Across the globe, classrooms are witnessing unprecedented student diversity that places continuous demands on schools and educators. The 2017 report from the European Commission entitled ‘Preparing teachers for diversity: the Role of Initial Teacher Education’, for instance, highlights the challenges of the changing nature of diversity in Europe brought about by international and intra-European migration. The complexity constituting this diversity is best captured through Vertovec’s (2007) notion of ‘super-diversity’ evident in intense diversity—marked by culture, language, religion, gender, class, and their intersections—among the society’s population. The report further emphasised the disadvantage experienced by students of immigrant backgrounds especially those of low socio-economic backgrounds. These students are left feeling alienated in schools against a backdrop of Eurocentric nationalism that continues to fuel polarisation and discrimination in society.
This paper engages with the challenge of educating in the context of diversity by posing the question: What matters for student participation in diverse contexts? It does so by examining the concept of ‘relationship’ as a key factor shaping student participation. This finding is taken from a research project that sought to examine the experiences and perspectives of educators and students in a culturally and linguistically diverse Australian primary classroom. Although Australia has been touted as a successful multicultural society, much of the basis for these claims rely on diversity statistics to celebrate multiculturalism or isolated stories of success that seem to emphasise the values of assimilation (e.g. Australian Government, n.d.). Literature continues to provide evidence that racism and discrimination persistently penetrate and perpetuate in culturally and linguistically diverse schooling contexts, which in turn negatively impacts on student participation and learning outcomes (Kalantzis, 2013; Rudolph, 2013).
In asserting that relationships do matter for student participation in multicultural schooling contexts, this paper seeks to problematise the dynamics and nature of ‘relationship’ and its contestations. Pedagogical frameworks that centre building relationships are traditionally tied to learner-centred approaches to teaching that emphasise developing a sense of community in the classroom (Cullen & Harris, 2009; Cornelius-White, 2007). Scholarship advocating for this approach advocates for feelings of ‘cohesion, trust, safety, interaction, interdependence, and a sense of belonging’ (Rovai & Whighting, 2005, p. 101) as pre-conditions for fostering safe spaces that enable dynamic and risky interactions. In the context of diversity and disadvantage, pedagogical approaches such as critical pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy also highlight the importance of relationships and community whilst contesting the dominance and privilege of Eurocentric and elite underpinnings of education—a taken-for-granted condition in learner-centred education. As such, the relationship-building in diverse contexts require educating ‘against the grain—to contest and resist the current social arrangements that constrain social justice’ (Keddie, 2012, p. 1).
In problematising the concept of relationship, I engage with Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus. Habitus allows for an understanding of dispositions as culturally and socially mediated. Habitus, as explored by scholars, denote to both determinative and evolving or agentic characteristics (e.g., Reay, 2004). As such, habitus enables an understanding of how barriers to relationship-building in the context of diversity are sustained and maintained. In engaging with Bourdieusian notion of habitus, I illuminate how the dispositions of both educators and students constrain student participation and speculate on the possibilities for change and transformation.