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Australian Journal of Adult Learning
Volume 53, Number 2, July 2013
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a
reflection on teaching and learning strategies
Kathryn Trees
Murdoch University
This paper discusses facilitating student collegiality within
diverse student groups. It argues that diverse student groups of
international, domestic, mature age and Gen Y students often have
similar difculties and strengths although they may occur for quite
different reasons and understanding this is useful when deciding on
teaching and learning strategies. It describes several teaching and
learning strategies and explains the outcomes of using these with
diverse student cohorts.
Keywords: Diversity, effective communication, critical reection,
teaching strategies
Introduction
Teaching classes with diverse student populations is increasingly the
norm in Australian higher education, including universities. This
234 Kathryn Trees
change reects “the expanding market in cross-border study” (Sawir,
2005, 567), resulting in more international students, from diverse
backgrounds studying in Australia, a focus in Australia on work
oriented training and increasing numbers of students with inadequate
reading literacy skills. There are “an increasing proportion of Gen
Y students worldwide” who are a “diverse group” (Skene, et. al.,
2007: 1). They are the Digital or Net Generation born in or after 1982
(Gardner & Eng, 2005, 405). They have their own education histories,
including learning using interactive computer technology and
through a system of “‘bricolage’” whereby their learning preferences
are “inuenced by their peers and their own capacity to search out
information and piece it together (Moore, Moore & Fowler in Skene,
2007, 3)”. For academics, such as me, effectively teaching diverse
student groups requires being critically reective, adaptable, able to
respond to varying needs and implement strategies for facilitating
students learning from each other.
A reective teacher engages in “thoughtful observation and analysis of
their actions before, during and after” teaching (Snowman et. al. 15)
by assessing the “ethical implications and consequences” of teaching
practices on students and self-reection involving “deep examination
of personal values and beliefs embodied in the assumptions teachers
make and the expectations they have for students” (Larrivee, 294).
This necessitates the teacher questioning them self about what, how
and why they are teaching. What do I believe needs to be achieved in
the tutorial to provide students with effective learning experiences?
How do I ensure as much as possible that these learning experiences
have relevance for students in their everyday lives into their futures?
How do I facilitate students’ development as ethical global citizens?
I need to “examine judgments, interpretations, assumptions, and
expectations” (Larrivee, 2000, 294) of students especially those based
on stereotypes – ‘international students are passive rote learners,
work and training oriented students are opportunistic learners’ –
that close off rather than open up the possibilities for conversations
and shared learning and adapt content and teaching strategies
appropriately.
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 235
I and other academics often voice our struggle to provide students
with the best possible learning experiences for a variety of reasons
including moves to standardised curriculum, “education [suited]
to job-training sites” (Giroux, 2012, 186), ever changing student
cohorts, pressure to research and teach; reasons not necessarily
specic to this socio-political period. Importantly, most of us are time
poor. At the same time, more students – those for whom English
is a second language, those from low socio-economic backgrounds,
mature age students either returning to education after time in
the work force or raising families, and increasingly school leavers
with higher visual literacy but lower reading literacy – require
individual or group remedial assistance and thus more time. Students
who regard themselves as clients receiving a service increasingly
expect academics to respond to their inquiries immediately and
accommodate their schedule, particularly if they are also working and
are time poor.
Time constraints are often at odds with developing collegiality,
knowing how to listen and speak with fellow students, particularly
those who are ‘other’. They are at odds with enabling students to be
“transformative intellectuals”, (Adler, 2011, 610) for whom education
is about intellectual and personal growth and wider social change
including supporting that in their peers. There is a useful, growing
dialogue amongst academics about effective strategies, including time
management and “culturally relevant pedagogy” (Adler, 2011, 609),
and resources for teaching diverse groups of students.
