The statement given together with the question paper really stirs up a lot to think about.

Living in a multicultural and multi-ethnic society and environment has its own challenges.

Often this is a factor that shifts and shapes the teaching and learning process in the

classroom. Before going any further into this discussion, let us first set a definition on what is

so called “multiculture”. The conventional definition as provided by oxforddicitionaries.com

states that it is “Relating to or containing several cultural or ethnic groups within a society”.

Another definition that we need to focus is by Banks & Banks (2010), in which the defined

culture itself as “a group’s program for survival in and adaptation to its environment.” In

addition he also added that the essence of culture is how the people of the culture interprets,

use and perceive them. Therefore, we could simple conclude that multicultural can be

defined as multiple people with different set of norms or “programs” in a single situation.

In Malaysia, we are very well known in having multicultural and ethnics of people living

together in harmony. This is well supported by Najeemah (2012), by stating that Malaysia is

a good multicultural countries around the world. She also mentioned that “In fact Malaysia

represents the true meaning of a diverse society in many ways such as; race, language and

religion.” Furthermore, she added that by population numbers, the Malaysian society consists

of Malays 50.4%, Chinese 23.7%, Indigenous 11%, Indians 7.1% and others 7.8%.

Relating to our discussion, having a country with multiracial society does mean that the

teaching and learning in the classroom also differs than any other single culture or ethnic

classroom. Although Malaysia is the only country in the world to have three different forms of

school, National Schools, National Chinese Schools and National Tamil Schools, this doesn’t

mean that it is restricted to certain race only. On another note, Vision Schools (Sekolah

Wawasan), were made in 2004 that increases interaction between races. This is again

supported by Najeemah (2012), “Vision schools are primary schools with the concept of

children learning together within an area without regard for race or religion. Under this

concept, two or three primary schools of different streams are placed in the same area.”

The first argument that we need to consider in our discussion is the differences in culture.

According to DuPraw and Axner (1997), there are “Six fundamental patterns of cultural

differences -- ways in which cultures, as a whole, tend to vary from one another…” Those six

patterns are different communications styles, different attitudes toward conflict, different

approaches to completing task, different decision-making styles, different attitudes toward

disclosure, and different approaches to knowing. Therefore we could conclude that the

students under a teacher’s care are different, and the treatment and methods use also needs

to differ accordingly. As mentioned communication is something that differs according to the

culture. Communication is generally perceived as the language use. In teaching and learning

process, language is crucial because it could be a deciding factor for the students’ success in

understanding a teaching and learning process. An example is if a student has a very strong

accent and dialect influence, the student will have problem in understanding the teacher, as

the teacher will use standard language. This view is supported Noriati, Boon, Sharifah and

Zuraidah (2014), states that students that only manages to only mastered one language has

a high tendency of getting left behind in studies.

On the other hand, on the contrary to the students that mastered two or more languages, for

example English and Bahasa Melayu, they will have a much better time in understanding

teaching and learning that is taking place in the classroom. Noriati et al., (2014), supports

this motion by indicating such students with that are polyglot – masters a multiple languages

has better chance in study and are more likely to succeed given proper training and

education given. Language, as the general public knows, is a tool of unification. Therefore, in

my opinion language, in this case the national language should be mastered by students

disregarding their race in order as the excerpt of the discussion suggest to create united

citizens. This motion is backed against Najeemah (2012) statement, in which she states “At

the same times, all the students from different ethnic background are obliged to learn Bahasa

Malaysia the official and national language of the country in order to be able of

communication with other ethnicities and also to comprehend the notion of national unity.”

This concludes that communication, in this case language is a factor that clearly implicates

the teaching and learning process occurring in our local classrooms.

Next, another key element we need to include in our discussion to argue about is ethnicity.

Ethnicity is easily defined as traits background or something to associate about. As we know,

when multicultural society exists, this also automatically means it also has various ethnicity

and that is the case for our local classroom as well. Like the previous argument before, there

are two sides to this argument too. This argument has a strong relation to the environment

surrounding the student. The first is that if the school, or the location where the student lives

is secluded from other ethnics, the only way that they might know about other ethnics are

merely from texts, or video shown by the teacher. Such lack of physical or real life interaction

with other ethnics will make the students lack of knowledge towards other races cultural and

ethnicity. This view is supported by Noriati et al, (2014) that she also believed such

behaviour will cause the students to have difficulties to mend with other ethnics and race

later on in life.

