Cultural Competence: Addressing Diversity in Culturally

Diverse Classrooms

*Dr. Lokpati Tripathi

“To honor diversity is to honor the social complexity in which we live -
to give integrity to the individual and to where he or she comes from. To
unify is absolutely necessary, but to insist upon it without embracing
diversity is to destroy that which will allow us to unite individual and
collective dignity.”
Eugene Garcia,
Student Cultural Diversity
Diversity is not very new but prevalent and a challenging issue in Indian society. India's diversity is
visible in its people, religions, climate, languages, customs, and traditions which differ from place to place
within the country. The culture of India is an amalgamation of diverse sub-cultures spread all over the country
and traditions that are millennia’s old. With more than 4000 communities, 22 constitutionally recognized
languages and hundreds of dialects, more than six major religions and hundreds of sects and more than 1.2
billion people, India presents a very complex, plural culture which very nearly permeates every aspect of living
from patterns of belief and values to hundreds of forms of creative articulation, from costumes mid foods to
enormous subtleties of refinement and participation. Nothing in India can possibly escape the impact of its
culture, be it politics, technology, education or development. The strong and inescapable cultural implications of
education and development were recognised right from the beginning.
Cultural Diversity and Education
Etymologically, Cultural diversity consists of two different words: culture and diversity. Let discuss
first culture and diversity separately. “Diversity” refers to the state or fact of being diverse, difference,
unlikeness, diversity of opinion. “Culture” refers to integrated patterns of human behaviour that include the
language, thoughts, actions, customs, beliefs, and institutions of racial, ethnic, social, or religious groups.
Culture shapes human behaviour, attitudes, and values. Human behaviour results from a process of socialization,
and socialization always takes place within the context of specific cultural and ethnic environments. A person's
humanity cannot be isolated or divorced from his or her culture or ethnicity. One cannot be human without
culture and ethnicity, and one cannot have culture and ethnicity without being human.
Every culture have different pattern of behaviour. Having several cultures in one classroom can be
haven for behavioural clashes. Therefore, to acknowledge and respect one another, to be fully human, requires
mutual understanding and appreciation based on cultural understanding. With the growing diversity of the
student body in Indian public school, it is increasingly imperative that teachers have and continually develop a
cultural competence that enables them to connect with, respond to, and interact effectively with their pupils.
Diversity in the schools could potentially provide opportunities for children to broaden their perspectives and
worldviews, as well as to learn about and share in different lifestyles, belief systems, and traditions (Aboud &
Fenwick, 1999; Stern- LaRosa & Bentham, 2000).Lindsay (2003) emphasized that the knowledge developed
regarding culture and cultural dynamics must be integrated into every facet of school, program, or agency. Staff
must be trained and effectively utilize the knowledge gained. Administrators should develop policies that are
responsive to cultural diversity. Program materials should reflect the positive images of all people and be valid
for use with each group. Institutionalized cultural knowledge can enhance an organizations’ ability to serve
diverse populations.
Institutionalization means that the knowledge is formally recognised, documented and shared in
interactive ways with new cohorts of teachers and other school staff. Explicit mechanisms and policies are in
place that provide for maintaining and expanding upon the professional knowledge base about culture, so that
the school is truly a learning organization (Senge, McCabe, Cambron, Lukas, Kleiner, Dutton & Smith 2000).
Culture impacts the learning process and social adjustment of our children, and providing developmentally and
culturally appropriate practice is at the core of the teaching profession (Robles de Melendez & Beck, 2007). In
this regard multicultural education and cultural competency can have a substantive impact on the education of
most students. Multicultural education and cultural competence has become a critical component for school
personal preparation and professional development, and such preparation should be include an understanding of
a variety of cultures (NCCTQ, 2007).

* Assistant Professor B.Ed, KN Govt. PG College Gyanpur Bhadohi, UP.