This paper is a discussion of my critical reection on teaching Gender,
Globalisation and Cultural Politics (GGCP), to undergraduate and
postgraduate, international and domestic students over three years
(2010 – 2012), within the context of the constraints outlined above. I
began teaching the unit part way through a semester, which is often
difcult for students and teacher. I came into the unit with my own
expectations of how it would operate, without time to do enough of
the usual preliminary work to build relationships. For me, there was a
lack of engagement between international, mature age and domestic
students. This prompted me to reect on a tutorial for a unit, ve
years earlier in which, Singaporean students reluctant to speak to the
236 Kathryn Trees
whole class wanted to be in groups with fellow Singaporean students,
found reading comprehension difcult and lacked condence to try
out their ideas with others. The tutorial group was not cohesive;
a signicant number of domestic students were not patient with
international students and avoided having them in their group. The
students did not benet from the cultural diversity and the range of
knowledge this offered; they did not learn how to listen and speak
cross-culturally; and did not develop a sense of themselves as part of
global citizenry. The learning environment and teaching strategies
were ineffective and I did not want that dynamic in GGCP. I was
concerned to promote positive group dynamics and condence so that
students experienced the classroom as a safe learning space where
ethnicity, cultural and socio-economic differences, future aspirations
including career, enrich rather than inhibit learning.
Here, I discuss teaching strategies, such as small group learning
opportunities and impromptu oral presentations I used in 2011 and
2012, to enhance the students’ recognition of their knowledge and
experiences and to help them develop the condence and ability
to interact and thus build collegiality. I also wanted to facilitate all
students in developing an understanding of themselves as global
citizens (a central unit aim). This paper is not a research project and
therefore I did not collect data to monitor the outcomes of activities.
However, students’ verbal feedback and university teaching surveys
have guided my reections about, and changes to teaching and
learning strategies and conrm my observations, assumptions and
comments about their effectiveness.
The learning environment
Contemporary socio-cultural pedagogic theory argues, “teaching and
learning are shaped by the social and cultural context of the learning
environment and the complex and dynamic human activity systems
within them at a particular point in time.” (United Kingdom Council
for International Student Affairs, 2012, 1) To optimise learning,
students need to communicate effectively, which is facilitated when
they are comfortable to speak and try out their ideas, feel accepted as
one of the group, are not ‘othered’. I, like most academics understand
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 237
this in relation to teaching domestic students with their diverse
“socio-cultural contexts” and their “previous learning environment”.
As an Anglo-Celtic, female, Australian academic who has much in
common with these students, I teach effectively for most of them.
However, I – as with teachers Susan Adler interviewed for her
research on teaching epistemology and diversity – rarely know
much beyond “tourist information” (Adler, 2011, 609) about the
international students’ cultures and less about their previous learning
environments. While over time we accrue general knowledge, it is
rarely possible to acquire specic knowledge of the “socio-cultural
context of the learning environment” and the previous learning
on which individual international students “schema” or “meaning
system” is built. Generally, we meet students in the rst week of
semester and work with them for fteen weeks and if lucky work with
them in successive units.
In GGCP, my teaching model and expectations are new for the
majority of international students, who are familiar with the lecture
format but not with listening in English spoken as a rst language or
to ideas framed within a western theoretical context. They are often
not familiar with interactive tutorials in which they are required to
speak about lectures they have heard an hour before and make links
to the week’s reading. However, many international students in GGCP
are familiar with the issues the unit focuses on, so they can assimilate
new information with their current knowledge. Importantly, the
international students can provide valuable cultural knowledge for
other international and domestic students and the teacher if the
learning environment facilitates this. When this occurs, they play
an important role in internationalising the curriculum while gaining
experience speaking in class. In 2010, I had not determined the unit
content or teaching strategies. Further, I was behind all semester,
often reading the unit material at the same time as the students.
This left little time for reection and adapting teaching and learning
strategies sufciently to give students the best possible learning
experience or have students benet from each other’s knowledge. I
was able to remedy this the following year; a reminder that learning is
incremental for everyone.
238 Kathryn Trees
In her paper, “Teaching International Students: Strategies to enhance
learning”, Sophie Arkoudis challenges readers to accept that at least
to some extent academics’ views of teaching international students
are based on preconceived ideas that international students are
“reluct[ant] to talk in class, [have] a preference for rote learning
and an apparent lack of critical thinking skills” (Arkoudis, 2011, 5).
