Capitalizing on Cultural Backgrounds

1. Language Used for Social Interaction Versus Language Used for Academic Learning

Understanding Social Language and Academic Language

There is a distinction between language used for basic social interaction, and language used for academic purposes.

• Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are language skills needed for social conversation purposes, that is they can speak English well enough to interact with their peers, talk on the telephone, and negotiate meanings with adults.
• Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) refers to formal language skills, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing, used for academic learning. Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency refers to the ability to demonstrate academic competence in the new language orally and in writing at a level commensurate with that of their native-speaking peers. For students with no prior schooling and no primary language support (i.e. neither the student nor members of their family have attended school in their native language) may take as much as seven to ten years to acquire academic skills in their new language. (Thomas & Collier, 2002). In other words, newcomers may need substantial time and educational support to develop English skills necessary for success in school.

In addition to mastery of academic English language terms and sentence constructs, academic language use, whether oral or written, requires a growing reservoir of background knowledge pertinent to any given discipline, along with knowledge of the conventions and structures of oral and written English.

Equally important for students new to English is explicit instruction in socially and culturally appropriate ways of using English, oral and written. At the primary levels, socialization of children into the conventions of sharing, saying “please” and “thank you” is a normal part of the curriculum.  It is also a part of our cultural norms. At the upper grade levels, teachers assume that these culturally appropriate speech patterns and behaviors have already been learned. It is frequently assumed that the rules of classroom behavior such as taking turns, talking, listening, and responding to other students and the teacher in appropriate ways have also been learned in the earlier grades.  None of these social/cultural conventions can be taken for granted with respect to the English Language learner.

Many teachers and stakeholders make the often logical mistake of placing ELLs into more advanced classes before they are ready. Because they may have a good foundation and making good progress in social language, and the younger they are the more native-like they may sound), it is easily perceived that the students may know more English than they actually do. Although learners might be accomplished speakers and sound native-like, academically they might be years behind native speakers. this lag may be explained by weak or interrupted schooling in the home country, or by months of non-comprehensible academic instruction delivered in English, or a combination of both (Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002).

Cummins (1981, 1982) analyzed the standardized test scores of ELLs and compared them to native English speakers. He found that, while the ELLS could acquire a social language rapidly, generally within two years, it took five to seven to acquire academic language. Compound this with a child who speaks with no foreign accent, they can be easily confused as proficient. When a student has strong academic knowledge in a first language, it can be transferred to the second language. When a student has a strong foundation in a native language, ti is assumed that the transfer to the second is more a question of language than of knowledge learning. Thus it is understandable that a child who learns to read in his or her native language first, regardless of the native language, understands the concept of reading. Therefore in ELL reading class, the concept of deciphering print is already understood; only the new language must be learned. Cummin's idea of Common Underlying Proficiency explains why an international high school student with strong academic background from the native country might fare better academically in an American school than in a second language learner who was brought up in the United States.

The time required for students to acquire social language is up to two years, and academic language five to ten years - this is  a great difference, and it can have a profound effect on academic achievement (Cummins, 1981a, 1982). Students arriving in the United States with limited or interrupted education will have a much more difficult time catching up to their English-speaking peers academically.

2. Mitigating Bias and Stereotypes in the Classroom

In general, the following suggestions, taken from Tools for Teaching. (Davis, B. G., can help to mitigate any biases or stereotypes that may exist in your classroom:

Treat each student as an individual and as an equal to other students; avoid singling them out. Convey the same level of respect and confidence in the abilities of all your students.

• Be sensitive to, and eradicate, any terminology that refers to specific ethnic and cultural groups. Avoid referencing cultural groups altogether.
• Allow students to gain a sense for the cultural climate in your classroom. Tell them that you want to hear from them if any aspect of the climate is making them uncomfortable.
• Introduce discussions of diversity at department meetings.
• Become more informed about the history and culture of groups that may be represented in your classroom.
• Whenever possible, select texts and readings whose language is gender-neutral and free of cultural-bias such as stereotypes. Point out the shortcomings of any material that does not meet these criteria should it be stumbled upon inadvertently. Discuss ways to correct it, and make it culturally-neutral.
• Aim for an inclusive curriculum that reflects the perspectives and experiences of a your students. Discuss and brainstorm ways to make curriculum and materials more culturally-friendly
• Bring in guests to foster diversity in your classrooms to demonstrate other cultures through book readings, book talks, cooking, or other cultural activities to create greater cultural awareness among students.

