Addressing Cultural and Socioeconomic Diversity

Chapter 5 Summary:

Culture describes how a group of people perceive the world; formulates beliefs; evaluates objects, ideas, and experiences; and behaves. It can be thought of as a blueprint that guides the ways in which individuals within a group do such important things as communicate with others, handle time and space, express emotions, and approach work and play.

A culturally aware teacher will emphasize the ways in which American society has been enriched by the contributions of many different ethnic groups and will not schedule a major exam or field trip for a day when certain students are likely to be out of schoo in observance of a religious holiday. They also should seek to foster an understanding of and mutual respect for the values, beliefs, and practices of different cultural groups. This is called multicultural education.

The Rise of Multiculturalism

1. Melting pot phenomenon- the assimiliation of diverse ethnic groups into one national mainstream
2. Cultural pluralism (cultural diversity)- a society should strive to maintain the different cultures that reside within it; that each culture within a society should be respected by others; and that individuals within a society have the right to participate in all aspects of that society without having to give up their cultural indentity.

Ethnicity and Social Class

1. Culture provides a set of norms that guide what we say and how we say it, what we feel, and what we do in various situations. There are two factors that distinguish one culture from another: ethnicity and social class.
2. Ethnic group- a collection of people who identify with one another on the basis of one or more of the following characteristics: country from which one's ancestors came, religion, language, values, political interests, economic interests, and behavior patterns.
3. Christine Bennett identified 5 aspects of ethnicity that are potential sources of student-student and student-teacher misunderstanding: verbal communication, nonverbal communication, time orientation, social values, and instructional formats and learning processes.
4. Classroom discussions may not go as planned if teachers have students who do not understand- or feel overly confined by - the mainstream convention of "you take a turn and then somebody else takes a turn".
5. Because of differences in clutural experiences, some students may be reluctant to speak or perform in public, whereas others may prefer exchanges that resemble a free-for-all shouting match.
6. Ethnic group members differ in verbal and nonverbal communication patterns.
7. They may also hold different values.
8. Ethnic group members may favor different learning arrangements and processes.
9. Some may prefer small-group learning centers over independent seatwork. Others may favor learning tasks that allow for interpersonal interaction, multiple activities, and the use of multiple sensory modalities. To teach math to these students you might involve them in problems that deal with buying, trading, or borrowing.
10. Teachers may need to wait longer for students to answer questions because some may be accustomed to longer periods of silence between speakers.
11. Some may prefer collaborative learning, open-ended questioning, inductive reasoning, whole-to-part sequencing of lessons, emphasis on visual learning strategies, and emphasizing students' cultural identity.
12. Social class is an indicator of an individual's or a family's relative standing in society. It can be determined by factors such as annual income, occupation, amount of education, place of residence, types of organizations to which the family members belong, manner of dress, and material possessions.
13. Socioeconomic status is determined by the first 3 things above by the federal gov't.
14. Minority students have lower levels of motivation, lower self-esteem, and weaker academic skills and they also more impulsive.
15. They also often score lower on tests and drop out of school sooner.
16. Acheivement gap between low-SES minority students and white students due to living conditions, family environment, characteristics of the student and classroom environment.
17. Low-SES children more likely to live in stressful environment that interferes with studying.
18. Middle-SES parents expose their children to a wider variety of experiences than Low-SES parents such as buying them more books, educational toys and games, to take them on more trips that expand their knowledge of the world, and to talk to them more.
19. Need for achievement is a drive to accomplish tasks and is thought to be one of the main reasons that people vary in their willingness to invest time and energy in the achievement of a goal.
20. Classroom atmosphere, teachers' approaches connected with achievement levels of Low-SES students. (a list on page 153 explains more attitudes and approaches that are included)
21. Pygmalion effect (the self-fulfilling prophecy, or teacher expectancy effect)- the expectations that teachers have for student performance and how those expectations affect the quality and quantity of work that students exhibit. Students come to behave in a way that is consistent with what the teacher expects.
22. There seem to be a limited effect on teacher expectancy and IQ scores, but a strong effect on achievement and participation.
23. Teacher expectancies influenced by social class, ethnic background, achievement, attractiveness, and gender.