Arkoudis’s observation was useful to me as a reminder to reect
critically on what is happening for students rather than making
assumptions based on stereotypical ideas. It assisted me to rethink
the experience with the Singaporean students some years earlier,
to question what was missing from the teaching and learning
environment in 2010 and remedy this. It was also necessary to
extend my reection to include other Asian students, African and
European students to whom the same stereotypical ideas are applied.
Importantly, the same principles apply to the domestic students.
Arkoudis identies four challenges specic to international students,
for moving beyond stereotypical thinking. These are: “learning and
living in a different culture; learning in a foreign university context;
learning with developing English language prociency; and learning
the academic disciplinary discourse” (Arkoudis, 2011, 5). While these
challenges are self-evident, it was useful to read and reect on them
in relation to international and domestic students who experience the
same challenges. Again, this is not new, rather a reminder to think
about strategies that Arkoudis identied: “internationalising the
curriculum; making lectures accessible; encouraging participation
in small group work; … supporting students in developing critical
thinking skills; and, explaining assessment expectations” (Arkoudis,
2011, 6) and plan learning tasks accordingly.
The Gender, Globalisation and Cultural Politics unit
The GGCP unit provides students with a global perspective, focusing
specically on the gendered dimensions of economic and cultural
politics. It discusses the growth of international capitalism and,
especially since the early 1980s, its expansion beyond national
boundaries, which has created a greater degree of integration and
interdependency between nations and national economies. Students
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 239
interrogate the positive and negative impacts of global economics
on cultures, poverty, health and the environment. It analyses issues
such as sex trafcking, HIV/AIDS, transnational corporations and
corporate social responsibility. The readings are drawn from a wide
range of sources, including the United Nations website, relevant
government and NGO websites and journals; problematically, only
one is from a local community group. True diversication of sources
for readings, at the required academic standard, is a challenge for the
future.
From 2011, the unit sought to have all students understand
themselves as international and global citizens. To achieve this,
students learn to situate the economic, political, social systems of
their home country, including Australia, within global economics,
politics, and cultures. This is an important step in students
understanding that all countries are interconnected, whether we
recognise this in our daily lives or not. It helps clarify the need for
thinking ethically about global as well as local issues. At the end of
the unit, a few Australian students, who had not travelled overseas,
expressed their initial difculty with understanding Australia as just
one example of a socio/economic/ political model because for them
Australia was the norm. The students also analyse what responsible
citizenship means, requiring an understanding of being a global
citizen and the necessity to engage with issues of equity and social
justice, sustainability and the reduction of prejudice, stereotyping
and discrimination (ALTC National Teaching Fellowship, 2012). This
analysis can be confronting, in particular for the domestic students,
as they engage with their own social, including gender and non-
Indigenous economic and political privilege.
In the rst two years, the unit had undergraduate and postgraduate
level students. The international students were ethnically, culturally
and linguistically different to each other, coming from places
as diverse as Ethiopia, Bhutan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Japan, Canada and Seychelles. The postgraduate students work for
government agencies, NGOs, university and various businesses.
Importantly the international students, in particular, had chosen to
study in Australia rather than elsewhere. They all expressed global
240 Kathryn Trees
worldviews, which were markedly different to the domestic students.
All the international students, to varying degrees, found listening,
speaking, reading and writing English difcult. The following year,
the student cohort was less diverse with a mix of students from
Europe, Asia and Australia, most were Gen Y students, and a smaller
number of mature age domestic students.
Student dynamics and introduction to theoretical concepts through
engagement with identity
My rst concern in the tutorial was to establish effective group
dynamics and make apparent the relationship between personal and
theoretical discourses. I thus began the rst tutorial in 2011 (and
again in 2012), with an exercise in which students formed a group or
groups based on their identities and later explained their grouping
to the class. This ensured all students spoke with others immediately
in conversations that explicated the nexus between theory and the
everyday. All students thus spoke and listened to each other and
exchanged personal information to make decisions about identity.
