Developing International Understanding with a Appreciation for Diversity

Authored by: Klara Kuemmerle and Benjamin Gross-Loh from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, Cambridge, MA, USA


Summary

For our research paper, we sought to investigate the degree to which members of the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School (BB&N) community appreciate diversity and the ways in which this appreciation manifests. After interviewing sources, we created four codes that represented the patterns that seemed to be most prevalent in our responses. These codes were:

  1. Events Celebrating Diversity,
  2. Student-Led Organizations,
  3. Sharing Perspectives in the Classroom, and
  4. Building Infrastructure that Supports Diversity.

The last code was most prevalent, and we extracted important fragments of people’s responses to give context to the codes. The statements made by our respondents and some of the conclusions we came to may not be representative of what the large swath of BB&N thinks but merely shed light on the beliefs held by a small group.

Introduction

To conclude our year-long research of international understanding as research fellows, we were tasked with investigating the degree to which BB&N appreciates diversity.

According to the Round Square definition, there are two parts to appreciating diversity: the first is valuing diversity, for example by “celebrating the power that is found in variety and difference”; and action—which entails actively “confront[ing] discrimination, prejudice and all obstacles that deny equal opportunities for everyone.”

In light of this, we conducted interviews with members of the community, asking them to reflect on how they view diversity efforts at BB&N, how they engage in efforts to appreciate diversity, and what changes they believe should be made. Through this, we hoped to glean a sense of people’s opinions regarding the current state of diversity at the school and what initiatives and efforts already exist or are needed to promote an appreciation of diversity.

We analysed our data, finding themes throughout responses using the coding skills taught to us at the symposium.

Process

In total, we interviewed three faculty members and four students. We sought a variety of perspectives by interviewing students with differing interests and experiences and teachers of different ages and departments. As such, our subjects included an English teacher, a student with experience living and studying abroad in Southeast Asia, the Special Assistant to the Head of School for Inclusive Communities, and one of our Librarians.

When searching for meaningful trends, we noticed that the ways people believe BB&N fosters diversity fall into five categories. We developed five codes to represent these common answers and tallied how many times these themes were mentioned in order to quantify the data and compare frequencies. The five codes we created are listed below, in Table one:

Analysis

Code 1: The highest frequency code, Events Celebrating Diversity, came up 10 times throughout our interviews. People named events such as Community Building Assembly, Community Day, invitations of guest speakers, and heritage evenings as key methods through which BB&N attempts to foster diversity.

“I think community day was really good,” one subject said. “It was a really good way to foster diversity and appreciate it. I was in Islamophobia [one of the discussion groups] and we were exposed to a lot, and I do think it’s important to get those experiences.

Another subject, referring to Community day, said, “It’s a big commitment… There are always student speakers and community day is really a student-initiated and student-led event. I think actually it’s one of the best examples of student-adult collaboration at BB&N.”

Code 2: Our second code, Student organizations, came up 6 times in reference to student-run clubs and initiatives that support minority groups and encourage an understanding of the diversity that exists at BB&N. Among the organizations mentioned were SHADES (Students Honoring and Accepting Differences and Embracing Similarities) and AASA (Asian American Student Alliance).

One teacher was supportive of student clubs but questioned their overall impact on improving diversity.

“Things happen around the school in silos. People are rowing their boats in the same direction and the impact is not as big. I would like to see the diversity movements connected in some way.”

Code 3: Our third code, Sharing Perspectives in the Classroom, occurred 9 times and was tallied when our subjects mentioned that sharing stories and perspectives about their unique experiences improved the diversity of thought at the school.

“Teachers do well to be open to different viewpoints,” one student said. “In History or English classes, the teachers really encourage students to have unique experiences and they encourage me to tell my experiences from Thailand.”

However, he added that some students can be scared to share their experience because they’re afraid their peers will think they’re “trying too hard.”

“When I share things, I’ve noticed living abroad it feels like I’m going to be judged—it’s up to me to take the initiative to share experiences and that will further appreciation,” they said, adding “But as of now teachers are open to [my stories].”

Another student thought his peers were tepid when it comes to listening to others’ stories, saying, “nobody shuts you down, but I’ve never had any really meaningful conversations about diversity or backgrounds with somebody else. I haven’t seen anything where people would be particularly cruel or disparaging.”

Code 4: Our final code, Building Infrastructure that Supports Diversity, came up eleven times. This code intended to capture policies or initiatives implemented by the administration to improve diversity. Mainly teachers reflected on the administrative changes they have witnessed with regards to diversity over the course of their time at BB&N.

“When I was hired you could count the number of gay and black faculty on one hand,” one teacher said. “At that time, most teachers were white males. Now the school is working hard to hire diverse teachers and admit a diverse group of students.”

Two other subjects noted how the school’s commitment to diversity has manifested in the Cultural Proficiency Requirement, which, one source said, requires every faculty member to “complete some kind of fairly major learning exercise related to cultural proficiency” and the role of the Special Assistant to the Head of School for Inclusive Communities, a new position established this school year to help assess diversity at the school and efforts to improve it, as well as to recommend initiatives that could be taken to improve the school’s standing regarding diversity.

Conclusion

The four codes we established served to encapsulate people’s opinions of what the most prominent diversity initiatives at BB&N are and how these are influencing the appreciation of diversity at the school. We would like to acknowledge that our codes didn’t capture the full scope of opinions stated by our respondents. Some unincluded noteworthy responses are as follows. One person said that BB&N, being a private school, is limited in the amount of diversity it could have relative to boarding schools.

“Students that live abroad will go to boarding schools, but you don’t get that at a private school. BB&N is limited [in terms of a diverse student body] but doing well with what they have.”

A teacher acknowledged that socioeconomic diversity is lacking at BB&N. “The School recognizes that its greatest shortcoming is economic diversity… Parents might be spending up to $150,000 which means that they have huge resources. Maybe 25% of [students] come from lower middle classes, but the vast majority represents the smallest minority of America or local society.”

So, while the school seems in some ways cognizant of diversity issues and the need to promote long-term incorporation of diversity, these efforts are not yet satisfactory to some. Granted the small sample size of BB&N from which we drew for interviews, we hope that this paper, by featuring people’s opinions and quantifying the themes that recurred in their responses, provides a small sense of what diversity and efforts to improve the appreciation of diversity look like at BB&N.