Introduction
Institutions of higher learning across the UK have modeled their services around initiatives that provide national leadership by advancing equity and diversity and at the same time ensuring the maintenance of high education standards in terms of content delivery. Standards of diversity and equality have increasingly become the fundamental goal not only as a learning resource valuable to students, but also as a means of enhancing cross culture integration demanded by the effects of globalization in the twenty first century. In line with the same, this paper attempts to explore the extent to which university education in the UK expresses commitment to inclusive excellence with practices that ensure students’ learning experiences occur in an environment that embraces diversity and molds them to reflect the same in their interactions with different people.
University education
While the development of manners and ethics occur at earlier ages of schooling, personalities and characters develop and mature at higher-level education. Diversity, however, goes beyond the mere enrolment of students from different racial backgrounds in an institution of higher learning. As observed by Clark, Farsching-Varner and Brimhall-Vargas (2012), it incorporates the creation of an atmosphere that celebrates and acknowledges students from different races and diverse backgrounds by organizing activities that encourage the students to collaborate and communicate effectively. To that effect, the authors take note of the importance of a learning environment that reflects diversity in myriad constructs that include but not limited to race, socio-economic diversity and diverse abilities.
Smart and Paulsen (2012) on the other hand points to the fact that diversity avails diverse sets of ideas or knowledge of the content by breeding heterogeneous thoughts. With adequate interaction, students have the opportunity to express verbally or in writing a wealth of information that powers innovation and creativity among students. The resulting diverse skills also contributes and adds value to team efforts capable of tackling diverse challenges presented by the 21st century developments. Tegeler (2013) while citing a study by the National Coalition on School Diversity notes that contrary to the longstanding notion that integrated schools only serve the interests of the minorities, non-minority students also benefit immensely from such settings. To justify the same, the study found that non-minority students in diverse learning environments are exposed to diverse discussions that aids in the development of critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities.
Diverse learning environment has also the effect of motivating individuals to participate since students influence one another. It also leads to the awareness of reactions and interpretations of situations since different personalities have different ways of facing challenges. Finally, diverse groups tend to interlock and produce a rigid body that is essential for building a healthy learning environment. Thus, while it is arguable that racially homogeneous settings may be inadequate in preparing individuals for the 21st century challenges, the benefits of heterogeneous setting remain equally debatable in the face of persistent feeling among many that others are not willing to tolerate them. Another challenge facing diversity is the feeling that multicultural education is less of cultural awareness but more of an initiative tailored to encompass under-represented groups in the society.
Effects of diverse learning environment on stereotypic notions
Characteristic to stereotypic ethnic/racial notions is a perpetuation of cultural biases against a given minority group occurring through time. Within institutions of higher learning in the UK and other parts of the Western world, white racial frame results in information gap especially regarding perceptions and understanding of racial differences by the whites. The reason behind this, as noted by Barnes and Robinson (2014: 125), relates to the fact that for generations, white racial framing has been perpetuated by whites themselves who willingly accommodate it or by those who tacitly ignore it. The result is that many whites fail to recognise historic and prevailing racial alignments. In fact, many reproduce generationally derived racial beliefs about the capabilities and contribution, more so intellectually, of minority races or ethnic groups.
Lately, however, there has been an improvement in students’ behaviors towards accommodation of diversity within the learning environment. The pre-conceived stereotypic notions prevalent in the past century have been replaced by intergroup interactions. Even though some of studies still show disparity in performance between racial and interracial pairs, with the former performing comparatively better, such results do not cut across all fields. An explanation for the observation, however, could be that intergroup interactions tend to be more effortful to navigate successfully compared to diverse groups. In a diverse group, it is highly likely that an individual from the white ethnic background may feel obliged to act in such a way as not to appear to be discriminative, which may in the process compromise his/her contribution in terms of diverted attention to the task at hand.
Despite these subtle outlier results, diversity tends to favor breakdown of pre-conceived stereotypic notions. For instance, the once popular belief that minority groups are generally underperformers has since been replaced by a more positive notion, that intellectual performance is dependent on the quality of opportunity available. In line with the same, Holoien (2013:5) notes that minorities expose others to new knowledge, and that their presence in the learning setting tends to indirectly trigger improved cognitive outcomes among members. Since the same reflect in the quality of their performances, recognition of this occurrence has seen a reduction in negative perception of minority groups by the majority group, an aspect that has lowered disparities and watered down pre-conceived stereotypic notions.
Diversity on the learning environment has resulted in improved inter-cultural understanding between people from different backgrounds. For instance, through enhanced interactions, individuals from majority groups have come to learn that contrary to the popular opinion that full scholarships are only awarded to students from minority groups, even students from the white ethnic backgrounds are eligible and often receive scholarships. As observed by Cruz, Ellerbrock, Vasquez and Howes (2014:44), the high-level interaction created through diverse interaction results in the development of an attitude characterised by being asset-oriented, objectively rational, unconditional reasoning and positivity towards each other.