As expected students were more or less condent about introducing
themselves, so that more condent students often initiated exchanges.
Questions students asked me about how to do the activity and the
students’ explanations of their decision making process raised a series
of issues to work into the unit content and teaching strategies.
Students had conversations, formed and reformed groups. One
student asked twice whether he should look at the colour of other
people’s skin. A domestic student asked whether the Australian
students should identify their cultural heritages even if their
grandparents were Australian. Once they had formed their groups,
they negotiated how to explain their grouping. At the end of the
sorting process, there were several groups with interesting accounts
of why they were together. One student asked if it was all right not to
join a group.
The explanations of groupings raised questions and identied
concepts central to the unit. A man and woman paired up based on
having a similar colour, and being from the same broad geographic
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 241
region. One man and woman paired up because they are both
indigenous, rather than pairing with others from the same country.
The indigenous students also identied themselves as being in a lower
socio-economic group to the other students from both countries.
The domestic students sorted themselves into groups depending on
their families’ countries of origin, so that three students identied
themselves as Mediterranean and the remainder as either Anglo
or Celtic Australians. Two men grouped together because of the
geographic proximity of their countries but were uneasy about this
because one was indigenous and the other was not. For many of the
international students politics was a key identity factor while for
the domestic students it was not. Interestingly, whether they were
international, domestic, mature age or Gen Y students was not an
issue. The activity and the discussion facilitated students speaking
and listening to each other, exchanging personal information and
thereby starting to form meaningful relationships. The process
produced what Adulis et. al. termed a “climate of interaction” (The
Higher Education Academy) that opened up possibilities for learning
through the exchange of experiences, because students began
speaking meaningfully to each other.
Students critically analysed their groupings and explanations for their
choice of grouping, which included discussions of racial difference.
This prompted one student to say she had read about scientists
disputing the idea of ‘different races’, a way the class were describing
themselves. It highlighted important concerns about everyday use
of concepts and terminology including whether people use them
correctly, what information they convey, the affects of using concepts
and language, such as ‘race’ in outdated and inaccurate ways. The
exercise also highlighted the heterogeneity of identity within the
international and domestic groups, which the students were able to
link to notions of international and global identities.
For the Anglo/ Celtic Australian students hearing about Chinese
people in Asian countries other than China, including their higher
socio-economic status raised issues about their own limited
knowledge of non-British colonialism and imperialism. They
242 Kathryn Trees
acknowledged that they were unaware of the social and economic
effects of intra Asian colonialism and migration. One student
explained that she had learnt Japan is culturally and ethnically
Japanese and homogenous though she knows that the Ainu, the
indigenous people of Japan are ‘the original inhabitants’ and occupy
the lowest socio-economic class as in other colonial societies.
Students’ interest in what each other had to say was immediately
apparent.
Doing the exercise encouraged students to raise questions about what
is acceptable and not acceptable to say and do depending on gender,
culture and religion. This prompted a discussion about asking if
you want to know something. We agreed that in the class, as long as
everyone is respectful, we would put ‘political correctness’ aside. This
is in keeping with Kathleen Melymuka’s nding that being caught
up in political correctness and well-intentioned sensitivity “can stie
constructive engagement” and cause abrasive situations. She writes,
“we draw conclusions, but we don’t say anything and we don’t learn
anything. So not only is there no connection, we drive a wedge into
the relationship with suspicion and fear, and it becomes difcult
to work in that relationship” (Melymuka, 2006, 42). Students also
raised concerns about the difculties of talking about unequal power
relations in a tutorial where those power relations already existed
through gender, culture, religion and privilege; for instance between
Indigenous and non Indigenous Asian men, women and men, and
those who could use technology and those with limited skills. While
students began tentatively, the outcome was the creation of a safe
space to speak and listen to others in which they had a responsibility
to actively participate.
