Postgraduate University Students’ Experiences and Attitudes Toward Culturally Diverse Learning Environments

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the attitudes that Australian domestic university students hold toward cultural diversity on a large, metropolitan university campus. We employed a qualitative approach incorporating five individual semistructured interviews, and a focus group in order to gather data on the participants’ attitudes toward cultural diversity, and the contributing influences on these attitudes. The findings of this study indicate that the participants’ attitudes were impacted significantly by past and present experiences of cultural diversity, and the immersion in a culturally diverse university campus. The research contextualizes how these life experiences are responsible for shaping attitudes toward cultural diversity on university campus and provides an insight into the influence of cultural diversity on Australian university campuses, including how such diversity policies have influenced attitudes. Importantly it discusses how more culturally inclusive learning environments can be created on university campus to accommodate this increasing diversity and how this translates into a more successful learning environment.