Cultural Competence
 Cultural Competence has been defined by numerous people in various ways. Simply to comprehend
this term, as defined in California Endowment (2003) “ as the attitudes, knowledge, and skills necessary for
providing quality care to diverse populations.”
Cultural Competence refers to a set of congruent attitudes, practices and structures that come together in a
system or agency to enable professionals to work more effectively with the members of culturally distinct
groups in a manner that values and respect the culture and worldview of those groups (Hanley 1999).
Competence is an on-going process that involves accepting and respecting differences and not letting one’s
personal beliefs have an undue influence on those whose worldview is different from one’s own. Operationally
defined, cultural competence is the integration and transformation of knowledge about individuals and group of
people into specific standards, policies, practices and attitudes used in appropriate cultural settings to increase
the quality of services, thereby producing better outcomes (Davis 1997).
For the purposes of this conceptual analysis, cultural competence for educators is defined as:
1. The ability to engage in self-reflection and self-critique of one’s belief system about oneself,
individuals and groups of people.
2. The knowledge, understanding, acceptance and appreciation of diversity among students (Ward &
Ward, 2003)
3. The ability to demonstrate behaviours that are congruent with an understanding of differences
among learners.
4. And the ability to effectively operate within different cultural contexts (NASP, 2003).

Cultural Competence Process

Cultural competence is a developmental process that occurs along a continuum. It is very important for
agencies to assess where they fall along the continuum. Such an assessment can be useful for further
development. Several cultural competence models have been developed based on the work of Pederson (1994)
and Mason, Benjamin & Lewis (1996).Pederson (1994) developed a tripartite developmental model to promote
cultural and multicultural understanding among practitioners. These competencies include the domain of
awareness, knowledge and skills. Each domain builds successively on the previous one such that mastery of an
earlier domain is necessary before proceeding to subsequent domains. The awareness domain competency
involves recognition of one’s own biases as well as awareness of the socio-political issues that confront
culturally different students. Competencies in the knowledge domain involve the acquisition of factual
information about different cultural groups. Finally competencies in the skills domain involve integrating
competencies in the previous awareness and knowledge domains in an effort to positively impact culturally
diverse children.Mason et al (1996) outlined a cultural competence model on the individual and organization
levels in which transitions from negative to positive practices that endorse culturally relevant services. This
model consists of five stages-1) cultural destructiveness, 2) cultural incapacity, 3) cultural blindness, 4) cultural
pre–competence, and 5) cultural competence. Cultural Destructiveness is a stage which acknowledges only one
way of being and purposefully denies or outlaws any other cultural approaches. This is the most negative end of
continuum. Cultural Incapacity is a stage which supports the concepts of separate but equal marked by inability
to deal personally with multiple approaches but willingness to accept their existence elsewhere. Cultural
blindness stage fosters that people are all basically alike so what works with members of one culture should
work within all other cultures. Cultural Pre-competence stage encourages learning and understanding of new
ideas and solutions to improve performance or services. Cultural Competence involves actively seeking advice
and consultation. It is acceptance and respect of differences, continuing self-assessment regarding culture,
careful attention to the dynamics of differences, and promotion of improved cultural relations among diverse
groups.Cross et al (1989) state that the cultural competence is a complex framework and that there is a tendency
for systems and organization to want a step by step approach. The cross framework emphasizes that the process
of achieving cultural competency occurs along a continuum and set forth six possibilities, starting from one end
and building toward the other: 1) cultural destructiveness, 2) cultural incapacity, 3) cultural blindness, 4)
cultural pre–competence, 5) cultural competency, and 6) cultural proficiency. It has been suggested that, at best,
most human service agencies providing services to children and families fall between the cultural incapacity and
cultural blindness on the continuum.
Importance of Cultural Competence
The notion of cultural competence is controversial because they insist that awareness of issues of
cultural, linguistic and class diversity, equity, social justice, privilege and power relations in our society. This
movement highlight the fact the culture children bring to their schools is a resource for them as individuals, their