Doing the identity exercise – in 2011 and 2012 – was a useful rst
step in having students interact effectively. In later classes (for both
years), when students formed small groups, men initially paired up
and international students formed groups with others with whom
they felt most comfortable. I asked the men to stand, look at the
distribution of men and women, move accordingly, and repeated this
for international and domestic students. It reconnected students to
the earlier discussions of heterogeneity and the opportunities to learn
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 243
through diversity. In 2011, with the more diverse group, my blatant,
“at least one man and one black and white person in every group”
made students laugh but more importantly reconnected them to the
rule about putting aside ‘political correctness’ within the classroom.
The humour was useful. I appreciate that whether speaking in such
a way is appropriate depends on the group and a careful assessment
of everyone’s sensibilities. Hence, the need to reect critically on the
skills and learning outcomes the unit is trying to achieve with each
new group of students and the socio-cultural context of their previous
learning as identied by the Higher Education Academy.
The exercise worked equally well when the student cohort was
less diverse with students still focusing on ethnicity, often through
ancestral history and interestingly music. It also identied similar
teaching and learning content and strategies to those identied with
the more diverse group.
Difficulties understanding and communicating
In 2010 and 2011, I found from conversations with the students
that the majority of international students had difculty engaging
with the reading, lectures and tutorials because, they nd listening,
speaking and writing English difcult. I assume that their initial
reluctance to speak in tutorial was because of their lack of English
prociency and therefore difculty in understanding the lectures.
While, from later conversations with students, I nd this is true,
their reluctance might also be because of cultural and gender rules,
education, life experiences and other issues that we have not been
able to explore. Difculty with understanding lectures because of
language was particularly the case for the rst four weeks which
introduce, dene terms and the theoretical perspectives, and tend to
contain language that is technical, and have less every day examples.
In 2012, I simplied the lectures, gave more everyday examples
from a variety of cultural perspectives and did more close reading of
texts in tutorials. The readings, which supplement and extend the
lectures, add another layer of anxiety for those students who cannot
read English prociently and for those who focus on visual media
rather than written texts. However, I think they are vital. Some
244 Kathryn Trees
international students can also experience lectures and readings as
too western centred, as was the case in the rst weeks dealing with
theoretical perspectives on globalisation and gender. Mid semester
in 2011, students explained that they were thus anxious about having
to articulate ideas and did not know what questions to ask in the
tutorials. This is consistent with Mills (1997) and others who found
that international students lacked the prociency in comprehending
and speaking English to keep pace with domestic students. I asked
three condent students how they experienced the tutorials. They
explained that they felt an added burden to speak up not only because
of the international students but also for the domestic students, who
for whatever reason may not have much to contribute some weeks.
Several domestic students – each year – certainly had difculties
communicating and comprehending the readings and lectures,
likewise the four rst theoretical lectures. However, in 2011 and 2012
groups interacted well from the beginning of semester so talked to
others openly about their difculties. Further, by doing the reading
and asking questions most domestic students could work through
their difculties. They have the advantage of English being their rst
language and familiarity with their learning environment. These
issues were exacerbated for all students at the beginning of each year
because students often found it difcult to understand what others
were saying and became embarrassed to keep asking them to repeat.
Two domestic students drew my attention to this problem when they
were working in small groups. A student beckoned me to join their
discussion so I could see the difculties they had communicating
and their reluctance to keep asking others to repeat themselves. I
was able to raise the issue with the class, acknowledge my difculty
understanding some people. I owned that I found it difcult to ask
people to repeat themselves too often and that it can take me some
time to concentrate on listening rather than what I might say next.
Knowing that the tutor faces similar problems can, I think, be useful
to students.
Listening is not always simple. An inability to know how to listen
appropriately often exacerbates difculty with communication. “To
listen well, students must understand the difference between hearing
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 245
and listening while recognizing and controlling the many listening
barriers within the classroom” (Bond, 2012, 61). In her work on
listening and emotional support, Jones explains that:
Listening is a multidimensional construct that consists of complex
(a) cognitive processes, such as attending to, understanding,
receiving, and interpreting messages; (b) affective processes, such
as being motivated and stimulated to attend to another person’s
messages; and (c) behavioral processes, such as responding
with verbal and nonverbal feedback (e.g., backchanneling,
paraphrasing) (Jones, 2011, 86).
