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Name: Zhang Kaiying
Matric No: 211922497
Exam ID: 9711G

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Welcome to my e-portfolio. I am Zhang Kaiying. I am interested in different languages and cultures and I always believe that experiencing diverse cultures can expand one's learning.  Through the learning of this course, I also understand multicultural and multilingual education more comprehensively. The culturally responsive teaching approach inspired me with more teaching strategies and methods.

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1. Multicultural Education: Characteristics and Goals

2. Culture in Society and in Education

3. Understanding Diversity

4. Multicultural Schools and Classrooms

5. Schools and Multicultural Education

6. Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform

7. The Multilingual Challenge

8. Building and Managing Positive Teacher-Student Relationships

9. Cultural issues in education, in society and in persons

10. Multicultural teaching and learning

11. Multilingual Classroom from Complexity to Pedagogy

12. Building a community of learners in diverse classrooms

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Date: 12 November 2021
Topic: Multicultural Education: Characteristics and Goals
Brief reason for this entry: To understand some concepts about multicultural education.
Detail explanation of new learning experience: This week, I learned some concepts and controversial issues about multicultural education. Multicultural and multilingual education are new concepts that have not been commonly recognized all over the world. The main goals of multicultural education are to realize equality and reduce misunderstandings between different cultures in the field of education.

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Date: 18 November 2021
Topic: Culture in Society and in Education
Brief reason for this entry: To figure out the relationships among culture, education, and society.
Detail explanation of new learning experience: In this video, the definitions of education, sociology, educational sociology, society, culture, and modernity were vividly described. What I learned from this video was the connections between culture, society, and education. As John Dewey stressed, learning occurs in experiences. Learning experiences influence the human body, mind, and spirit. Thus, education affects the development of culture in society. In education, diverse cultures should be respected and developed. Only in this way, can education be improved and benefit the culture and society.

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Date: 25 November 2021
Topic: Understanding Diversity
Brief reason for this entry: To explore the teaching approach to enhance multicultural education.
Detail explanation of new learning experience: The cultural responsiveness refreshed my learning this week. To be able to better understand diversity, teachers need to embrace different cultures and students from diverse backgrounds. Students should be encouraged to communicate with each other and teachers in friendly and polite manners. The teachers can provide students with opportunities to share their explorations of different cultures in class.

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Date: 02 December 2021
Topic: Multicultural Schools and Classrooms
Brief reason for this entry: It is important to understand how to set up multicultural classrooms.
Detail explanation of new learning experience: This is a real-life multicultural classroom set up in a kindergarten. Multicultural classrooms are classrooms that embrace diversity and incorporate ideas, beliefs, or people from different countries and cultural backgrounds. Several cultural perspectives are put together to enable students to get a truly international education.

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Date: 10 December 2021
Topic: Schools and Multicultural Education
Brief reason for this entry: To identify some cultural problems in schools.
Detail explanation of new learning experience:
Stereotyping students is a prevalent phenomenon in schools nowadays. Usually, teachers categorize students according to their different cultural backgrounds, learning styles, and other features. The category of students based on their learning styles can help teachers adapt the teaching methods based on student needs. Besides, teachers can provide appropriate feedback and constructive learning suggestions for students after identifying different learning styles.

However, learning styles can change over time. Students can adapt their own learning styles based on their academic performance and results as well as feedback from their teachers and even classmates or friends, which makes it challenging for teachers to accurately classify students according to learning styles. Consequently, teachers are more likely to stereotype students by classifying them by learning styles. If teachers hold stereotypical beliefs about students and their learning styles, it will be dangerous for both teachers and students. Stereotypes are overgeneralized beliefs, often unconscious, that people have about others. The problem with stereotypes is that they cause bias, which is an action based on the belief that a stereotype is true. Bias impacts our choices and behaviors without conscious knowledge. Therefore, teachers with stereotypical perceptions of students will easily make incorrect decisions and impact students’ academic success. Meanwhile, students can become less motivated to study hard because of their teachers’ bias in certain ways.

In order to reduce the risks of stereotyping students, teachers are supposed to cautiously observe students’ performance in class, analyze students’ academic progress based on the assessment date, and reflect on their own teaching methods.

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Date: 16 December 2021
Topic: Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform
Brief reason for this entry: To study approaches to develop a multicultural curriculum.
Detail explanation of new learning experience: I have to admit that I didn't well in assignment 1. After that, I actually studied more materials and learned more about education in China. My exploration of multicultural education in China focused on domestic issues, but not the development of multicultural education influenced by globalization and internationalization.
In terms of the development of multicultural education in China, culturally responsive teaching pedagogy was explored and implemented based on some theories developed by some western researchers. The teaching experts and policymakers in China have endeavored to contribute to an appropriate curriculum that enhances more cooperative and collaborative learning.
As far as I observed, there are more teaching training programs established in Chinese schools to improve multicultural education. In other words, Chinese schools have started embracing diverse cultures and people from different cultural backgrounds.

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Date: 24 December 2021
Topic: The Multilingual Challenge
Brief reason for this entry: To seek solutions to the multilingual challenge
Detail explanation of new learning experience: Possible challenges: (1) Side effects; (2) Goal formulation; (3) Learning the language of schooling; (4) English and other semiotic resources; (5) Affective functions; (6) Effort; and (7) Confusion.
Possible solutions: (1)It's necessary for teachers who teach at the lower primary level to speak the local language. (2) It's helpful to have a local language teacher or teaching assistant. (3)A communication mechanism should be established for the purpose of consultations. (4)The teachers should be encouraged to learn the local language.

