Student Teachers as Designers: Addressing Multicultural Classroom Challenges Through Design-Based Education

Multiculturality is a defining feature of contemporary education. Teachers encounter learners with diverse linguistic, cultural and pedagogical backgrounds, as well as differing expectations of teaching, authority and learning processes. Traditional approaches to intercultural competence often emphasise cultural awareness and sensitivity as well as understanding of cultural differences.

This article presents a new optional course offered in the Professional Teacher Education Programme at Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK) and reflects on its outcomes as well as student feedback. This course implemented design-based pedagogy, or design thinking, with the goal of moving from mere awareness towards practical, context-sensitive pedagogical tools.  The course proved successful in supporting student teachers in analysing authentic challenges in multicultural classrooms and co-creating pedagogical responses to them.

Course Outline and Objectives

­The optional course The Art of Teaching Multicultural Groups – Co-creation of New Concepts and Practices (5 ECTS), offered in spring 2026, was designed to bridge theory and practice by equipping student teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to teach and support learners from diverse cultural, linguistic and pedagogical backgrounds.

The competence objectives were to support the student teachers to

• recognise that education is a product of cultural heritage as well as societal and political changes,
• identify their own intercultural competence and development needs as a teacher in a multicultural environment,
• apply acquired cultural knowledge to their own teaching tools and practices, and
• co-create and share new teaching solutions in educational contexts.

The teacher students worked with the above theoretical and practical context through real-world development tasks by following the principles of a design-based education (DBE) approach (e.g., Coelen et al., 2021). The DBE process is popularly divided into five steps:  empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test. In order to empathise the course participants with the lived reality of multicultural learning settings, the course began with an interactive lecture of theoretical approaches and a general discussion of the participants’ own experiences. This was followed by a definition phase, where the student groups explored the development needs related to multicultural classrooms and chose one need that they wanted to work on. They then brainstormed, explored solutions and, lastly, created a prototype to meet the identified need.

In practice, the course consisted of three online days as well as offline collaborative tasks meant to be tackled in peer groups. The online days focussed on 1) introduction and theory, 2) guidance and definition of the development focus, and 3) a final seminar with peer group presentations of their solutions. The timeframe of the course did not allow for a practical pilot implementation of the proposed solutions.

It is important to note that we, as the teachers of the course, purposefully avoided giving examples of possible prototype solutions. We knew that this would create uncertainty, but we regarded it as a necessary step to foster the student groups’ own imagination and creativity.

Theoretical Framework of the Course

The theoretical framework was structured around six core themes: impact of cultural background, cultural sensitivity, conceptions of humanity, awareness of discriminatory practices, intercultural communication skills and pedagogical cultures.

A central premise of the course was that intercultural learning begins with self-awareness. Rather than focusing on “knowing about others,” students were encouraged to examine how their own assumptions, habits and responses shape pedagogical practices. This aligns with Bennett’s (2004) view of intercultural sensitivity as a developmental shift from an ethnocentric perspective, where one’s own culture is taken as a central way to understand the world, to an ethnorelative perspective where one’s own culture is understood as just one way among many to exist in the world. In addition, the course premise also aligned with Deardorff’s (2020) emphasis on openness and respect as basic requirements for the development of intercultural competence.

The course theory also explored the relevance of teachers’ conceptions of humanity (Susimetsä & Lemechkova-Toivonen, 2024), cultural theories (e.g., Hofstede, 2011; World Values Survey, 2025) and high and low context cultures (Hall & Hall, 2020; Lardner, 2003) to pedagogy. Differences in directness, silence, feedback, non-verbal communication and hierarchy can easily be misinterpreted in educational settings. Similarly, differences in survival vs self-expression values, or traumatic experiences, can appear as differences in student motivation or activity. In this context, survival values refer to values and attitudes that may, for example, lead students to be more focussed on their studies, and to expect concrete benefits from it, in order to secure their livelihood. Self-expression values, on the other hand, refer to people who have “secure” living conditions and social support systems and may pay more attention to their own creative wishes or recreational activities.

Another important facet was students’ identity development in a multicultural context. Commins (personal communication, March, 19, 2018) notes that schools are settings in which students’ identities develop, and the learning environment can undermine or support this development. Therefore, it is important for teachers to recognise and reflect on their beliefs and values and understand the sociopolitical nature of the education system and society in general. This entails understanding how certain majority groups may inherently receive more support than minorities.

Students and Their Feedback

The optional course was attended by eight student teachers. Three of them were participants of the International Teacher Education Programme, while the others came from groups using Finnish as their language of study.

The participants reported that the course increased their awareness of cultural diversity in education and improved their understanding of intercultural communication. Furthermore, they reported that the course offered them a chance to reflect deeper on their own assumptions and teaching practices. Overall, the participants reported increased skills, knowledge and competence aligning with the course objectives (from 4.5 to 6.2 on a scale from 1–7).

As a clear benefit of the pedagogical model, the respondents indicated that they had received practical understanding, rather than purely theoretical knowledge. Working in multicultural peer groups was also seen as an enriching experience.

“This course significantly supported my development as a teacher by enhancing my ability to design inclusive pedagogical strategies.” – Student teacher 1

The design-based structure was generally perceived as positive. Aspects that were mentioned included the course’s connection to real-life challenges, collaborative work and work-life applicability, as well as how the outputs could be used in participants’ own teaching contexts.

“I’ve learned that the art of multicultural teaching is not just about imparting knowledge, but about creating a safe ecosystem where cultural differences are respected, and each student is empowered to take ownership of their own learning journey through community engagement.” – Student teacher 2

In addition, the student teachers valued the freedom to choose their development focus and the opportunity to create concrete teaching solutions.

“I learned more about the theories, and I think that through them, I can create more solutions.” – Student teacher 3

The feedback on the dialogical aspects of the course was very positive.

“Open discussion and having an option to share your ideas was a wonderful experience I can continue practicing this with my own students now in future.” – Student teacher 4

“I particularly valued the integration of the online feedback sessions [. . .] and the final seminar, which created a meaningful space for peer learning and constructive dialogue.” – Student teacher 1

The participants also recognised some challenges related to the DBE method and course scope: three students wished that the course had lasted longer. One respondent wished for a tighter scope for the assignments to reduce uncertainty, and one wished that there were more guidance sessions with the course lecturers. However, since the implementation worked well for most students, this course implementation will be offered again (with a similar scope) in the next term.

Conclusion

The course discussed in this article shows how design-based pedagogy can support student teachers’ professional development by engaging them in the co-creation of pedagogical solutions. Although creative assignments with no model answers require more tolerance of uncertainty than more traditional types of learning assignments, the open-endedness also taught the students to engage creatively in problem solving, rather than looking for ready-made solutions. Additionally, the design-based course implementation kept theory from remaining abstract: Theoretical concepts became relevant because students needed to apply them for analysing concrete problems and to justify their design choices. It was especially heartening to see that some students would have liked to spend more time on the topic than a single optional course allowed.

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