In addition, active listening consists of verbal strategies (asking
clarifying questions), whereas passive listening is nonverbal in nature
(providing back channelling cues) (Jones, 2011, 86). I assume most
people usually take listening and hearing for granted, and are often
passive listeners; however, effective cross-cultural communication
is a complex process that requires active participation. Most
rarely, practice or teach this skill, which Beall et al. argue, “fosters
motivation and improvement in both learning and listening among
the students and the instructor” (Beall et al., 2008, 63). When
students learn to actively listen, they engage with the content and
each other in ways that dispel notions of students – particularly some
international students – as rote learners unable to think and speak
their own ideas. Through this peer interacting and learning – hearing
rst hand about the effects of HIV, or knowing what mining in WA is
like – the students learn from each other.
In 2011, a further barrier to understanding and communication for
several domestic students was feeling intimidated by the international
students’ rst hand knowledge of unit content such as poverty, HIV/
AIDS, civil war, the negative effects of transnational corporations.
These domestic students felt reluctant to express their ideas or ask
questions because their knowledge was from texts rather than rst
hand. It was the case, that the international students’ class status – in
most of their cases – achieved through access to education has not
distanced them from families, including their own, living in chronic
poverty, with HIV/AIDS, and socio/economic insecurity without
government welfare systems to rely on. This rst hand knowledge of
246 Kathryn Trees
issues the GGCP unit focuses on brings a wealth of knowledge to the
class and sharing in this is a benet and privilege for the domestic
students, which they appreciate once they overcome their own
insecurities in a respectful environment.
Working in small groups
In both 2011 and 2012, working in small groups, a large part of the
two-hour weekly tutorial was a key factor to the success of the unit,
reecting my belief that when students develop social interaction
and communication skills they learn more effectively. According to
Illingworth and Hartley work in groups is used “to manage a large
cohort; to develop appropriate skills in collaboration; to simulate
a real work environment; etc. and is considered by some to “lead
to greater efciency and effectiveness” (West, 1994 in Illingworth
and Hartley, 2007, 1). Others argue, “teams are inherently inferior
to individuals, in terms of efciency” (Robbins and Finley, 2000 in
Illingworth and Hartley, 2007, 1). For me, depending on the student
cohort and the purpose, one of the key considerations is whether
group work facilitates students’ collegiality and learning.
Volet and Manseld argue, in their writing about group work, that
understanding the value of “social forms of learning” (Volet and
Manseld, 2006, 335) can be “challenging for lecturers and students”
most particularly when group assignments “are emotionally and
socially demanding with unclear benets for student learning” (Volet
& Manseld, 2006, 341). Further, as Barron (2006) argues, domestic
students can resent small group work if they feel international
students lack of English skills will jeopardise their own grades; this
is particularly true for students who regard education as a product.
To alleviate students’ defensiveness about their grades or feelings of
disadvantaging others, there was no grade directly attached to group
work (in all three years). Rather, students used part of the group time
to discuss texts, concepts and lectures and connect these to practical
examples, before doing individually assessed writing exercises. This
will not always be ideal but as my central concern was group cohesion
and open communication it worked well.
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 247
In 2011 and 2012, as students discussed the weekly topic, I moved
between groups ensuring that all students participated by asking
questions of quieter students. This monitoring of the groups and
prompting acted as a model and the outgoing students actively
prompted others. This is consistent with Volet and Manseld’s
nding that “explicitly valuing, and monitoring of group processes” …
“encourage[s] positive outcomes for individuals and the group” (Volet
and Manseld, 2006, 355). Once students were working to include
everyone in the discussions, they became more patient about listening
to others; thus encouraging the less condent ones to speak. They
were in Volet and Manseld’s terms “regulating peers’ behaviours
and motivations to reect concern for peers’ benets (Volet and
Manseld, 2006, 355). As each group, and all students, had to report
to the class, the condence to have something to say was important.
