Imagine you teach a PBL class, and your students represent different genders, ethnicity, as well as religious and social class groups. You inform the students they will work in group and ask them to split into teams of 4.

The students start looking and walking around. While doing that, they try to negotiate with whom to form the group. Now let’s imagine what  some students may be thinking:

“She is wearing glasses, she must be smart.”

“I only want to work with girls.”

“He is from another country, I should avoid him.”

“I want to work with the ones that wear burka too.”

In this scenario, some students base their opinions on stereotypes. Strong prejudice prevents these students from forming groups with certain peers. In situations where the teacher would order random groups, chances are that prejudiced students would obstruct communication.

Hence, stereotypes can :

• hinder communications,
• lead to miscommunication
• exclude some students from the PBL groups.

While the teacher could just allow students to work along cultural clusters, this would not prepare the students for employment in multicultural environment.