Diversity in the Classroom

Abstract

In early years settings and schools, the population of children from diverse ethnic backgrounds has been increasing all over the world. Along with this increase, there is growing interest and concern in meeting the needs of these children and their families throughout their early years and school experience. Within any mainstream culture it is assumed that an ethnically diverse population should be able to be successfully integrated; however, it is not always clear how this could be achieved. Adaptation and integration to a new culture or school environment may be best achieved via effective communication between students, parents, and professionals. In this chapter, teacher beliefs and attitudes and how these affect communication will be discussed. The power of teacher-child relationships will be highlighted and suggestions will be made about effective practices to promote communication and build relationships.

A Tailored MOOC Fostering Intercultural Conflict Management in the Educational Context: Evidence from Italy

“…Firstly, the findings highlighted that-beyond the MOOC experience-teachers who participated in the study reported scores reflecting a more competent use of all five Conflict Management Styles when compared with the normative group, the latter comprising a sample of general Italian workers employed in public and private organizations (Majer 1995). These data are, however, in line with the ongoing transformations of the educational context; indeed, according to the European agenda, nowadays, teachers are increasingly demanded to promote mutual understanding, respect, and integration among students, rather than reaching high-quality learning outcomes alone (Ası and Joyce 2023;EC 2017EC , 2020. They need to favor a satisfactory class climate, manage relationships with and between students, and deal with the potential conflicts that could occur during classes, also due to the increasing differences in values, worldviews, and cultures in our society (e.g., Jackson and O'Grady 2019;Loode 2011;Meissner et al 2023).…”

“…For this very reason, teachers, globally, are pressured by growing expectations, as they need to possess or acquire new individual and relational skills to successfully fulfill the teaching role (Ası and Joyce 2023;EC 2017;Vallone et al 2022). Specifically, they need to possess/enhance not only their knowledge and awareness about multicultural education but also their individual skills to deal with potential conflicts which could arise in classes due to differences/mismatches in values, cultural backgrounds, and worldviews (Evans et al 2009;Han and Han 2019;Kunemund et al 2020).…”