university.nae.school
Inderjit Dehal
Director of Professional Development,
Education Team
Cultural Awareness: An Introduction
At the last count there were 56 schools in our family educating 51,000 students and employing 10,000 staff. Each individual brings their unique narrative to the Nord Anglia Education family.
We are full to brimming with cultural, religious and ethnic diversity. How we view that diversity and how we build on it so that it is a strength is a challenge for each of us. The articles and thought pieces in this edition of Connect-ed hopefully provide suggestions and ideas on how you can move your practice forward.
We often hear the simplistic comment that diversity is positive. Diversity can be a strength, but it brings with it all sorts of challenges. In particular, how do you engage effectively with or get the most out of someone whose narrative might be 180 degrees different to your own?
I am going to focus on just one idea – the idea that we all hold inherent biases. We can debate where they come from (for another time please Editor) but we can’t discount the fact that we have them. They are the instinctive suggestions formulated by your mind.
They become hurtful when we act on them – knowingly or unknowingly. I’m reminded of schools I worked with in the UK where the Heads always professed their total commitment to equality and diversity. Yet, when you looked at their data, certain groups, black boys in particular, were disproportionally their lowest performing and most often excluded.
We also looked at a school which bucked the trend, where black boys performed just as well as all other students and where there wasn’t a disparity in exclusion rates. What did this school do differently? Whilst recognising all the challenges these students faced at home and in their communities, they focused on what teachers were doing. They accepted that all teachers had inherent biases and they brought in experts to work one to one with them, enabling them to better understand their own thinking. Teachers were supported to examine why they were acting as they were and to act differently if that is what was needed. The lessons of that work have stayed with me - treating others fairly requires strong self-awareness and humility to recognise that you might not have been doing the right thing, even when you thought you were.
Looking to submit an article to Connect-ed? Contact [email protected] and let us know what you are wanting to write about!