The second part is that differs from the first case is the student with interaction in a proper

environment with students from different races and ethnicity. An example of this, if students

with difference race and ethnicity like the Malays, Chinese, Indian and the Indigenous people

were to be placed in our national school (SK) or even Vision Schools, interaction will take

place. This will make them more sensitive towards how their friends from another culture

thinks and acts without even knowing, for example non-Muslim students will not eat or drink

in front of Muslim students during fasting month. Such of the case mentioned can be related

to Nooriati (2014), as she agrees that acceptance and respect were build up as a result of

interaction during formal and informal learning. In my opinion, no child or student should not

be experiencing the first case, but instead going through the second. This is because as

mentioned before, the goal of creating a friendly learning and teaching culture is to create

united citizen, therefore ethnicity or race should not be the key to stop students from learning

together regardless their identity or even the teacher’s ethnicity. This thought is supported by

Önder, Kaplan, and Beşoluk (2011), “Although it is extremely important that children learn

about their culture, it is also important for them to learn that not everyone is the same. This is

especially important for children who live in a community that is not racially, ethnically or

culturally diverse.” So the implication that this implies is that teaching and learning in the

classroom due to this arguments, need to directly and indirectly introduce about a culture and

also being sensitive and aware of differences in the classroom.

Another argument to be put in front of this discussion is social class. Social class is defined

as people having the same social, economic, or educational status. This of course refers to

the social class of the family of the student. Social class also plays and important role in

giving an impact towards teaching and learning process that occurs in the classroom.

According to Noriati et al, (2014), there are 3 basic social classes namely low, middle and

high class. As the name suggests, the issue arises when low social class students will have

problems in terms of getting the tools needed for learning and even a conducive environment

to study. This happens due to a theory called cultural deprivation theory or in other words

cultural deprivation model. According to Irizarry (2009), this theory states that family from low

class social class tends to not give emphasise on education. It is also caused by the parents’

efforts to work overtime and neglects the student’s academic achievement in schools. This

according to Noriati et al, (2014), will lead to demotivation and dropouts from school.

However, it is a different story for the other side of the class. The social classes of middle

and high brings better prospect for the student with such families. This is because, as

oppose to what the low social class family is, financing is not a problem, thus getting supplies

for education and even private tuition is possible. According to Noriati et al, (2014) this will

double their chance in a wide variety of education compared to lower social classes. This

situation causes teaching and learning in the normal classroom to be affected too. It would

seemed easier if change of policy can be easily done, but in reality that is not the case at all.

According to Hochschild (2003), “…any serious policy change is enormously complicated,

particularly in the diffuse and decentralized world of public schooling.” That shows policy

changes may not be the best solution to be made. However, Hoschild (2003) also mentioned

of the ways that this could be overcome is by what she considered is the solution are by

having a good quality preschool, individual reading instruction, small classes in the early

grades, assignment to classes with peers who take learning seriously and behave in ways

that enable them to learn, and consistently challenging academic course. She also stress

that those steps will not only helped the low social class background students, but will also

effect students with middle social class. Furthermore, she also emphasize that “Most

importantly, qualified, knowledgeable teachers make a difference, as described above.”

According to what is discussed above, a simple conclusion is, in creating a friendly learning

and teaching culture that will lead to a united citizen, teaching and learning in classroom

needs to reduce any huge and clear signs of cultural deprivation model by empowering

teacher and activities that both classes can do and understand.

Another point of discussion that we could discuss is the settlements of the students. In other

words, where the student does lives. Settlement is defined as a place, typically one which

has previously been uninhabited, where people establish a community. We can class the

settlements into to category. The first is urban areas or town and the suburbs. In such areas,

urban and suburbs for instance, they are more exposed to multicultural and ethnics around

them. The same goes for social class like we have mentioned before. This is because in

such areas, the social class also varies as there are urban poor people, private sector

workers, government sector workers and business families. Such variety exposes them

towards variety of culture due to the surrounding factor. In addition, according to Noriati et al,

(2014), the norms of the students in regards towards education, spending ability, behaviour

and view towards responsibility differs accordingly. The affecting factors are parents

inspiration, their occupation, last but not least their view on education itself. In addition,

Litheko (2012) mentioned that “Parents who take a keen interest and put aside time to

discuss school matters with their children also play a crucial role in the attitude of the child

towards their education.”

