A rapid surge in globalisation and increasing movement of families and students across borders have led to the formation of schools, universities, and classrooms comprising of students from different cultural backgrounds. Importantly, such multicultural platforms have escalated the exchange of different ideas, perspectives, and traditions, which has essentially triggered the amalgamation of numerous cultures into a beautiful ecosystem under the spectrum of the education system. Despite this unity and cooperation, education leadership and management courses aptly point out that multicultural platforms also expand the scopes for misunderstandings, conflicts, cultural stereotyping, alienation of students, inability to form friendships, and several other issues. These concerns inevitably disturb the learners’ learning experiences, and must hence be monitored by educational leaders and managers. Here are some of the measures that can be implemented to smoothly handle multiculturalism in an educational institute.
- Acquire knowledge: It is extremely essential for the educational leaders and managers to be thoroughly aware of the different cultures and traditions that their students pursue. Knowledge will keep them from reacting to characteristics that is different from their own culture. Likewise, by gathering information, the managers will be able to include all the students by training the teachers accordingly, organising events for different culture, integrating their knowledge in the lesson plans, and so on. If the leaders want an ambience of acceptance and respect, they cannot remain ignorant of the students’ culture. Knowledge will also permit the managers to locate certain biases towards certain cultures. They will then be able to attend to those biases by reaching out to everyone and taking measures accordingly. Typically, learners from different cultures also have varied learning preferences, and knowledge of these will allow the manager to add these insights into the lesson planning for different modules.
- Encourage cooperation: As a school leader, promoting cooperation is of prime importance. Be it in a classroom, or in a school event, education leadership and management courses highlight the importance of bringing the learners together. Not only does this allow them to bond, but the learners are also able to learn about each other’s cultures, get accustomed to it, and eventually embrace it instead of facing misunderstandings. This cooperation and inclusion can be stimulated by encouraging group work, asking the students to collectively arrange events, and so forth.
- Encourage your students to be proud of their heritage: Typically, when students from a different culture become a part of a group of students from a different culture, they happen to hide their own cultural beliefs, and try to absorb the other learners’ views. This leads to cultural erosion, and it very much defies the fundamentals of education and learning. That said, school leaders and managers must encourage the students to be proud of their heritage, ignore what other people think of their traditions, and not suppress their views. This will gradually give them the confidence to fit into groups and the system, without losing their cultural perceptions.
Although these are some of the most important strategies that can be implemented to handle multiculturalism without facing the issues associated with it, there are a slew of other measures that can be taken, and these are largely driven by the ambience and features of the students, the school, the teachers, the infrastructure, and a series of other factors.
