Cultural diversity of the teaching corps in Switzerland : a question of social justice ?

Author(s):

Marie Anne Broyon(presenting / submitting)Abdeljalil Akkari

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 03 A, Teachers' Imagination Regarding Diversity and Inequality

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

17:15-18:45

Room:

B004 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Ghazala Bhatti

Contribution

Switzerland, like most education systems in industrialized countries, is confronted with the cultural diversity of the participants (students, teachers and parents) and of school knowledge (curriculum). Our research interrogates the demographic, linguistic and cultural discontinuity between students and cultural composition of the teaching body, a topic that has been little studied in Swiss research.

According to the literature, a disequilibrium between the ethnocultural composition of the teaching body and the student body is disquieting in that certain teachers are incapable of understanding or of showing empathy for children from an ethnic background other than their own. They are, consequently, unable to adapt their teaching or their pedagogical strategies to the public they must face. Gay (2002), observed that low expectations concerning minority students, the imposing of stricter discipline, the attributing of academic failure entirely to the home environment and systematically assigning racial minorities to special education classes are tendencies that have been widely observed. And among the American scientists, it seems unacceptable for a pluralistic society to submit public school students to a teaching body that is monocultural and mono-ethnic when one takes into account the influence of schooling on the transmission of values to students (Carnegie Forum sur l'éducation et l'économie, 1986; Graham, 1987; Ladson-Billings, 2011; Sleeter & Milner, 2011).

On another side, what research there is on teachers of different cultures in Europe or North America shows real promise. The ability to give meaning to school knowledge for students situated far from the school norm, and their families, along with higher expectations, leads to improved results (Georgi, 2011). Moreover, the presence of teachers coming from "other" backgrounds leads to changes in representations on the part of all of the students (negative stereotypes from some, acquired resignation for others). The importance of the teacher of migrant origin as an identity model or as a significant other has been put forward both for the involvement of students in the learning process and also as a vocational element in the choice of the teaching profession (Buhse et al., 2009 ; Guyton, Saxton & Wesche 1996; Jones, Young, & Rodriguez, 1999; Ochoa, 2007 ; Strasser & Steber, 2010 ). This potential can be realized only in association with a solid professional education that encourages, among other things, thinking about cultural diversity.

Due to the multicultural context of Switzerland, in our research, the cultural diversity of the teaching profession includes as well teachers coming from other countries that teachers coming from different linguistic regions within the country.

The research apparatus comes from three principal questions. The first question aims to analyze the sociocultural profiles of 1,200 teachers-in-training from five Swiss cantons (Geneva, Valais, French-speaking Bern, Jura and Neuchatel). The five cantons chosen are representative of the multicultural demographic situation in Switzerland.. The profiles of these teachers are later compared with those of the students they will have in their charge during their professional career. The second question allows us to examine the trajectories and experiences of working teachers coming from diverse backgrounds. We are also exploring some of the obstacles teachers have had to deal with, and support they received, in order to become teachers. The third question examines the empirical evidence of the existence of an educational added-value supplied by teachers coming from diverse backgrounds. This added value is postulated in scientific literature but seldom shown from empirical data.

Method

The research methodology is a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative methods. It is based on a online survey developed within the framework of the project and on in-depth interviews with working teachers , school principals and students. The quantitative component is to establish the socio-cultural profiles of student teachers in four institutions in Switzerland. To establish these sociocultural profiles of teachers in training, we will use a specific questionnaire administered online to all teachers in training in four institutions .The data from the questionnaires will be analyzed using SPSS. This is a quantitative, non-experimental research (Johnson & Christensen, 2004) as only a cross-sectional design will be carried out. This part of the study aims to study the relations between variables of the sociocultural diversity of the teachers-in-training (nationality, language, origin, parents, long etc.) and to mix them with other "generic" variables (social background, gender, previous education, crosscultural experiences). We equally hope to compare these "teacher" variables with cantonal statistics providing the sociocultural characteristics of the students. We started our study by examined the national data and the presence of linguistic and cultural diversity in the records of students who have been accepted into teacher training in two institutions (Geneva and Valais). The qualitative component seeks to understand how cultural diversity is perceived by different educational actors. These part of the research questions the points 2 and 3. This diversity can be worn by players themselves, such as teachers or students from immigrant families. It can also be an external object, as wardens. In order to identify the direction that takes cultural diversity by these actors, we are conducting semi-structured interviews and focus group (with secondary students: 15 to 19 years old) . Participants are selected based on their background and based on their teaching experience in order to have a wider variety of profile. We have already submitted the discursive responses and interview transcriptions of an exploratory sample (15 interviews with beginning teachers) to a systematic analysis to study views and representations using Nvivo software. This analysis rests upon a work of encoding and classifying of content (Miles & Huberman, 1991) allowing recurring themes to emerge with a minimum of assumptions. Another essential task with the qualitative data is to allow the identification of the meaning of the words of the people studied from a large quantity of raw data of unequal quality.