Situation are a little bit different for the students in the second type of settlement, the rural

and remote areas. This is because like previously mentioned too, these people will keep the

same point of view and mindsets. Also, such remote and rural areas, does not have such

diversity in their cultural and ethnicity. All of that results into their view in education is not

ambitious and big. However, a small win is that according to Noriati et al, (2014), the student

in rural and remote areas are less likely to create havoc based on their behaviour. To make a

short conclusion of this point of discussion, to create a friendly learning and teaching culture

in order to make a future united citizens, the teaching and learning process must be carried

out with more emphasis given towards reading. That was supported by Litheko (2012) “But it

has to be pointed out that children exposed to a culture of reading will normally perform

better than those that do not have the privilege.” That statement in my opinion shows that by

reading, students in remote and rural area will know more about the world outside of their

settlement. Thus, bringing us to improve teaching and learning session with more information

to be fed to students via reading.

In my opening statement until now, we have focus most of the discussion on the students.

However, teaching and learning does not happens if there are no one to teach. So, in order

to make this discussion balanced, teachers also should be a topic of argument. The first

point of argument that I would like to present forward is acceptance and fair treatment.

According to Noriati et al, (2014), teachers should give fair treatment to students according to

their personal needs. I agree with this statement because a teacher, after knowing the

student cultural, ethnicity, and social class backgrounds, should not treat students based on

those traits, but instead treat them equally. Another issue that teacher should avoid is doing

generalisation using the student’s family background information. An example of this, a

teacher knowing the family parents are both medical doctors, thus he or she generalise that

the student must be good at biology or science. Another example to ponder is some very

classical that we can see about a decade ago in our schools, is where the teacher know the

family of the student is from a farmer or a hard labour, will suggest the student to take up

different streams of education. Meaning the teacher will ask the student to avoid taking

science stream or engineering due to fear that such student will not be able to carry forward

that course. Therefore, such generalisation is inappropriate and this is supported by

Najeemah (2012), in which she clearly states, “It has been cases that the academic

achievements of the students have been tied to a stereotypical interpretation of their races

and this matter has to be carefully monitored in multiethnic schools to prevent any kind of

tension or discrimination.” A simple conclusion of this argument would be that teacher should

never made a generalisation towards the student based on some very on-the-surface

assumptions.

The next point of discussion should be learning strategies. Learning strategies as define by

Weinstein and Mayer (1986) as “behaviours and thoughts that a learner engages in during

learning” which are “intended to influence the learner’s encoding process”. It is well known

that there are various learning strategies are made available for teachers to choose from.

However, the best teaching and learning strategies that teachers should apply, in

accordance to our multicultural society is cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is

defined as small heterogeneously mixed working groups of learners learning

collaborative/social skills while working toward a common academic goal or task. An

additional definition is by Allison and Rehm (2007), which is “…cooperative learning is an

instructional approach that benefits all students, and, in particular, students from diverse

backgrounds.” The question is, why is it important for the teacher to use it in teaching and

learning? First of all, as mentioned in the early parts of this discussion, that in order to create

a united citizens, in my opinion I believe that understanding needs to be created in the early

stage by mixing in classroom during teaching and learning lesson. My statement is not a

sweeping statement, but it is supported by other sources. According to Najeemah (2012),

commenting on cooperative teaching as a way to overcome deficiencies faced by schools

(vision schools) with multicultural students states, “This style of teaching will give the

students this opportunity to learn the subjects from different points of view (in this case

different ethnic pints of view) and it will enable them to have a better comprehension of

issues regarding to social and ethnical issues.” I would like to also stress, a part of this

discussion was ultimately to hopefully create a united citizen in the future too and this

teaching and learning strategy is suitable. That is due to Allison and Rehm (2007) that

mentioned “…cooperative learning provides a perfect opportunity for them to interact and

collaborate with friends and other young people who are likely to become friends.” This

shows that with cooperative learning, the students will learn how to be friends and united

from a young age. Such friendships, most of the time will be carried forward towards their life

later as a responsible adult. If there is still doubt, some example will be put forward on how it

will be applied in the classroom situation. Take the "Think/Pair/Share" method in which

students are first asked to think individually about a topic. Later, in pairs, preferably different

culture or ethnic, they share their thoughts together. Later they are required to share that

idea with the entire class. Concluding this point of argument, it is crucial for us to know that

this teaching and learning method, we can safely said, based on the arguments presented

that such thing will imply a new wave on the way multicultural teaching and learning takes

place, both for teacher and students. It is also important that teacher, chooses this method to

be used as it is most effective in accordance to our local classroom.

