Cultural Diversity in Schools: Empowering Students as Co-Creators of Inclusive School Culture

“You know” said the principal of the small primary school in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, as we chatted on Zoom, “Our school’s cultural demographic is changing rapidly. I’ve got parents telling me that our school needs to be more responsive to the local cultural diversity that they are part of.”

In an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, embracing cultural and linguistic diversity is vital. Schools play a crucial role in nurturing inclusive classrooms that foster cultural awareness. Let’s explore the advantages of cultural diversity in classrooms, the significance of co-creating inclusive school cultures, and the transformative impact of cultural inclusivity on K-12 education.

But first, let’s take a closer look at the historical and social factors that have contributed to Australia’s multicultural transformation.

Australia is culturally and linguistically diverse

From its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origins, Australia has always been a country of migration. Waves of migration over the last 150 years have arrived in Australia for different reasons, creating a changing cultural landscape over time.

Migration, post the Covid standstill, is back on the rise in Australia and cultural demographics across many places are changing. Schools are eager to ensure their school culture is reflective of their diverse student and community populations, and are looking for innovative and responsive ways to promote cultural inclusion.

New York City schools are now benefitting from the recent inclusion of Diwali as a public school holiday alongside Eid al-Adha and other non-European originated festivals, as part of the importance of wider acknowledgement of the diversity of ‘New Yorkers’. Here in Australia, the latest census showed for the first time that less than 50% of Australia’s population identified as Christian. With Diwali, Eid al-Adah, Wesak (Buddha’s birthday) and a variety of First Nations festivals widely celebrated across Australia each year, schools have a great opportunity to acknowledge a wide range of festivals and celebrations across their calendar year.

Schools already are responding to their diverse communities in a variety of ways; school newsletters are being translated into multiple languages and onsite translators are provided for parents and caregivers. A variety of celebrations and festivals are acknowledged and celebrated throughout the year. School libraries are resourced with books about a myriad of different cultures, written by a wider diversity of authors. All of these efforts culminate to urge schools to engage in more deeply impacting work such as redesigning of curriculum.

 

Australia is clearly home to many cultures and languages:

• Almost half of Australians have a parent born overseas (48.2%)
• Over a quarter were born overseas (27.6%)
• 22% of Australians use a language other than English at home
• The most common languages other than English used in homes are Mandarin and Arabic, with Punjabi (common in India and Pakistan) has increased by 80% since 2016.

Source: 2021 National Census Results

Australian suburbs can be culturally diverse or cultural enclaves. Consider what it might mean for schools in communities with strong cultural representation; such as the Indian community in Girraween, NSW, the Chinese community in Box Hill, VIC, the Greek community of Reservoir, VIC or the New Zealand community of Wattleup, WA, and the opportunities this provides local community with global perspectives. Explore the interactive map of the top countries by birth and top languages by birth from SBS.

Schools are undoubtedly uniquely placed to lead this work and build school culture that reflects and respects cultural diversity in a variety of ways, developing culturally and globally conscious young people.

Strengths of cultural diversity

Responding to local cultural diversity is one part of building inclusive classrooms. It is clear cultural diversity brings many strengths and opportunities to classrooms that can be leveraged to create dynamic and exciting learning environments. These include:

Strengths:

• Recognizing Different Ideas
• Bringing Cultural Richness to the Classroom
• Increasing Cultural Interaction
• Having Fun
• Prejudice Reduction
• Knowledge Construction
• Supporting Creativity
• Supporting Empathy Development
• Gaining New Experiences

Opportunities:

• Developing Management Skills
• Developing Empathy
• Showing Respect
• Learning Cultural Components
• Unity in Diversity
• Providing New Experiences
• Being Open-Minded
• Gaining New Experiences
• Gaining New Perspectives
• Understanding “Others”

Source: “Cultural Diversity Through the Lens of Teachers: A SWOT Analysis.” Yahya Han Erbas, 2022.

How can schools respect and honour this?

Cultural diversity and multiculturalism brings many benefits to schools, especially when it goes beyond surface level inclusion, as recently outlined by Stanley’s Wang’s piece, “There are many ways to embrace cultural diversity in schools, but we need to look beyond visible diversity.”

