly at classroom level. Interestingly, Mullan’s suggested approach is not confined to identifying, recognizing and understanding discourse markers and their meaning in the selected authentic material; it also fosters production of those discourse markers by the learners themselves. Group work is encouraged in an approach which includes several steps ranging from an initial identification of the discourse markers to a more in-depth analysis aiming at introducing students “to the concept of discourse markers, their meanings and functions, and to think about how they might translate them into English”. Finally an assessment task is proposed which is also an invitation to self-assessment and reflection on the use of discourse markers by the learners themselves. This is embedded in a larger assessment task which situates discourse markers within a broader approach encompassing “a number of competencies and incorporates the analysis of a range of sociolinguistic and interactional strategies that the students have been working on throughout the semester such as standard and non-standard forms of French, register, and discourse markers”.

Theme 6: curricula and textbooks are too limited

In this theme, Koshal underlines the necessity of complementing ready-made, activity resource books (culturally oriented) with online teacher-created activities. In his analysis Koshal underlines the role of teachers as curriculum designers, “re-designers” (who change the curriculum, “fine tune things for their own goal”) and “co-designers” (who create new resources). Importantly, teachers’ involvement in redesigning curriculum “stands to contribute to its implementation”. Koshal considers that there are “a bunch of culturally oriented materials available online which helps teachers to consider the major role of teaching culture just besides dealing with the language per se.” The result of the comparison initiated by Koshal, based on activities derived from a textbook as against activities proposed by teachers online, highlights the lack of a systematic organization of online activities but they can constitute valuable resources when picked up appropriately and in line with the learning goals. However, this implies a meticulous choice which is not required when using the textbook. The author also notices differences in presentation with online activities being designed in different colours and shapes in order to ensure students do not become bored. Finally he underlines how online activities largely outweigh activities presented in the textbooks and recommends “an innovative mixture of the offline and online activities”.

Summary of individual contributions

The contributions in this volume address pedagogy for students of diverse backgrounds in different contexts and from a range of perspectives. For example, the articles by Liyanage, Singh and Walker, Kadir and MacGill focus Australian context while Diallo, Ben Abdullah and Embarki focus on France. In their paper, Liyanage, Singh and Walker problematize Australian education policies in the ways in which they encourage teachers’ perceptions of themselves as outsiders but not participants in the interplay of variables that characterizes Australian society. They argue that education policies contribute to certain in the misunderstanding and the misrecognition of ethnolinguistic diversity in classrooms. For students of diverse backgrounds to achieve their full potential as members of the broader community, they call for contextually responsive and pedagogically viable education policies that focus on increasing teacher education opportunities and teacher professional development in the areas of cultural identity and shifting cultural ethnoscapes. As for Kadir’s contribution, it analyses critical and creative thinking in the context of increased diversity in Australian classrooms. Even though critical thinking is described as “fundamental to effective learning in Australian” in the Australian curriculum, its design and content are influenced by Western education traditions and epistemologies. The implementation of such perspectives in classrooms with students of diverse backgrounds may engender as the epistemologies and education traditions of these students do not always align with those advocated by the curriculum which may result in tensions.

MacGill’s contribution also highlights cultural issues around Australian curriculum in the sense that ethics of care is used as a theoretical framework to discuss the student/teacher relationship. Her article critiques the notion of the universality of care as it is not reality “neutral”. It carries with it the dominant ideology and knowledge construction. To demonstrate this view, MacGill uses Indigenous ethics of care as a counter narrative to the prevalent white ethics of care implemented in schools. The article shows that since Indigenous students’ cultural habitus is not shared or understood by their teachers, their relationship is not always fluid and may lead to students’ resistance to teachers as a result of disconnect and differences in performance of care.