Encouraging students to speak to the whole class
Students’ having the condence to speak to the class was a key
concern. A few weeks into semester in 2011 and 2012, I announced a
series of guest speakers in tutorial, to elaborate in some way on the
week’s topic. Students initially thought this was to be an external
speaker. Then because I had just heard one of the Asian students,
in the small group discussions, explaining community consultation
processes in the villages where he worked, I asked him to tell the class
about this. My strategy was to choose students who had spoken on a
topic in the small groups because they had rehearsed it informally.
Students remained in their groups. The informality of the seating was
less threatening than standing in front of a class. After a few minutes,
I asked a question and others followed. We did this every week with
more than one student speaking some weeks. This form of impromptu
oral presentations was useful because students did not feel burdened
to prepare work separate to the week’s readings. It had the added
benet of keeping students on task, rather than them just chatting,
when in small groups.
In 2011, one of the domestic Gen Y students asked for notice the week
before she spoke, as she was not condent of having enough to say.
Several domestic Gen Y students required more questions to prompt
248 Kathryn Trees
them. Their dilemma arose because they could not speak with rst
hand knowledge of issues relying instead on the readings and general
media information. They were reticent feeling that they had to gauge
the validity of the statistics and information from the readings in
relation to what international students said about these topics. For
some domestic students the international students were the arbiters
of the validity of much knowledge, this included the Gen Y students
who were looking up material in class. These students were concerned
that everyone else already had all their knowledge. They were also
more likely to direct their speaking to me rather than the larger
group, a sign of their insecurity. Because of the nature of the tutorial
group and the close monitoring of small group discussions this did
not cause negative dynamics; however it could have and certainly
some students were uncomfortable which I needed to address.
While I tried to alleviate the domestic students’ difculty by
explaining Australia as a political, economic model like any other
country, I had not built this into the curriculum adequately in 2011.
I reworked the unit so that in 2012, students focused on issues,
including transnational corporations, the increase in HIV/AIDS in
Western Australia as they do with the same issues in Tanzania, for
instance. This more clearly situated Australia in the global sphere and
increased their condence of the social context about which they were
speaking. It did not eliminate their need to rely on secondary sources,
for few of them have direct experience of the issues – though they
may well have family working on mines – however, more felt they had
some authority on the topic. Each year there will be a new group of
students and the same issue may not apply; however, Australia will
always need to be situated in the international context.
In conclusion, as I reect on my teaching with diverse student groups,
I appreciate that interrogating pedagogy, adjusting curriculum
and teaching strategies to meet specic group needs is central
to providing the best possible learning experience. Enhancing
communication between all students and the teacher is the most
important step in this process. Clearly, it is not possible given the
time constraints to radically review curriculum content after meeting
new student groups for the rst time. However, time taken to learn
Effectively teaching diverse student groups: a reflection on teaching
and learning strategies 249
about their backgrounds and providing them with ways of drawing
on their socio-cultural experiences to understand and contribute
and possibly nding supplementary readings is rewarded. Teaching
strategies adapted to the particular student cohort are central to
making students learning experience as comprehensive and positive
as possible. For future classes, I evaluate and decide on as many
teaching strategies as possible once I have met classes. This is difcult
when student numbers are large, it is also complicated by having
more than one tutor in a unit. In 2013, I propose to work with a tutor
who is willing to work in a similar way. We will begin by deciding
what it means to each of us to be a reective teacher and how this will
inform our teaching decisions.
I am very happy with domestic and international student’s
continuing responses to their experience of GGCP in particular,
their recognition of benetting from speaking up, even though they
were uncomfortable doing so at the time. I am enjoying ongoing
conversations with students who feel they have made strong
connections with others because the class overcame the desire “not
to offend” and opened up discussions of sensitive issues. For me,
this is about having created a safe learning environment, facilitating
students to become transformative intellectuals, which they take to
other situations.
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