Cultural Diversity: Practising what we preach in higher education

Preparing teachers to teach students from a wide range of cultural backgrounds has become an issue that concerns many researchers and educators. This paper argues that multicultural educational policies are no more than rhetoric unless such policies are put into practice. Using the format of a personalised narrative, the paper outlines the story of three people from three different cultural backgrounds, who use their own cultural diversity as a model of successful intercultural teamwork. Set against a background of an inflexible University administration system, conflicting cultural value systems, cultural commitments and attitudes towards status and power, the narrative records the human dimension of teamwork as team members plan and implement a multicultural education course for undergraduate teacher education students at an Australian university.