SESSION 4D
Annette Edlin
Challenges and strategies for a culturally diverse classroom

Abstract
In a typical TESOL classroom, we are confronted with a heterogeneous group of students whose cultures and backgrounds are often at variance and even conflict with each other. Effective andragogy requires instructors to be aware of this diversity and create classroom environments and learning patterns that respond to the diversity and give to all students the capacity to succeed.
The objectives of this interactive workshop are:
1. To alert teachers to the impact of cultural diversity on classroom environments and the varying preparedness of students from non-Western backgrounds to learn and interact in the context of Australian instructional settings
2. To identify strategies that teachers can use to weld culturally diverse groups of students into a more cohesive and integral learning cohort.
3. To develop practices that assist students to be equipped for life in an Australian university.
Because of the presenter’s professional experience of living and working as a tertiary educator in Asia for a number of years, there will be a focus (but not exclusively so) on Asian educational and cultural traditions.

Bio
Annette Edlin has worked as a teacher in many culturally diverse setting in five nations across four continents. Her most recent assignment included five years teaching English and Academic Skills to undergraduate and graduate students from culturally diverse backgrounds who were attending a university in South Korea. Currently she is a teacher at the University of Wollongong.