What Makes Education
The factors that make up education and facilitate it are the ones that can lead to the achievement of quality education. Cultural diversity is a matter that, if acknowledged, managed, and dealt with properly, education is more likely to be of good quality.
What is Quality Education
Quality education is measured by the accessibility of resources, particularly technological and physical, in basic education. Teachers play a crucial role in achieving quality education, but motivation is essential to positively influence students’ performance. Teachers’ motivation and passion for education are crucial for transforming poorly resourced schools and maximizing learning opportunities, despite not guaranteeing quality education. Quality education requires studying cultural diversity, incorporating diverse cultures into teaching methods, strategies, and lesson preparation, and ensuring teachers are lifelong learners.
Inclusive Education in the School Community
Inclusive education entails the openness, willingness, and competencies to understand, embrace and support the diversity of learners’ profiles, circumstances, needs, styles, and expectations as a powerful source for democratizing and enhancing learning opportunities, processes, and outcomes. Cultural diversity can be broadened by existing outside the classroom and being a school-wide matter. Therefore, it is essential for education to be inclusive outside the context of teaching and learning. As teachers are the main educational resources, inclusive education also entails teachers in the school community being aware of their cultural diversity before learners’ diverse cultures and approaching their relationships positively despite the diversity. Culture constitutes of a set of beliefs and values. These values and beliefs have greater impacts on the behaviours of learners, how much they value education and how they socialize with other learners. A teacher gets in the classroom also with his or her own beliefs and values, which can influence how they teach and how they approach every learner.
The Gulf Between Education and Culture
Cultural and educational beliefs must be integrated to create meaningful learning in a diverse environment, requiring teachers and learners to adopt educational values. Quality education requires a balance between education and culture, as there can be gulfs between education and culture. This can lead to learners being unsure of how to behave in the classroom, as education may be perceived as confidence, while culture may view it as disrespect. Adopting educational values can help create a supportive environment, but overpowering learners are more likely to result in poor performance.
Educational values encompass honesty, integrity, empathy, equality, responsibility, purpose, teaching methods, and learner-learning strategies.
Achieving Quality Education
It is not merely education that plays a significant role or has a greater impact on the achievement of quality education, but inclusive education alongside culturally responsive teaching and the motivation and encouragement of teachers who embrace diverse cultures of learners. A positive school climate should inspire such a classroom environment; where cultural consciousness exists and is embraced among teacher-teacher and learner-learner as well.
Conclusion
There is quality education in education that is inclusive of cultural diversity. Inclusivity not only acknowledges diversity but takes it into consideration and structures the curriculum, delivery of the content and classroom environment that caters for all learner’s needs, not excluding teachers’ culture. Education consists of three elements; the content, the teacher and the learner. Therefore, cultural diversity should be considered in all three elements that make up education.