The contribution by Diallo, Embarki and ben Abdullah deals with the education provisions provided to Elèves Nouvellement Arrivés en France (ENAF) [Students Newly Arrived in France] in France. The paper shows that a range of structures are created in schools and policy measures put in place to regulate the provisions to be provided to the students. These structures and policy framework focus on providing French language skills to the allophone students who come from diverse backgrounds with little or no knowledge of the French language. The article discusses the education challenges posed by the diversity of the allophone students in the education system and the ways in which their learning experiences and epistemologies are accommodated or not by the French education system. The article shows that the education provisions were successful but were criticized for being its strong emphasis on French and irrelevant to the cultural and social needs of the allophone students and for being dysfunctional.

The contributions in this volume also delved into diversity in classroom based on specific topics. The contributions by Falkert and Mullan examine the challenges of teaching language variations in French and the teaching culture-specific French discourse markers. Falkert’s article addresses L2 pronunciation in French. Following a brief overview of the changes that have impacted on the teaching and understating of L2 pronunciation and variations in French, Falkert’s article offers an interesting discussion on whether the teaching of pronunciation in L2 context is influenced by teaching cultures/traditions or by languages ideology. Falkert’s article shows that text/textbooks generally provides little space to language variations. As a result, phonetic variation is not treated sufficiently in classroom context and therefore they perpetuate the underlining language ideologies that seek to protect and defend the French language from such variations. As for Mullan’s article, it focuses on the teaching of French pesky discourse markers. Even though it is challenging to accurately define discourse markers, these are important to teach as they can help develop learners’ intercultural awareness and competence in French. In addition to listing out the properties and functions of discourse markers, Mullan’s article offers practical classroom activities to teach discourse markers. These include, exposing students to discourse markers with authentic material (e.g. A video clip) then consolidate the recognition of the discourse markers with practical exercises (gap filling with discourse makers and role plays) and finally assessing students’ in order to give students opportunities to practice the discourse makers they have learnt.

Last but not least, Khoshhal’s article discusses teaching English as a second or foreign language. In his article, Khoshhal compared online teacher–teacher created activities with the ready-made activity resource books which are both online and offline supplementary resources created to help busy teachers who would not have the chance to create their own material for their classes. Khoshha’s article compared the widely used website wwwbusyteacher.org by ESL/EFL teachers with the ready-made resources pack selected from the book Top Notch I Copy and Go. The article found that even though resources books offer useful supplementary material, they need to be offered with online teaching activities and to include a wider range of activities that could be used to accommodate the cultural and linguistic needs of busy teachers.

Conclusion

This article has shown that in this globalized world, diversity in education setting is an inescapable reality that needs to be systemically addressed. The article has also shown that diversity in classrooms is complex as it encompasses ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, gender, exceptionalities, language, religion, sexual orientation, and geographical area. However, in education settings, students of diverse backgrounds bring with them a range of experiences that influence, shape and construct their epistemologies, cultural paradigms, self-and ideological representations. Therefore, these need to be acknowledged and integrated in classroom settings for better education outcomes. The analysis of the contributions in this volume shows that there are however challenges to acknowledge and integrate diversity in classrooms. The contributions show that, for example, there are cases sometimes where education policies are silent or they ignore diversity in classrooms. In other cases, it is the education policy or the curricula in place that reinforces the dominant ideologies and as such generates tensions. The contributions show cases where textbooks and language teachers ignore language variations. In light of these challenges raised by the contributions in this volume, there is a strong argument for comprehensive and clearly articulated policies and pedagogies for classrooms with students of diverse backgrounds. In particular, together the authors highlight:

•	The need for policies to acknowledge diversity and outline clear pedagogies to reflect diversity in the classrooms.
•	The importance for curricula and textbooks to be carefully designed and selected so that they acknowledge and include diversity, especially linguistic and cultural variations in the context of foreign language teaching.
•	The need for teachers to be educated to be able to go beyond prescribed curricula and textbooks in search of variety and diversity in their classroom activities.
•	The necessity to provide teachers and students with opportunities to critically reflect and further their knowledge and experiences with diverse classrooms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. http://ncate.org/Standards/UnitStandards/Glossary/tabid/477/Default.aspx.