How do cultural and gender differences affect communication in the classroom and impact student learning?
For “cultural”, you can take this a number of ways. It could mean communicating with students from different ethnic background, or students that come from different states. Each state has its own culture. Try comparing Virginia with New York, for example. New Yorkers like to be direct and get the job done. Sometimes, they can come off as a bit rude and pushy. Virginians, on the other hand, try to mitigate and talk around issues to avoid hurting feelings. This can lead to misinterpretation and confusion. The same can be applied to different ethnic cultures. Granted, if you talk about cultures like this, you will be generalizing and stereotyping—depending on the class, this may or may not be ok. You may need to put in a few weasel words like “most” or “in general”. As for gender differences, there’s some research out there that suggests men and women learn differently. You can try talking about this, but it might be more of fact regurgitation than analysis, and depending on the class, th
