Respecting Cultural Diversity Begins at School

Introduction 

Understanding cultural diversity is becoming an important component of success for many professionals whether at an educational or corporate level. It is the responsibility of individuals and institutions to promote, encourage, and facilitate cultural diversity at work. Within the topic of “Respecting cultural diversity begins at school” essay will be discussed how to navigate cultural diversity at school and university. 

Navigating the cultural aspect of addressing members of the teaching staff in an academic environment can be difficult whether approaching the subject as a student or a professor. There are many students and professors at both UWM and MATC that do not speak English as their first language or grew up in an environment where other languages and corresponding cultures may have been more prominent. This can lead to unintentional misunderstandings because of their choice of titles whether faculty addressing other faculty or students addressing faculty. Another area where contention may arise is punctuality; different cultures hold the concept of time and leisure to different levels with no intentional disrespect to others, but this is what they think the norm is according to their culture and the environment they were raised in. The last area to be addressed in this memorandum is culturally how students would communicate understanding in a class.

Perceived Importance of Punctuality

The environment that people are raised in or live in impacts the way they deal with each other. These environments impact life outlook, thought patterns and peoples work ethic. These learned cultural behaviors also trickle into how people deal with each other and how punctual they are when it comes to scheduling and respect of scheduled tasks in their daily life. The perception of time varies depending on cultural background. This can be observed mainly in arrival and deadline times. More specifically, arrival times for meetings and classes as well as deadline times for assignments and projects. I currently have the opportunity to experience these perceptions of time with respect to cultural from both a student and instructor perspective.

The student population at UWM comes from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some interesting example of these perceptions of time can be seen in countries such as Germany, India, Brazil, Nigeria, and Switzerland and many more. Latin and middle eastern cultures tend to be flexible with time, where a majority of these countries’ time means the person can arrive for personal meetings anywhere from an hour to a day late and it is perfectly acceptable. Other culture may not even apologize when late because it is common and culturally acceptable. On the other hand, we find other countries with strong industrial history, for example, in Germany people are expected to routinely arrive 10 minutes before the start of meetings. While in Japan the train systems run in a tight deadline, when even a one-minute delay is considered late.

These are examples of countries that operate on a more linear sense of time and accordingly people who live in such countries are naturally affected by such punctuality and respect for time and tardiness. In these countries that have a linear sense of time being late is treated as a sign of disrespect. It is common to observe people adapting their adherence to punctuality based on environment. For example, students who decided to study abroad and are introduced to different cultures may adapt accordingly.

Using Body Language to Communicate Understanding

Expressions and signs given in class during the lecture by multicultural students can sometimes be interpreted incorrectly by teachers. Some cultures use head nodding to indicate understanding or agreeing with a teacher during a lecture, question or answer. But it is the responsibility of the teacher to never take that for granted and should follow up the lecture with request for comments or feedback or even short questions to ensure that students understood the material.

Conclusion 

Sometimes, teachers who come from a different cultural background may miss certain social cultural cues and misinterpret the level of understand of their students. For example, a teacher from different cultural background whose first language is not English may pronounce certain words differently or express themselves in ways that are foreign to the students. This type of cultural diversity may affect how students understand or interpret what the teacher is trying to explain and potentially create a misunderstanding between teachers and students. On the other hand, teachers coming from unique cultural backgrounds may also be able to present ideas and topics to students from a unique perspective. In either case, if there is no direct communication and feedback between faculty and students, then there is no way for either one to confirm that the teacher was able to effectively communicate their knowledge and the student understood the concept correctly.

References

• Hunt, V., Yee, L., Prince, S., & Dixon-Fyle, S. (n.d.). Delivering through diversity. 
• Harzing, A. (2017, May 20). How to address your teacher? 
• Meyer, E. (2015, March 3). Frim Switzerland to Nigeria, here are the most and least punctual countries. 
• Morrison, L. (2016, October 31). Capital - Native English speakers are the world's worst communicators. 
• Forsyth, M. (2016, September 08). Culture - The language rules we know – but don't know we know.