Teaching for diversity: university educators’ accounts of care work and emotional labour with CALD students

ABSTRACT

The massification of higher education has resulted in a highly diverse student body. Within this expansion, the increased number of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) students has unquestionably enriched university campuses, but has also brought challenges for teaching and learning within higher education systems. There are limited accounts in the scholarly literature with regard to university educators’ perspectives of their teaching and students. In particular, limited attention has been paid to the care-related and emotional dimensions of teaching diverse cohorts. Through a mixed-method study of university educators, this paper provides a thematic analysis of university educators’ experiences of teaching CALD students, including their reflections on students’ specific needs, the existing supports offered and suggestions as to what supports are needed. It considers the visibility of the care work and emotional labour educators undertake, and problematises how this work is created by institutional assumptions but rarely recognised as legitimate ‘work’.

KEYWORDS:

• Care
• emotions
• invisible labour
• cultural and linguistic diversity
• teaching in higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We distinguish between migrants and refugees to be clear how different types of migration (for example economic, family, humanitarian) create different needs and experiences of resettlement.

2 White/Anglo-background, English-speaking, mid-high socioeconomic status, school-university pathway.