Adapted from: Davis, B. G. (2009). Tools for Teaching. Jossey-Bass

3. Cultures of Power

Lisa Delpit, author, researcher, and minority advocate, speaks extensively about  power and a type of responsive pedagogy that allows for equal educational access for all students. In Other People’s Children (1995) and The Silenced Dialogue (1988), she researches curriculum, and writes about findings and  discussions with teachers in classrooms across the country. She also interviews students and their parents of various cultural backgrounds. While these events took place over a decade ago, she continues to raise some important and interesting issues about bias in curriculum. A curriculum called Distar was one in which she studied extensively, is a program that provided reading instruction using scripted lessons in order to teach higher-level critical thinking, similar to current curriculum focused on the teaching of reading. She said that the curriculum unfairly characterized its success because it taught and built upon concepts that children with families that already had a strong literacy foundation would have already come to school with, and thus made progress with the program. Those without such a background in literacy were deemed “remedial” and consequently assigned and tracked accordingly. She claimed that in schools with many second language learners and struggling readers (often minority children, poor, or other marginalized minority groups), this program had disastrous potential for labeling and widen achievement gaps (Delpit, 1988).

Among her suggestions were to provide children with the content that other families from different cultural orientation would have been provided, to include looking at their background, ensuring each classroom taught the strategies appropriate for all of its children, versus appropriate for only those who had requisite background.

She also addressed what was labeled a “culture of power,” wherein if families had been part of the majority culture, or “culture of power,” and had lived by the rules of that culture they would be farther ahead and less likely to be labeled. Instead they are considered to be uncaring and irresponsible parents in the absence of such knowledge and understanding of the culture of power, or dominant culture. Without knowledge, they can’t transmit the cultural rules to their children. Instead they tend to teach them another culture, one in which they need in order to survive in their communities.

Her suggestions include:

• Immersing students in meaningful contexts rather than decontextualized subskills, allowing students to become experts in their own and in what they are already strong in, while transitioning them into the culture of power.
• Children need to not just know the culture of power, but understand its “arbitrariness” and the codes that that power and all the relationships ensued represent.
• Too often children are discouraged with the educational system, and give up altogether; encourage them to move forward with competence and confidence. Let this process begin by helping them understand the strengths of their own culture, and how it can help them understand, and work within, the new (without sacrificing their own).

Delpit identifies five aspects of the Culture of Power:

1. Issues of power are enacted in the classroom, and they include the power the teacher has over the students, that the publishers have within the textbooks that teach the students in how information is presented and how people are represented (minority groups in particular).
2. There are codes and rules for participating in power, and that this culture of power takes on linguistic form with certain codes for communication and representation of self through walking, thinking, talking dressing, and interacting with others.
3. The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power, and that the culture of school reflects these upper middle class values.
4. Teaching the culture of power doesn’t translate into understanding, and is often more confusing than understood for those not a member of the culture.
5. Members of the culture of power are not typically aware that they operate within it, or that it even exists.

Dialogue is offered about how “progressive” teachers using current teaching methods should examine those methods because they impede low-income and minority students from access to the culture of power, or the mainstream institutions that established them. The imbalancing of power has a detrimental affect on society, and furthers the stereotypes those within the culture of power continue to perpetuate by focusing on the negative versus the positive.

She suggest that we provide opportunities for minorities and those that are disenfranchised to determine who they are, involve them in a power that helps to define themselves by acknowledging their own cultures, allowing them to embrace pride in it, and pride about where they come from rather than having them conform completely to the Culture of Power.

References:

Delpit, L. D. (1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press.

Delpit, Lisa D. 1988. The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children. Harvard Educational Review 58:280–298. pp. 286, 296.

4. Bringing Culture Into Our Classrooms

The Minority Achievement Gap

According to Diplomas Count: An Essential Guide to Graduation Policy and Rates (Olson, 2006),  in 2006 more than 1.2 million students, most of whom were minority students, did not graduate from high school with a regular diploma. Close to 30 percent of students nationally do not graduate, of which 51.6 percent are Black students, 47.4 percent are American Indians, Alaskan Native students, and 55.6 percent are Hispanic students. Compare this to over three-quarters white, non-Hispanic students that will graduate on time.

According to Diplomas Count, only 60 percent of students in urban schools, versus 75 percent in suburban, will graduate. 

