Sikula, T. Buttery, & E. Guyton (Eds.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 525 -- 547). Old Tappan, NJ: Macmillan De Vita, G. (2001) "Learning Styles, Culture and Inclusive Instruction in the Multicultural Classroom: A Business and Management Perspective" Innovations in Education and Teaching International 38(2): 165-174

Introduction

In this paper, the author stated that in many occasions a number of teachers and most administration educator find that even a well -- organized lecturers and workshops usually don't connect all students when it comes to the composition and working with different cultures. The paper highlighted that most traditional ways of uniform instructions look so ineffective within the frame of student groups which is compost with students who have unique culture and come from different backgrounds and with various methods of studying (De Vita, 2001).

However, this article suggests that some of the reasons why lies are normally constituted in the divergences which exist between the instructor's ways of teaching and student's ways of studying are more than just understand but importantly the differences which sometimes occur due to cultural background. Most importantly, the paper stated also that in a number of the occasions international students or other students who are not competent in English or come from countries whose first language is not English to study in the UK colleges, sometimes undergone a lot of cultural sufferings. This is because it is easy for them to understand the study or leaning methods and the way lecturers give instruction in classroom first. As a result, there academic performance during the initial period in college is normally very low compare to other students from English spoken nations and UK students.

Further, the article analyses that a good number of research which has been carried out on the organization and identification of studying methods but educators who would like to use theory of studying methods for the purpose of classroom application are totally left out of the picture despite its enormous body of literature. Most of the time attention is not accorded to the research on how culture can influence the kind of learning method which is preferred for the development of individual and how most teachers can encompass the information in way that can help them to diversify their ways of teaching to connect students from different cultural background together and begin to offer a well inclusive instruction approach.

The paper according to the author is to analyze how the gap which exists between two cases that is culture and learning methods can be explored and linked seriously. According to Felder and Soloman's Index of Learning Style (ILS) of 1999, normally studying style should be the one which build a co-existence of different people from different cultural background in a class of international business management and most so to understand learning preference which international students can comprehend well. From this evidence, practice-based suggestions on how to move towards inclusive instruction through multistyle delivery in business...

The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for curriculum design of business management degrees at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Method used in the research

As stated by De Vita (2001) in this article the research was carried out during the first week of the term when students when international students first reported to the class. It took approximated time of 25 minutes of the time during the college workshop at the main introduction hall. First, the ILS questionnaire was given out to all students after taking them through details of the research being done and the relevant benefits of carrying out the study for both the students and the tutor. In the explanation, they noted that the study is meant to provide a broad knowledge of how each and every individual learn issues especially in class which could assist students to understand how they can help themselves to grasp with teaching or learning methods in college. It also explained some of the study methods and instruction style which are preferred by most tutors and how the result from ILS survey can be obtained by summing up the scores which are inside the instrument. Felder and Soloman (1999b) stated that during the research information sheet which was provided to be field were completed with proposal on the ways which could help students to understand their strength of knowledge and other potential avenues which are difficult in academic settings.

The score sheets were then returned to the tutor after each person had completed the filling. However, the secret individual results were promised since most of the sheets were not bearing any name, even though the information regarding the nationality and native language were requested to be filled by each participant.

Findings

According to the author the article out of 63 scores sheets which were completed and forwarded back, 21 from local students and 42 were forwarded by international students. The 95% of the result indicates that students have a good attitude towards the research since the participation was voluntary and because of the promise that information to be provided by every participant will be kept secret. The 75% of the result indicates that the effective information which was obtained came from international students either through visual or verbal inputs.

Conclusion

A lot of work had already been done on the methods of learning but the most challenging task is where the literature of the study is focusing when dealing with relationship between culture and methods of learning. In rare occasions the literature explores the results of influence which culture can have on the mode of studies which are preferred for instructional advance to be adopted by teachers and management educators who are normally applied with people from different cultural background.

References

De Vita, G. (2001) "Learning Styles, Culture and Inclusive Instruction in the Multicultural Classroom: A Business and Management Perspective" Innovations in Education and Teaching International…