families, their teachers and the entire society. Thus students’ funds of cultural and linguistic knowledge are to be
valued and affirmed in contrast to the experience of previous generations as well as current generations whose
identities and cultures are frequently suppressed in the schools.
Cultural competence is an important prerequisite for effective teaching of the country which has great diversity,
historical experiences of oppression that many culturally distinct groups continue to endure and experiences
educational failure and outcomes of minority students. Researches have proved that the extent to which
educators, students and the total educational environment reflect cultural competence significantly affects the
nature and type of schooling, conditions for learning, as well as learning outcomes. It provides a basis for the
school to include cultural competency on the list of desirable outcomes for education.
The purpose of education is to pass on this shared knowledge, perceptions of the world, and cultural cannons,
which are information necessary to function in the dominant culture (Hirsch, 1987). Consequently, the content,
practices and policies of an education system reflect the values of culture in which it exists (Sengupta, Hopson
& Thompson- Robinson 2004).
Cultural Competence and Teachers
Teachers in culturally diverse classrooms face increasing challenges in providing an appropriate
classroom environment and high standards of instruction that foster the academic achievement of all students. In
order for teachers to be effective with diverse students, it is crucial that the first recognize and understand their
own worldviews; only then will they be able to understand the worldviews of their students (M. J. Bennett,
1993).Teachers may feel daunted by the expectation that they learn about students’ cultures, however cultural
understanding can go a long way to make teaching easier (Sheets, 1999).
Research findings have indicated that overall teachers feel somewhat competent in many component of cultural
competence including knowledge about cultural diversity and research reflecting the instructional needs of
diverse students groups and the use of effective strategies to teach minority students (Holcomb-McCoy, 2005).
“Teachers will be in a much better position to get children to participate in classroom talk if they understand
how talks take place in children’s homes….. If children have not been expected to use language in “schools”
ways, they will need time and experience in order to learn them (Trumbull 2005).
Researches has also found that teachers with higher levels of multicultural education have demonstrated higher
levels of respect for cultural diversity, of perceived cultural competence, of preparedness about working with
culturally diverse students and have greater levels of engagement combating prejudice at school than teachers
with less multicultural education ( Gorham, 2001; Holcomb- McCoy, 2005). The aspects of culture tend to
remain invisible, yet they are arguably the most important cultural factors to be considered if one seeks to be a
culturally competent teacher (Trumbull, Greenfield, & Quiroz 2004).
Part of cultural competence is having the skills and knowledge to engage parents, families and community
members in the schooling process- something that requires understanding their orientation to schooling, their
notions about the roles they may appropriately take, and their preferred ways of communicating (Boethel 2003).
Culturally competent teachers are able to engage in self-reflection, and thus step outside the worldview, to
discuss how their experiences and cultural backgrounds effect what they perceive and interpret about the race,
culture and ethnicity of students in their classrooms. They will able to manage the dynamics of difference within
the classroom. Effective culturally competent teachers are at the forefront of understanding the dynamics of the
differences between their students and their personal lives.
Conclusion
Diversity is positively changing the nature of our nation’s classrooms. Due to social mobility, schools are being
populated with more students from diverse cultures and teachers are expected to be knowledgeable and
competent in teaching strategies to meet a variety of learning styles. Reforms addressing the needs of children
and youth emotional disturbance have recognized the importance of cultural issues. Developing cultural
competence means improving cross cultural capabilities by adapting services to the cultural context of families
and children. It is the need of hour to view students as individuals first and then members of culturally distinct
groups whose backgrounds can be used as resources than liabilities in the classroom. It will permit an educator
to consider the complexity of students learners and positions them to better meet their students’ educational
needs.
“Understanding the cultures of the youth we serve requires more than words and good intentions. The journey
toward cultural competence requires the willingness to experience, learn from those experiences, and act.”
J. H. Hanley

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