Moving along these lines of the focus shifting towards teachers, it is also in the power of the

teacher to select appropriate resources. Some may overlook how much this could be an

influence. This is because resources that is used by a teacher may only use the majority

ethnic as a subject of a text. This might cause the students from the minority ethnicity to lose

interest in the subject and feel demotivated. This is supported, in accordance to Noriati et al,

(2014) students of minority ethnic may felt left out due towards texts or materials used are

more majority oriented materials without mentioning those of theirs. To make this more into

perspective, let us narrow it into literature. In literature it is easy to used and also the story

could bring different messages and some is probably uniting messages. According to Brown

(2014), “Powerful literature can transport students into a world where they can feel the joys

and struggles of others and where they can inhabit the cultural landscape the characters live

in.” This indicates that literature can lift barriers of live and socioeconomic barriers and social

statuses. Now we know, for the purpose of discussing this point, we use literature as one of

the branches of subject taught in school. Therefore in selecting resources for this subject,

according to Brown (2014), the literature must have cultural integrity and avoidance of

exoticsm. Making it simple, these two means that the character of the literature piece chose

must not contain any racial stereotype. Brown (2014), also reaffirms this by stating “Our

sharing of multicultural literature can open new vistas for students, making way for new

explorations not possible within the time constraints of the school calendar.” The question

how does this implicates teaching and learning? The answer is teaching and learning will be

much more rewarding in sense of characters that are interesting, with messages of

multicultural society conveyed subconsciously. It also means that teachers will be much

more sensitive towards the resource they pick. I believe, the power that teachers were given

to select the appropriate resource would cause better understanding indirectly during lessons

conducted by teachers.

The third part of this discussion, in my preference, as we had touch both and teacher and

students, we should also not forget about the schools or the environment where teaching and

learning takes place. Some might see that the role of school administrators have no relation

towards the unity and the multicultural relations. However, on the contrary, according to

Najeemah (2012), “They play an important role not only ensuring students can get the best

academic achievements but also ensuring students from different ethnic groups can socially

interact well.” Furthermore, according to Noriati et al, (2014), a good manager creates a good

team, and that anology is also used for the administrators. This said, it means a well-

managed school will not only create a suitable environment, but also could trigger a

workforce between Parents Teacher Association, the school and the community. Concluding

this, though it may seem vague, however I believe a conducive environment will trigger more

interaction between races in school. This implicates towards teaching and learning by

making everyone to work together and teachers to be much more aware of what they can do

so that the students can benefit from the environment that motivates them.

Another point to ponder about how does school involves in this discussion is by the school’s

locality. This point might be similar to some points brought on the previous parts touching

about the students. The school’s locality is also important because according to Noriati et al,

(2014), the school’s locality affects the culture of the school. She also mentioned that urban

schools get better access to more than one ethnicity in the school. This provides good

interaction between the students. However, the same cannot be said for the rural areas

school. Lack of ethnicity in the school is one thing, but the other worrying issue is lack of

teachers, and teachers most probably will ask for transfer back to their original urban place.

In my opinion, such an issue can be tackle by having transfer student programmes from

urban to rural and vice versa. Teachers also should be given better initiative to avoid them

moving out from rural area schools.

Concluding this discussion, there are 3 main parts of discussion that we have gone through.

First students are the most important part. Students need to be more aware and need to be

able to push themselves to improve their communication and even help themselves and

inform their parents about the importance of education. The second part focuses on the

teacher. Teachers are the conductors of the students. Therefore, teachers need to be more

proactive towards the changes in the classroom and the multicultural differences that is

present. This will make lessons much more effective. Lastly schools, with great administrator

can be the force moving all the other party to collaborate and create a conducive

environment for the students. Therefore with all those 3 component, we knew that

multicultural does have a great implication towards teaching and learning in the classroom.

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