Managing diversity: academic’s perspective on culture and teaching

As UK Higher Education institutions continue to accept students from ethnically diverse backgrounds, there is now an onus and an expectation for academics to provide learning environments and experiences that are inclusive, validating and affirming. The aim of this paper is to explore, through the lens of the academic tutor, the pedagogical methods employed towards the implementation of ‘cultural branching’, which we define as helping ethnically diverse students to build bridges between their pre-existing knowledge and what they are expected to learn. To investigate this in more detail, the researchers interviewed 22 academic tutors across three UK Higher Education Institutions in the North of England. The findings suggest that current curriculum structures and pedagogical approaches favour the dominant non-ethnically diverse learner. Our research proposes that additional emphasis needs to be placed on developing a practical and functional approach which embeds cultural branching via technological platforms.