Teach English in Winnipeg - TEFL Courses

Cultural Sensitivity in the Classroom (27) With immigration and the use of foreign workers increasing throughout the world, cultures are bound to collide and interact. Without cultural sensitivity, this collision of cultures could lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. People who aren't culturally sensitive tend to be ethnocentric, thinking that their way of doing things is the standard to which other must be held and that all other ways of doing and thinking things are wrong. This paper will explore the definitions of culture and cultural sensitivity, the importance of cultural sensitivity, and finally give examples to illustrate the importance of cultural sensitivity. To begin, several definitions must be established for the context of this paper. Culture is “the learned and shared values, beliefs, and behaviors of a group of interacting people” (C, MC, CC, IC). While cultural sensitivity refers to the “quality of being aware and accepting of other cultures” (Wikipedia). According to Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, cultural sensitivity isn't a state of being, but rather a fluid transition between various stages of understanding. The six stages are divided into ethnocentric and ethnorelative stages. Ethnocentric stages include denial, defense, and minimization while ethnorelative stages include acceptance, adaptation, and integration. The most useful for a teacher and the students in a multicultural classroom are probably between acceptance and adaptation in order to overcome the obstacles associated with cultural interaction. Without cultural sensitivity, a teacher can take a student's actions, or inactions, to be illogical, unreasonable, or impolite when they are, in fact, acceptable actions for the student's home culture. Between various cultures, religion, space (personal bubble), time, body language, and race, among other things, all mean different things to people of differing cultures. A teacher must do research to learn, at least briefly, about the students' home culture and acceptable action within that culture. This allows for the teacher to better understand the students and to connect with the students. A teacher must also be relevant and relative to the students' everyday experiences. A teacher can't talk about American pop culture to a group of japanese students and expect them to connect easily to a lesson about pop culture. Understanding the native culture and being culturally sensitive is important for a teacher to understand the actions of their students. Asians tend to allow the teacher to do all the talking and only talking when the teacher directly addresses them while Latin American students tend to be talkative in the classroom. With this being said, a teacher in Asia shouldn't be discouraged when their students are reluctant to speak. Specifically in Korea, students are taught by their parents to not look a teacher in the eye when being spoken to directly, especially when being scolded. In Yemen, a Muslim country, there are strict gender roles that they believe in, such as classes being same-sex and that women shouldn't go to work or college. In the Arab world, technology isn't encouraged or readily accepted whereas in Asia, technology is readily accepted and almost expected to be used. The importance of learning and understanding the students' native culture and the practice of cultural sensitivity on the part of the teacher, as well as the students, helps to encourage a positive classroom environment. A working knowledge of the students' native culture also allows for the students and the teacher to connect through the lessons as well as connect socially. Cultural sensitivity is a necessity as people continue to move around the world for jobs or travel, especially in the classroom where differing culture are bound to interact.