Background: Social and cultural diversity in higher education is increasing with regards to globalization, mobility, migration and the opportunity to study abroad, as well as, participate in courses and programs online. This creates a challenge for educators to effectively manage social and cultural diversity in higher education. The social and cultural diversity of students is frequently associated with learning problems connected to social and cultural stereotypes based on ethnicity and nationality. These stereotypes continue to be pervasive and ubiquitous explanatory models for obstacles and impairments for teaching, learning and achievement.  

Aim: The purpose of this paper is to analyze pre-service teachers’ conceptualizations of culture and how these conceptualizations can potentially interfere with knowledge construction as a social practice. 

Method: The method is based on text analysis of course assignments of pre-service teachers in the teacher education program in Sweden. These students are in their third semester of the program and are specializing in intercultural perspectives.

Results: Pre-service teachers' conceptions of culture exhibit a strong essentialist notion of culture. Culture is used as a simplified and explanatory model of social and cultural difference that ignores implicit and explicit norms, criteria, values, expectations and behavior requirements in the process of knowledge construction. I propose that stereotyping and branding culture as innate differences can conceal the pedagogical device and the underlying issue of knowledge and knowledge construction as a social practice that goes beyond identity politics.

Conclusions:  Stereotyping and cultural branding can impede critical examination of what, how and for whom knowledge is constructed.

Keywords: Culture, race, ethnicity, gender, knowledge construction, critical pedagogy