Culturally Diverse Students in Higher Education: Challenges and Possibilities within Academic Literacy Practices
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
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https://hdl.handle.net/10642/4241Utgivelsesdato
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FLEKS - Scandinavian Journal of Intercultural Theory and practice 2016, 3(2):1-18Sammendrag
With growing diversity in the population, higher education faces a new situation with
increasing student diversity. In our paper, we will explore questions concerning the
consequences
student diversity has for higher
-
education institutions. Based on our
experience from three different R&D projects, the differences in culture and academic
literacy practices give culturally diverse students challenges that have often been ignored in
acade
mia. Some other studies also document that this group of students has a much higher
risk of dropping out and underachieving than majority students (Andersen & Skaarer
-
Kreutz, 2007; Støren, 2009). In our paper, we are going to discuss the students’ challeng
es
and discourse of remediation that is often associated with their challenges and suggest how
higher
-
education institutions can adjust their practices to be more oriented to intercultural
communication. Intercultural communication as a dialogic approach m
ay create dynamics in
academic tutoring and lead to mutual change/transformation instead of a one
-
way
adaptation of existing academic literacy norms. We argue that all teachers should be aware
of cultural differences in literacy practices in the education
systems and strive to adjust
their teaching practices to the diversity in the classroom. This approach, we believe, can
contribute to a better learning environment for all students, independently of their
backgrounds