Empowering Culturally Responsive Education through Mosaic Collaboration

• In Event: Education for Reconciliation, Nonviolence, and Cultural Justice: Intercultural and Collaborative Approaches

Proposal

The meaning of teacher has undergone a fundamental shift over the years. The new challenges require educators to rethink their role and re-evaluate their teaching. The teaching should move from transactional to transformational. In working with students, instead of thinking our world as melting pot which focuses on the issue of assimilation, we need to rethink of it as tossed salad or mosaic and respect each individual’s uniqueness and strength. Understanding who your students are and what cultural relevance is will create a learning environment where students can succeed in their academic and personal lives. Without understanding where students are coming from, it will be difficult for the teachers to effectively help them. By establishing inclusion in the classroom, students can feel sense of connection and belonging.
A divided world could display a state of separation and lack of understanding among people due to differing beliefs or perspectives. The different groups hold fundamentally opposed views which could lead to friction and tension. In re-examining education and peace in a divided world, teachers should embrace the diversity of students and be prepared to teach all. Inclusive teaching will establish and support a class regardless of people’s differences. It will enable all students to take part in learning and feel a sense of belonging. As the diversity in the school setting rapidly increases, the classroom can be full of students sharing different needs, and various backgrounds of culture, race, gender, class, religion, language and other variables. Having diverse students and understanding them will be another challenge for teachers, and the teachers’ role in educating children to live and work together respectfully is becoming more critical. Culturally relevant and responsive teachers also should not be hesitant to utilize students’ culture as a vehicle for learning (Ladson-Billings, 1995). By understanding the cultural pluralism and the importance of social relationship in this era, the schools can certainly create a healthy and peaceful classroom for all the students.
As social beings, we learn from each other constantly by interacting and socializing. This explains the importance of a relational epistemology. Human beings are socially constructed and influence one another in constructing knowledge. Communication can never be fully complete without both verbal and nonverbal communication. In order to provide culturally responsive teaching and practice inclusive education, understanding the culture of the student and yourself is critical. Every student is distinctive, and inclusive education should value each individual as they are, and look into each student’s identity more cautiously in order to support their education. Through cultural awareness of the students in the classroom and building a positive relationship, the challenges that teachers experience could be reduced and transformed to a confidence in teaching.
Caring teaching-learning relationships are important for being a prerequisite for intellectual growth. In agreement with Goldstein, Noddings (1995) thinks that practice in teaching should be practice in caring. Building a caring relationship helps people to acquire knowledge that leads to more effective education. In order to effectively care for students, teachers need to understand “what is happening in the family, the mass media, and the peer group, and how cultural and social trends are influencing the behaviors and ideas that students bring to the classroom” (Orstein & Levine, 2006). Multicultural caring or identity-centered multicultural care theory is what educators need to pay attention to as it focuses on more inclusivity of the students.
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that focuses on fair opportunity plays an important role in promoting inclusion, and helps students to personalize their learning. In addition, through culturally responsive teaching, educators should be able to respond to learners’ cultural differences to design instruction that is inclusive of all learners. One of the effective ways to support students’ learning would be through focusing on collaboration instead of competition. The mosaic collaboration does not limit all students to work together at the same time but it provides more flexibility. Students can work on their own pace, can come up with more creative ideas or even different ideas to contribute to the whole mosaic. For example, students have freedom to choose any size, shape, color and time that they desire and have interests in to add to the mosaic. This approach guides everyone to enjoy the learning process, feel a sense of belonging and accomplishment of completing the project together with other students. It helps each student to perceive what other students will bring to the whole project and at the same time everyone will be able to gain understanding of the big picture they have been working together collaboratively. They will learn that they have a common goal but the input of each student could be different but still valued.
As technology also advances rapidly in the field of education, building international academic partnerships and collaboration became easier. Cultivating and fostering global education in the school setting can play a vital role in rethinking education and promoting peace in a divided world. It could be simply implemented via Zoom. This opportunity provides innovation, cultural and experiential teaching and learning experience while encouraging both students and teachers to work with groups from different cultural background and learn from each other. Through building cross-cultural knowledge and being exposed to new idea, cultures, and ways of viewing the world to broaden perspectives, students can gain multicultural educational experience. This is another way to engage students to learn through collaboration instead of competition.

Author

• SoYoung Kang, Gwynedd Mercy University - Gwynedd Valley, PA