Building an Academic Identity: Benefits and Drawbacks in Multicultural Engineering Classrooms

In our globalized world, multicultural instruction poses various challenges to educators and students alike. While these challenges have been traditionally recognized in the field of social sciences, they have been neglected by the natural sciences. Our study aims to illustrate the importance of cultural differences in science and engineering education. Based on data gathered in two multicultural environments, at two academic institutions from two different countries, we highlight the students’ perceptions of the cultural differences, how they help build an academic identity and how they influence the teaching and learning process.