Multicultural Education Programs

1. James Banks describes 4 approaches to multicultural education: Contributions approach (historical figures whose values are consistent with American mainstream culture are studied and any that challenge those views are ignored), Ethnic additive approach (an instructional unit composed of themes, points of view, and accomplishments are added to the curriculum), Transformation approach (there is no one valid way of understanding people, events, concepts, and themes, and Decision Making and Social Action Approach (it incorporates all of the components of the previous approaches and adds the requirement that students make decisions and take action concerning a concept, issue, or problem being studied).
2. Multicultural lessons are organized around key concepts such as immigration; culture; identity; perspectives; ethnic institutions; demographic, social, political, and economic status; racism and discrimination; intraethnic diversity; and acculturation.
3. On page 161 the book discusses several characteristics that contribute to the success some teachers have in teaching students from culturallyt diverse backgrounds that were developed through research by Eugene Garcia.
4. 3 instructional tactics that are recommended most often by proponents of multicultural education: peer tutoring, cooperative learnin, and mastery learning.
5. Peer tutoring- involves the teaching of one student by another. When children with different cognitive schemes are forced to interact with each other, cognitive conflict results which then causes growth to occur because they try to resolve this conflict by comparing and contrasting each other's views.
6. Cooperative learning- by working in small, heterogeneous groups (of 4 or 5) and by helping one another master the various aspects of a particular task, students will be more motivated to learn, will learn more than if they had to work independently, and will forge stronger interpersonal relationships than they would by working alone.
7. Mastery learning- an approach to teaching and learning that assumes that most students can master curriculum if certain conditions are established: they have sufficient aptitude to learn a particular task; have sufficient ability to understand instruction; are willing to persevere until they attain a certain level of mastery; are allowed whatever time is necessary to attain mastery; and are provided with good-quality instruction.
8. The basic mastery learning approach is to specify clearly what is to be learned, organize the content into a sequence of relatively short units, use a variety of instructional methods and materials, allow students to progres through the material at their own rate, monitor student progress in order to identify budding problems and provide corrective feedback, and allow students to relearn and retest on each unit until mastery is attained.
9. Textbooks are just a starting point. A teacher who is committed to providing students a strong multicultural experience will have to seek out high-quality supplementary materials.
10. These multicultural programs are justified in several ways on page 165.
11. The basic purpose of multicultural education is to give students the opportunity to learn about the characteristics of people from different cultures and to try to understand how those individuals view the world.
12. Telecommunication projects allow students from different places and varied backgrounds to interact with one another, sharing ideas, and experiecnes and learning new points of view.
13. They can also allow more questioning and interaction than occurs in face to face settings with some groups.
14. Email exchange programs can also be used.

Page 167 some ideas to use technology to bridge the gap

iEARN (www.iearn.org) a program that allows teacher and students to work together online on various education projects

Interactive Forums and Learning Circles (interactive project-based partnerships which lasts 14 weeks)

4Directions Project (http://4directions.org)

Reading Upgrade- web-based program which uses music adn video within an interactive environment to maintain student attention to and interest in lessons that focus on decoding, phonemic awareness, fluency and comprehension

Bilingual Education

1. 3 approaches that are used: Transition program (their is a rapid shift to English proficiency), Maintenance Programs (focus on maintaining native-language comptenence), and Two-way bilingual TWB (features instruction in both languages) features of this is included on page 175.

Life experiences:

I have not ever lived in an area where bilingual education or multicultural education was a large part of education. The biggest thing that I have run into with this would be children who are Jehovah witness and can not participate in parties at the holidays or saying the pledge of allegiance. These are then just dealt with on an individual basis with the parents and teachers. Now I do live in an area where low-SES can become a factor many times. We do have many students who may not have the money for trips, supplies or etc. The teachers have always been great about finding away to help each of them if possible. We have various groups that help give school supplies before school starts for students who do not have the money for these. The teachers have also been very good about helping the students if they do not have the supplies for a project by giving them to them or by helping them during or after school.

Blog:

This blog is still helping me to be able to organize my thoughts, ideas, or important information. I think it has been great to be able to have a place to write down those neat ideas that you read about in the lesson book.

On pages 144-145, 156-158, and 168-170 there are great ideas or suggestion for teaching in the classroom. I will come back later and add these to my blog.

Discussion Boards:

I liked what one student put in the discussion board. We are not just a melting pot but a salad bowl. This is so true because we are not always melted together but just mixed up in an area and we tend to keep our own individualized ideas, values and customs.

Most of us had the same ideas about teaching these student. It is just another part of teaching students in and individualized way just like learning styles. We need to be aware of their values and where they come from so that we can incorporate it into our teaching strategies.

We also all seemed to feel the same way about students not having all the supplies or materials needes sometimes. We all would help them out to the greatest extent possible.

Educational Blog:

I had a tough time trying to find a blog that went along with what I want to do, but Ms. Graff helped me out. She found a really great blog for speech language patholgist. I really enjoy it. There is alot of neat ideas and great information. It is located at http://tinyeye.wordpress.com/ . It is called TinyEye: Mind over Meltdown. She describes that we all need to sit back and relax sometimes. Her quote "Next time you feel a meltdown sneaking up – revisit the battery chargers. Also, grab that old hair brush and start singing." What a great idea that we all need to remember. She also talks about Telepractice, tips for parents, ASHA's public policy for Speech, and so much more. I can't wait until I can have a few spare moments to completely read through each of her blogs and add more great information to my blog.

Question of the Week: How will you become an effective multicultural teacher? What teaching methods will you use to guarantee you are effective with your students?

I think it is just like incorporating learning styles into teaching, we must also incorporate a multicultural education into our classroom. Even if we do not have students from other cultures, all students need to be given information about other cultures, areas and religions. Our ideas and values are not the only thing that is important. We need to have a vast knowledge of information. I want to be able to use technology to the greatest extent possible because we are in area that is not abundant with people from other cultures. So by using technology such as internet, email, and other web-based programs I can allow ny students to interact with a variety of children from around the world.