How can Intercultural Diversity be understood? The Lecturers' Response

Abstract

Education set-ups across different age cohorts and countries often pride themselves on having students from various nations. The objective of this paper is to understand how, within a Maltese context, lecturers at sixth form level understand and consider intercultural diversity when implementing the curriculum. It also studies how lecturers’ personal experiences with race and culture inform their thinking on a meta-reflective level. Previous research has shown the importance of the use of reflection in teacher education (Davis 2006) and the use of portfolios for learning and assessment (Chetcuti et al. 2006) but little research has been carried out on teachers’ perspectives of teaching intercultural classes at a sixth form level. The study aims to fill in this lacuna in the literature by exploring what lecturers believe influences their ideas and practices of intercultural education in the classes they teach. There are clear implications of this study for policy, particularly showing that good will and having the best of intentions need to be augmented by a curriculum that is flexible enough to accommodate for students from different cultural groups if student learning is to be optimised across the board.