Issues and Recommendations for Teaching an Ethnic/Culture-Based Course

In this article, we present potential pedagogical concerns and strategies for instructors who teach ethnic/culture-based courses. Four specific issues form the basis of this article: (a) student comfort with ambiguous concepts, (b) different levels of student ethnic/cultural identity development, (c) student fears in examining their biases and assumptions, and (d) student emotions when acquiring new and sometimes value-conflicting information. We provide recommendations to facilitate student learning and an open classroom environment.