Diversity Training Improves Intercultural Communication Skills

In an elementary school serving a large population of immigrant Hispanic families, a teacher waits for parents to pick up their children at the end of the day. When a mother arrives to pick up her child, the teacher greets her with "You should be proud of Juan. He completed all of his work for the day and got an A on the pop quiz."

For school principal Sara Nelson, Houston Elementary School’s participation in the Organizing for Diversity Project has had a long-lasting effect on her staff.

The mother firmly responds by saying, "We expect that from him every day." The teacher insists, "But he deserves a pat on the back for it." The mother simply smiles at the teacher, takes her child’s hand, and walks away without saying a word. The teacher watches them leave as she tries to understand why the mother doesn’t praise her child.

A teacher praising a child for his or her accomplishments is highly valued in an individualistic culture because it promotes self-esteem. However, in a collectivistic culture, parents don’t see the need to highlight a child’s accomplishments since this kind of behavior is expected from the child. Furthermore, parents from a collectivistic culture are more comfortable with constructive feedback because it keeps their children’s accomplishments in perspective. This type of feedback is not intended to be a put-down to children, but it can easily be interpreted that way by members of individualistic cultures.

This scenario, in which a teacher goes out of her way to praise one of her students in front of his mother, is an example of how the relationship between a parent and a teacher can be seriously affected when either one fails to understand each other’s expectations or intentions. And it is intensified by the lack of realization by either the teacher or parent that a cultural miscommunication or disconnect has occurred. Such disconnects or miscommunications are referred to in research literature as "culture clashes."

Panelists at the Institute share how the Organizing for Diversity Project helped them reflect on their practices and ideas.

Professional development in diversity and multicultural education has become increasingly important over the past decade as this nation’s school population becomes increasingly more diverse while the majority of teachers are monolingual, white, middle-class females.

From teachers to administrators, and office clerks to service providers, schools are training their staff and personnel to better deal with the issue of diversity. While much of the diversity training implemented in public schools focuses on superficial aspects of culture, language inclusion, and community involvement, SEDL’s Organizing for Diversity Project (ODP) is seeking to help teachers enhance their knowledge and self-awareness of diversity issues and develop better intercultural skills for instructing and relating to culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in mainstream classrooms.

Organizing for Diversity Training Institute

Recently, SEDL invited 23 diversity trainers from across the United States to participate in an Institute for Diversity Training in Austin, Texas. The objective was to share what the ODP has learned in its study and to receive input from the group of educators on the training process SEDL has designed for teaching in a diverse setting.

"The idea for the institute was to establish a network of trainers who are willing to use the training modules we designed," says SEDL program associate, Pat Guerra, who has led the work for the ODP. According to Guerra, this network includes people who have conducted diversity training and staff development, as well as teacher educators and private consultants who work with teachers.

The Institute’s three-day program began with an overview of the ODP program and a session on one of the program’s training modules. "The idea, at least initially, was not to train them on the specific use of the modules, but on how to work with diversity in the classroom," adds Guerra.

"On the second day we highlighted a classroom application by focusing on module activities, plus teachers participated in a panel discussion with educators who went through the training and helped develop the training modules," she explains.

The panel included teachers Barbara Dray and Mary Ellen Alsobrook and school principal Sarah Nelson. It also included Shernaz Garcia and Phyllis Robertson from the University of Texas at Austin, who assisted SEDL with the project as one of the project’s lead researcher and consultant, respectively; and project evaluator Nance Bell, as well as Guerra.

Panelists observed that through the ODP training they discovered that teaching was more than just curriculum and instruction, that the training encouraged them to reflect on their practices and ideas.

"If anything, it challenges your own ideas and beliefs regarding your students, forcing you to look inside as well as outside," said Dray, a teacher who admitted being somewhat skeptical of the value of this kind of training when she first heard about the ODP.

For school principal Sarah Nelson, the program has had a long-lasting effect on her staff, although it’s been more than two years since a group of her teachers went through the training. Nelson, whose school is made up mostly of Hispanic students, is a firm believer in the need for cultural diversity training for teachers.

"I believe education and schools are driven by teachers’ beliefs and values," Nelson emphasized. "Once teachers start examining and reflecting on these issues, then the cultural diversity training begins to have an impact on student learning."

ODP Training Manual

During the three-day event, participants were given the opportunity to use the ODP training manual, which consists of 11 modules that actively engage teachers in a wide range of issues and helps them reflect on the values and assumptions they bring to the classroom.

These modules range from the importance of effective intercultural communication in the classroom and views of culture to cultural influences and the socialization of young children and understanding cultural variability in the classroom.

"The module that participants focused on during the training dealt with individualism and collectivism," explains Guerra. "We had participants look at real-life scenarios and incidents of episodes in the classroom and then had them analyze these to see how they could be transferred to meaningful classroom practice."

At the end of the three-day meeting, participants had developed an action plan —which included the use of one or more modules from the training manual — to be used in their own work with teachers. SEDL plans to monitor the training and use the findings that result from these.

Guerra says the institute was noteworthy because the high degree of participant engagement made it more interactive than many of the diversity training sessions offered. "We viewed this institute as a way to expand the ODP learnings," she adds. "We gained as much from the participants as they gained from us."

Next Article: Resources for Greater Understanding of Diversity Issues