Embracing Diversity in Our Classrooms

Students with various cultural backgrounds and a range of experiences with ensuing perspectives can bring a great deal of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity to our classrooms. These resources can become powerful teaching tools in bringing awareness to food, culture, religion, discoveries, ideas, literature, art, music, and so forth to enrich the American culture by virtue of our classrooms. Not to mention it will stimulate a challenge to the “status quo” – is this such a bad thing?

As we build a repertoire of approaches to teach and learn by capitalizing on the multitude of cultural experiences in our classrooms, we can also develop interpersonal skills, communication, and language proficiencies. Many studies have shown that when students work collaboratively with peers from various cultures, they will be better prepared to face the world outside of the classroom, for 21^st century college and career readiness.

Here are some approaches that foster successful teaching in diverse classrooms (Zeichner, 1992):

• Teachers should develop and communicate a clear sense for who their students are ethnically and culturally. This understanding will go a long way in garnering their commitment and cooperation to becoming high academic achievers.   

• Communicate high expectations equally for all students, despite the stage of language development one might be in. Language development can be supported with adjusted and differentiated curriculum, while holding students accountable for the same expectations in progress.

• Develop a bond with students instead of seeing them as “those others.”

• Hold students accountable through an academically challenging curriculum that fosters higher-level cognitive skills.

• Focus instruction on meaningful content in the most interactive and collaborative learning environments as possible.

• Include the perspectives and contributions of all students equally.

• Scaffold curriculum to link academic challenging content to the cultural framework and resources students bring to the classroom. For instance, nurture their ethnic pride while introducing new content to challenge them, debate with them, and stimulate peer discussions with.

The following considerations can help you to understand your students’ strengths, learning needs, and what they can contribute to your classroom in order to deliver them needed interventions within a new culture with possibly an even larger learning curve combined.

• The level of the family's socioeconomic circumstances and resources. These often correlate to school success.
• Extent and level of prior education in the country of origin, also associated with success in school.
• Level and extent of literacy in the home language. The more literacy in the native language at home, the more likely students will assimilate English in the classroom, and experience academic success.
• Extent of home family support systems – languages spoken, English language used, single-parent households, number of other family members living in the home. These factors also correlate to academic success.
• Showing students how much you care about them will go a long way in garnering their devotion, getting to know and understand them, and nurturing their hopes and dreams in a genuine way that builds trust.
• Integrate curricular themes to bring awareness to all students. Share hopes, dreams, doubts, fears about cultural diffusion, cultural differences, and integrating cultures both in and out of school.

• Discuss and practice building character, such as what it means to be an “admirable character” and what good character attributes are in general. Discuss ideas of love, friendship, and good parenting, helping strangers, warm, poverty, and tolerance within the understanding of human rights.

• Understand and learn to recognize the strengths and challenges faced by your second language students in order to refer them and their families to appropriate community-based services, such as homework help, library programs, after school programs, programs that provide Internet access.

Tapping into students’ backgrounds will not only enhance learning, but contribute to their sense of belonging, comfort with the new culture and its assimilation, and devotion to learning. This feeds a self-esteem and motivation that validates them.  Here are some suggestions:

• Use semantic webs to find out what they already know and how this knowledge relates to their cultural framework. For example, the word “culture” could be drawn in the center, with all students contributing to what the word means to them. Next, they would discuss all those elements related to culture, expanding the subtopics. Students ideally will come across more that interests them, and this can become fodder for further research either independently, or as a class.
• Students can be asked to voice their opinion about a topic presented, then return to research books and other resources to expand on, or even change, their opinions and perceptions.

• Selection of culturally relevant curriculum and instructional materials is crucial. Material that reflects diversity, students’ heritage, cultures, and other aspects of their cultural and ethnic identities will go a long way in garnering devotion and the self-esteem needed to become strengthened, empowered learners with practice in language, thinking, reading and writing in meaningful contexts.

• Always select text and supplemental materials that reflect other cultures, written from multiple viewpoints in art, history, poetry, journals, and even illustrations that represent content and ideas.

• Rodriguez (1992) observed that high school students felt left out of the curriculum in the absence of anything that related to their own cultures. When presented with information pertinent to their own cultures, or even others outside of the mainstream culture, students feel valued, empowered, and thus resulting in higher rates of participation. 

Au & Jordan, 1981; Boggs, 1985; Coballes-Vega, 1992; Gallimore, Boggs, & Jordan, 1974.