If we are serious about creating environments that are truly safe spaces where everyone belongs, this must be co-created; parents, students, staff and leadership. We need intentional opportunities to come together to discuss and share everyone’s hopes for their school community. Creating these spaces and opportunities to share and be heard is key for everyone to feel ownership over strategies for fostering belonging in schools. With student voice and student agency so important to centralising students in their learning, young people undoubtedly have the potential to future shape better communities, students must be integral to this process.

Students as co-creators of school culture

Involving students in co-designing culturally inclusive and responsive school culture requires commitment to real student voice and clear vision:

• Prioritising Student Voice: This means building student representation models which provide ample time and space for all students to share their thoughts, ideas and strategies, to really hear from their peers.
• Intentional and intersectional inclusion: This means moving beyond box ticking events, for while these events create wonderful opportunities to start conversations, we need to build on these to go deeper to providing safe and inclusive spaces where everyone feels a sense of belonging.
• Listening to community: This means connecting meaningfully with families and community groups that are a core part of students’ identities and making intentional spaces for listening to them. This allows schools to design partnerships that promote holistic education.

Students need to be given the space and time to co-create their school culture, as this is an integral when avoiding reductive or tokenistic solutions. To do this, schools can provide spaces for students to come together and share their experiences, ideas and hopes. Doing so forges inclusive, safe and engaging school environments.

Students deserve to go to a school where they feel a sense of belonging. They deserve to see themselves, their families, and communities represented in books, available in their schools. The students I have had the pleasure of working with have told me how much they want to learn about other countries, cultures and languages. They want to learn about these things not because of the prospect of overseas travel, but rather because they interact, play and learn alongside people from diverse cultural backgrounds regularly. It is also likely that they will work with diverse teams in their future careers, whether they choose to work overseas or not. In our digital age, they will be connected with people from all over the world. Forging strong and positive global connections in multicultural teams requires intercultural competence.

Approaches to implementing this work:

• Ensure diversity of student backgrounds and voices within student councils, or have rotating groups of different students, to allow a wider range of voices to be heard and represented.
• Dedicate home-room discussions to gathering students’ perspectives, invite them to share changes they wish to see and create opportunities for them to give feedback to school initiatives.
• Commit to implementing student suggested initiatives or changes made from student feedback to ensure students see their contributions are valued and feel school commitment to co-creation of school culture.
• Hold regular curriculum reviews, to ensure curriculum and resources are reflective of local cultural diversity, and wider global perspectives, with opportunities for students and parents to provide feedback on cultural perspectives and topics on what they’d like to see taught in schools.
• Design learning experiences through leveraging communities’ first hand experiences. Inviting parents and community members (leverage video conferencing for increased access) to share lived experiences, as well as students, particularly from higher year levels or international students, to partake in experience sharing for powerful intercultural experiences.
• Provide opportunities for students to creatively design solutions for culturally inclusive school communities, leveraging student voice and agency, such as Meg’s Student Action Workshops for Cultural Diversity. Ensuring student designed solutions are implemented post event.

Examples from Australian Schools

Yeronga State High School, Queensland, is committed to Student Voice and Student Agency through authentic context provision. Their Student Congress is made up of 40 students Grades 7-12, meeting 4 times a year to discuss issues of importance to the student population. The issues they discuss are sourced from student feedback. Additionally, students are peer nominated and voted in to ensure students feel appropriately represented.

“For student councils to be authentic, students need to be elected by other students because students see the kids who are the passionate kids. In social media kids share and see others’ content – this is a whole world teachers don’t know about.”
– Holly Haswell, Learner Agency Coordinator, Yeronga State High School

Mernda Primary School, Victoria, took part in the 2023 Global Citizenship Student Ambassadors. Their Student Ambassadors, upon realising their school population (staff, students and families) identified with over 50 cultural backgrounds, wanted to create a meaningful solution for their school’s cultural diversity to be reflected, shared and learnt about, “aiming to bring more understanding and representation of cultures from our school community”. The students decided to podcast as their solution and learnt how to podcast, bought equipment and launched a podcast series, shared on Firefly, the school’s communication platform, interviewing students from different cultural backgrounds each episode.

 

Co-creation is a powerful tool. Students are ready to share, advise, design and reflect on the environments they want to learn in. Students are undoubtedly able to create and implement solutions, given the space, support and resources to do so. Schools have a wonderful opportunity to work in partnership with students to co-create school cultures that value ‘belonging for all’.