The others among us : how experience informs post-secondary faculty's preparedness for cultural diversity in the French linguistic minority classrooms of Manitoba

Abstract

Due to the ten-fold increase in international students matched with a stronger participation of French immersion graduates in the last eight years, the College universitaire de Saint-Boniface now includes a wider diversity of Francophones in its learning community. This thesis set out to identify the awareness of cultural diversity and to examine the education, training and preparation of post-secondary faculty members at Western Canada's oldest educational institution. The approach was inductive, qualitative and phenomenological, using an interview method. Tacit knowledge of the experiences of 13 interviewed faculty members was drawn out from stories as well as those shared by the teacher/researcher. Professors and instructors demonstrated awareness of the new cultural diversity through experiential learning experiences both formal and informal. Many stated that their comfort and ease of working with a heterogeneous group was because of their own identity as a cultural and linguistic minority within Manitoba.