Expected Outcomes

Using empirical data, this project will bring new light on the impact and the importance of having a teaching body that reflects, at least partially, the diversity of the students in Switzerland. We have seen that the scientific literature is based on hypotheses which deserve to be confirmed or contradicted in different national contexts, in particular, the importance of role models, which teachers can represent for young people of immigrant background. Moreover, it is vital to identify the educational added value contributed by teachers coming from diverse backgrounds The analysis of data already collected allow us to bring some elements of answers to the initial questions. At first, the gap between student diversity and teacher in Switzerland has been confirmed. As for the contribution of the entrance selection of training, data analyzed show that if teachers from diverse backgrounds are under-represented in the teaching staff, it is mostly because they are very few to appear for entrance exams of teacher training. Regarding the question of the existence of an educational added-value , the analysis of qualitative data shows that teachers coming from diverse backgrounds indeed bring added value to education. They are indeed numerous to list a certain amount of professional expertise provided by their multiple affiliations: at the level of pedagogical relationship or communication with families, they are more open, they have interest to work with diversity in the classroom. In addition , some teachers are also aware of their role model of success for students and their families. However, some of them also note some limitations to the contribution of cultural diversity

References

Buhse, H. et al. (2009). Konzept zur Förderung von mehr Migrantinnen und Migranten um Lehramt und im Bereich der sozialen Arbeit. Online im Internet: http://www.gew-bremen.de/Binaries/Binary12211/AGIL-MigrantInnen-foerderung.pdf (zugriff: 05.03.2012). Carnegie Forum on Education, the Economy, Task Force on Teaching as a Profession. (1986). A nation prepared: Teachers for the 21st century. Washington, DC: Carnegie Forum. Georgi, V. B. (2011). Vielfalt im Lehrerzimmer: Selbstverständnis und schulische Integration von Lehrenden mit Migrationshintergrund in Deutschland: Waxmann Verlag. Graham, P. A. (1987). Black teachers: A drastically scarce resource. Phi Delta Kappan, 68(3), 598–605. Guyton, E., Saxton, R., & Wesche, M. (1996). Experiences of diverse students in teacher education. Teaching & Teacher Education, 12(6), 643–652. Johnson, B., and L. Christensen 2004 Educational Research: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Approaches (2nd Edition). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc Jones, E. B., Young, R., & Rodriguez, J. L. (1999). Identity and career choice among Mexican American and Euro-American preservice bilingual teachers. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 21(4), 431–446. . Ladson-Billings, G. (2011). Asking the Right Questions: A Research Agenda for Studying Diversity in Teacher Education. In A. Ball and C. Tyson (Eds.) The American Educational Research Association Handbook on Studying Diversity in Teacher Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Ochoa, G. L. (2007). Learning from Latino teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sleeter, C. E. & Milner IV, R. (2011). Researching Successful Efforts in Teacher Education to Diversity Teachers. In A. Ball and C. Tyson (Eds.) The American Educational Research Association Handbook on on Studying Diversity in Teacher Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Strasser, J., & Steber, C. (2010). Lehrerinnen und Lehrer mit Migrationshintergrund–Eine empirische Reflexion einer bildungspolitischen Forderung. Ethnizität, Geschlecht, Familie und Schule, 97-126.

Author Information

Marie Anne Broyon (presenting / submitting)

Haute Ecole Pédagogique du Valais (HEP-VS)

Onex

Abdeljalil Akkari

Université de Genève, Switzerland

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