Instructional strategies and pedagogy for culturally diverse classrooms

Although previous research and U.S. demographics have established a need for holistic, culturally diverse content and methods, college courses still seem to prefer teaching content over methods, which emphasize holistic learning. This paper presents a framework for incorporating holistic, culturally diverse instructional strategies and pedagogy into communication courses and programs. Several studies that investigated various aspects of the framework, as well as a recent content analysis of 260 courses from across the United States (Milhouse, in press), are discussed. Implications of content and methods for seven programs are presented, as well as two matrices, that comprise a collection of approaches, techniques, and resources.

Key terms:

• Cultural diversity
• instructional strategies and pedagogy
• content analysis
• cognitive structures
• intercultural communication