BLOG

JANUARY 28, 2020

on teaching cultural understanding

By Guest Bloggers Megan McGee Jennings and Andrea Payne, Global Scholars Educators in Toronto, Canada

A vignette from the classroom as we work on Global Scholars Unit 2: Nature in Our Lives, part of the Nature and Our Cities curriculum:

Teacher: Let’s think about how nature is part of our culture.

Student: Uhhh… what’s culture?

Teacher: *facepalm”

Yes, this interaction really took place. We weren’t impressed with our classes that day, to say the least! As Canadian teachers in our second year working with Global Scholars, building cultural understanding with our young students has been one of the more challenging aspects of the program. Before starting this program, we hadn’t taken much time to evaluate students’ cultural understanding, and as 10-year olds, they hadn’t even considered culture as a part of their daily lives. Developing cultural understanding in the global sense seemed, at first, like a feat we wouldn’t be able to accomplish.

The Global Cities’ Student Learning Outcomes for Cultural Understanding indicate that through their participation in the Global Scholars program, students should develop knowledge and understanding, skills, and attitudes that allow them to understand and appreciate their own and others’ cultures, and to reflect on the cultural factors that influence communicating with peers and solving problems. In our particular setting, we have noticed that while students do not struggle to create posts that address the varying levels of English language proficiency inherent to working with members of our international digital exchange, they require significant time for exploration in the online classroom, and direct teaching to be able to appreciate the differences between their own lives and the lives and cultures of their global peers. Part of what makes this aspect of the program so challenging is that our students often do not have a strong sense of their own culture(s), and falter when asked to even define the word “culture.”

Canadian culture can be difficult to define. With historic Indigenous and European influences, over time, Canada’s identity has further been shaped by large populations of newcomers from around the world, creating what is often referred to as the Canadian cultural mosaic. In our experience,students in our classrooms have an understanding of culture that is based primarily on heritage and celebrations. They have often not considered that the many communities they are part of (i.e., classroom, school, neighbourhood, etc.) have their own distinct cultures rooted in a set of shared values and experiences. Recognizing this gap in students’ understanding of culture in a broader sense has contributed to some more successful learning in this area as we have adapted our teaching practices to meet our students’ needs.

Three key elements we’ve found helpful in our teaching are:

TIP 1: define “culture” from day one

Establish an understanding of culture as part of the learning in group activities from the first day of school. Working together, students can develop a set of agreed-upon norms and values. This sets the stage for further work around understanding classroom and school culture. From there, students can use this lens of culture and values to examine their own actions and the actions of others in our communities. Once they have considered these perspectives, students are better able to apply their understanding to their exchanges in the online classroom.

TIP 2: identify elements of culture in other schools and cities

As part of the Global Scholars Unit 1 introduction, take the time to fully study the locations and cultures of the members of your digital exchange group. Doing so opens the door to discussions around students’ own culture(s). In addition, it is vital to take the time as a class to analyze online posts from others and consider, through discussion, unique cultural perspectives. Spending time digging into the cultural factors that may influence students’ posts and responses in the online classroom will develop students’ ability to view issues from different perspectives. 

TIP 3: honour the process

At the outset, students’ online exchanges will appear superficial, and even finding meaningful questions to ask their Global Scholars peers will be a challenge. For us, this was discouraging and led us to question our teaching, wondering why our students weren’t able to clearly see connections between culture and nature as set out in the lessons for Unit 2. Fortunately, last year’s experience sparked optimism as we recalled how students’ cultural understanding grew incrementally as they continued to interact online throughout the year. Lessons around culture in Units 1 a 2 are simply planting the seeds. The harvest is reaped later in the year as students interact meaningfully and begin to appreciate the importance of considering culture as a factor in interactions, problem solving, and drawing conclusions about global issues. Honour the learning process and remember: they’re kids, and learning is a process. We have to stop and remind ourselves of this often!

Cultural Understanding is 1 of 9 learning outcomes described in Evaluating Global Digital Education: Student Outcomes Framework, co-published by Global Cities, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and OECD.

Read more about student learning outcomes

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