Cross-culture socialization
The UK is home to one of the most diverse university intake in the world, such that for instance, for postgraduate studies, it has become usual finding a class made up of more than 50 percent international students (Smith, 2014). The observation comes as a fantastic news since it points to a breakdown of country, racial and cultural barriers and in the process creating a global learning platform for students. While integration inside the classroom is quite high as mentioned earlier, not much of it seems to be available outside of classroom since foreign students do not appear to mingle with British students as freely as one would imagine. It thus follows that the elevated social integration observed inside classroom and translated in classwork is a result of essence and convenience and not a reflection of students becoming free with one another.
As observed by Pickard (2014:130), while the social makeup of populations, institution attended and courses pursued remain stratified, differences in behaviour presents a great challenge to social integration. While behaviours such as clubbing may contribute to disparities when the parties involved differ, say on religious beliefs, its contribution to social non-conformities is quite insignificant. Students across UK, both foreign and nationals cite cultural divide and to a small extent language barrier as the major contributors to status quo of limited interaction. Nonetheless, the fact that students as well as university management have realised the challenge has seen an initiation of measures, both at personal and institution level, aimed at closing the gap and creating a more integrative and harmonious university learning environment.
Social and cultural integration is a win-win situation for the different groups involved. In fact, all students receive the cognitive benefits of the diverse learning environment, an aspect that contributes in the moulding of individual characters. Hyland et al. (cited in Thornton et al, 2011) note that cultural diversity in modern university education provides students with rich opportunities to learn about each other. In effect, such learning in addition to preparing students to cope in an independent and multicultural world also ensures that academics and professionals operate individual local and national perspectives. Thusly, whatever benefits derived from social integration at university level shapes the future of students by qualities that are aligned to social coherence within diverse groups at different levels of professionalism.
Koch, Mcmillan and Peper (2011) on the other hand notes that the benefits of integration measured from a post-university education standpoint presents a big challenge in that there is little, if any, evidence that such influences group performance and turnover. Philips and Gully (2013) also reiterate the same and observe that studies on the same are at best inconclusive since numerous studies have failed to show any formidable relationship between job-related and demographic diversity with team cohesion or performance. Despite this argument, the studies point to the potential influence of diversity on performance, at least indirectly, through such aspects as conflict management in work environments.
The question of whether UK university students feel that diversity in their learning environment is partially or holistically beneficial does not have any particular sufficient answer. The reason behind this apparent difficulty is associated to the fact that social integration constructs in the UK is multifaceted. On one hand, students in UK universities show elevated levels of interaction between diverse groups on matters relating to academics, but remain largely segregated along racial lines when it comes to out of class social integration. Additionally, students from different racial and cultural backgrounds relate different experiences of social integration. A related study by Dunne and Owen (2013) established that while students gave feedback that is more positive on the benefits of cross-cultural integration in the academic realm, the social realm remains relatively cold in as far as integration is concerned.
This may be where my small scale research can hint at some of the causes surrounding the social divide of university students outside the educational realms.
Conclusion
Universities across the UK have established learning environments that encourage students to embrace diversity both in academic and social prospects. Noteworthy though is that despite the vast pool of knowledge on the importance of diversity on social, academic and future professional success of individuals, the social aspect of diversity seems to have taken backstage as many students fail to integrate at the said level. Nonetheless, UK university students continue to register profound belief and results associated with the benefits of cross-cultural integration in their studies. Among the benefits of integration are improved cognitive skills, development and manifestation of highly effective behavioural and perceptual constructs towards one another, as well as redefinition of characters to reflect different association and reflective capabilities. A review of available literature also showed that the continued thriving of cultural and racial integration in universities across the UK has enabled individuals to dispel pre-conceived stereotypic notions that were carried from the past, key among them relating to the assumed poor performance and little, if any, contribution of minority groups to an extended learning environment. However, despite the numerous benefits of integration among university students, there is need for further studies to establish engraved patters that hinder holistic social integration between minority ethnic students and nationals and the possible means of overcoming those hindering patterns.
References
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Clark, C., Fasching-Varner, K. J., & Brimhall-Vargas, M. (2012). Occupying the academy: just how important is diversity work in higher education? Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Cruz, B., Ellerbrock, C. R., Vásquez, A., & Howes, E. V. (2014). Talking diversity with teachers and teacher educators: exercises and critical conversations across the curriculum. New York. Teachers College Press. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=920415.
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Smith, D. (2014). Diversity and inclusion in higher education: emerging perspectives on institutional transformation. London, Routledge.
Tegeler, P. (2013). Diverse classrooms also benefit white students. Huffpost Education. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-tegeler/diverse-classrooms-also-b_b_2403328.html
Thornton, M, Bricheno, P, Iyer, P, Reid, I, Wankhede, G, & Green, R. (2011). ‘Getting Diverse Students and Staff to Talk about Equality and Social Integration Issues on Higher Education Campuses in India and the UK’, Research In Education, 85, 1, pp. 17-29.
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