References: Anouk Ticheloven, Elma Blom, Paul Leseman & Sarah McMonagle (2021) Translanguaging challenges in multilingual classrooms: scholar, teacher and student perspectives, International Journal of Multilingualism, 18:3, 491-514, DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2019.1686002
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED586989.pdf

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Date: 02 January 2021
Topic: Building and Managing Positive Teacher-Student Relationships
Brief reason for this entry: To learn strategies to build and manage positive teacher-student relationships
Detail explanation of new learning experience:
1. Celebrating students' birthdays and their own festivals in their culture can help to create a harmonious atmosphere.
2. Planing class short trips can enrich students' learning experiences and enhance relationships.
3. Giving students opportunities to discuss what they want to learn and planning lessons based on their interests will motivate students to learn.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Chinese Classroom

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Date: 12 January 2022
Topic: Cultural issues in education, in society and in persons
Brief reason for this entry: To study cultural diversity in China
Detail explanation of new learning experience: A classroom with children who view themselves as individuals or as an individual that serves a group will determine how the classroom needs to function in order to achieve student success.
Cultural issues cover a broad range of concerns including race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and disability.

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Date: 20 January 2022
Topic: Multicultural teaching and learning
Brief reason for this entry: To understand multicultural teaching and learning
Detail explanation of new learning experience:  Multicultural education must be long term and comprehensive with  appropriate information, training, and experiences provided throughout the professional education curriculum. Solutions to these problems seem to lie in infusing the concepts related to multicultural education into all required courses, giving students the opportunity to learn about both research results, whether in mathematics, language arts education, or social foundations, of education and the opportunity to experience working with a diversity of children in a guided, reflective manner in practica, internships, and laboratory situations. Within survey courses such as media for children, cultural awareness and issues of authentic evaluation should be broached more directly. It is in methods courses, however, that students can explore diverse ways of teaching such as providing more hands-on learning experiences, and integrating the arts into the curriculum as a natural forum for dealing with materials from diverse cultures, diverse learning styles, and non-verbal communication. Methods courses would also be an appropriate place to provide more opportunities for interaction with teachers from minority backgrounds, an opportunity to help students overcome the lack of confidence that they feel about teaching about cultures other than their own. Besides infusing multicultural issues which change knowledge and attitudes into all appropriate courses within the curriculum, a series of seminars with professionals, parents, and other community members representing the perspectives of various cultures should be instituted. This kind of interaction would allow students to focus on and discuss in a forthright manner issues relating to expectations, communications, and fears of offending specific community groups. The results of this study indicate that education students are aware of multicultural issues in education and that education students want to learn how to be effective teachers for all of their students. Although it is apparent that their current teacher training program is not providing adequate preparation for teachers to function effectively in an increasingly diverse society, it is encouraging to acknowledge that student interest and perceived need for training can be a good starting point for important changes. When teacher training programs address both theory and practice in multicultural education throughout the curriculum in a comprehensive, long-  term manner, students can acquire the knowledge and confidence necessary to deal with multicultural issues in education with intelligence, professionalism, and understanding.
Reference: Barry, N. H., & Lechner, J. V. (1995). Preservice teachers' attitudes about and awareness of multicultural teaching and learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11(2), 149–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(94)00018-2

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Date: 28 January 2022
Topic: Multilingual Classroom from Complexity to Pedagogy
Brief reason for this entry: To learn how to enact teaching pedagogy in multilingual classrooms.
Detail explanation of new learning experience: In the 21st century, heteroglossic bilingual conceptualizations are needed in which the complex discursive practices of multilingual students, their translanguagings, are used in sense-making and in tending to the singularities in the pluralities that make up multilingual classrooms today.
Studies showed that students' plurilingual abilities can built through seven principles that support dynamic plurilingual practices in instruction—heterogeneity, collaboration, learner-centeredness, language and content integration, language use from students up, experiential learning, and local autonomy and responsibility.
References: GARCÍA, O., SYLVAN, C. E., & WITT, D. (2011). Pedagogies and Practices in Multilingual Classrooms: Singularities in Pluralities. The Modern Language Journal, 95(3), 385–400. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41262374

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Date: 12 February 2022
Topic: Building a community of learners in diverse classrooms
Brief reason for this entry: To learn some skills to build a community of learners in diverse classrooms
Detail explanation of new learning experience: The University of Rhode Island defines diversity in the classroom as “understanding each student brings unique experiences, strengths, and ideas to our classroom … Diversity is the exploration and incorporation of these differences to enrich learning in our classroom.”

Use language that promotes positivity and doesn’t reinforce existing stereotypes. For example, the phrase “boys will be boys” shouldn’t be used to justify sexism or aggression.

Respond immediately and effectively to inappropriate comments or actions. Take infractions seriously and keep families informed.

Model inclusion and acceptance. Encourage students to include all of their peers if you see division forming along racial or economic lines.

Remove existing markers of inequality in your school. For example, make sure students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch programs aren’t singled out and made to feel different.