Transcript Teaching Students Whose Race, Class, Culture or Language

Teaching Students
Whose Race, Class, Culture or Language Differs
from Your Own
Chapter 6
Achievement Gap


Achievement Gap is the disparity in learning
between African American or Latino students and
white middle-class students, usually reported based
on results of standardized test.
The achievement gap can be narrowed by:




Classroom structure
Teacher expectations
School culture and climate
Teachers and schools can have a profound positive
effect on the achievement of racial and ethnic
minority and low-income students.
Demographics

What changing demographics in the United
States means for teachers:




Language differences
Varied economic experiences
Cultural differences
Teachers Must:





Bridge the gap
Overcome personal bias
Create a supportive classroom environment
Respect all students
Become familiar with cultural backgrounds
Cultural Misunderstandings

Cultural misunderstandings between
teachers and students result in:




Conflicts
Distrust
Hostility
School failure
Diversity: Asset or Deficit

Deficit Model:


Assuming inaccurately that students from lowincome families or racial and ethnic minority
families lack substantial useful knowledge or
resources upon which to build and support a
student’s education.
Inaccurate assumptions about low-income
families:


Knowledge does not match academic goals.
Families have different values about education.
Knowing Your Students Helps You Teach

When teachers’ backgrounds differ
from their students the teacher should:


set high expectations for these students
be proactive in learning about their
cultures, backgrounds and families.
Resource: Funds of Knowledge
*Funds of Knowledge* is knowledge
students and families possess from
their own cultural and community
experiences that enables them to
operate successfully in their own
cultures and communities, but often
mismatched with knowledge required
to be successful in school, and is often
devalued.
Characterizations

Make a character map, create a character bulletin board, or
describe the following students based on your first, instinctual
reactions:







a teenager from a family that has strong and vocal Democratic
Party ties;
a teenager from a family that has strong and vocal Republican
Party ties;
a significantly overweight teenage girl;
a primary school student from an affluent family who is an only
child;
a middle school student whose two older siblings you had in
class several years ago--each of whom was often a
troublemaker;
an Asian boy who is the son of a respected university math
professor;
a teenage boy who is thin, almost frail, and very uncoordinated
for his age.
Devaluing Students in School:
How Does It Happen?

Whether students experience schools as valued
or devalued depends on:





Teachers
Administrators
Other Professionals
Staff Communication
Self-fulfilling prophecy is a teacher’s
expectation about a student which may come true
whether or not there is evidence to support that
expectation.

In what ways do you think your expectations of the
students on the previous slide would influence your
teaching?
How Teachers Communicate
through Their Expectations
Not Listening to or acknowledging Not encouraging particular
students
students
Failure is inevitable for some
students
Not allowing enough time to
think during discussions
Systematically disadvantaging
particular groups
Identifying and correcting
misbehavior more frequently
Calling on students less
frequently
Correcting behavior more
harshly
Giving lower grades for
comparable work
Engaging less in informal talk
Establishing relationships with
parents from own racial / ethnic
group
Greeting some students with a
smile and others without
Rosenthal and Jacobson

1968 Classroom Study


They told teachers that Harvard researchers had
developed a new IQ text that could predict which
students were about to bloom intellectually.
After testing, they reported to the teachers which
students were “bloomers”.



These “bloomers” were really chosen at random.
There was no IQ test that could predict which students
were on the verge of an intellectual spurt.
Eight months later, students were tested, and
those who had been assigned as “bloomers”
outperformed the other students.
Eliza Doolittle and Howard Gardner

What links Eliza Doolittle, the
fictional character from
George Bernard Shaw’s
Pygmalion (which was the
basis of the movie My Fair
Lady) and Harvard
psychologist Howard Gardner
together?

According to Linda and Bruce
Campbell’s book Multiple
Intelligences and Student
Achievement, it is the Pygmalion
Effect (or self-fulfilling prophecy).
Eliza Doolittle

In the play, Eliza emphatically states, “You
see, really and truly, apart from the things
anyone can pick up (the dressing and the
proper way of speaking, and so on) the
difference between a lady and a flower girl is
not how she behaves, but how she's
treated. I shall always be a flower girl to
Professor Higgins, because he always treats
me as a flower girl, and always will; but I
know I can be a lady to you, because you
always treat me as a lady, and always will.”
What is MI?

For Howard Gardner,
intelligence is:

the ability to create an
effective product or offer a
service that is valued in a
culture;

a set of skills that make it
possible for a person to
solve problems in life;

the potential for finding or
creating solutions for
problems, which involves
gathering new knowledge.
Multiple Intelligences

Linguistic Intelligence: the capacity to use language to
express what's on your mind and to understand other people.
Any kind of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or other person for
whom language is an important stock in trade has great
linguistic intelligence.

Logical/Mathematical Intelligence: the capacity to
understand the underlying principles of some kind of causal
system, the way a scientist or a logician does; or to manipulate
numbers, quantities, and operations, the way a mathematician
does.

Musical Rhythmic Intelligence: the capacity to think in music;
to be able to hear patterns, recognize them, and perhaps
manipulate them. People who have strong musical intelligence
don't just remember music easily, they can't get it out of their
minds, it's so omnipresent.
Multiple Intelligences

Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence: the capacity to use your whole
body or parts of your body (your hands, your fingers, your arms)
to solve a problem, make something, or put on some kind of
production. The most evident examples are people in athletics or
the performing arts, particularly dancing or acting.

Spatial Intelligence: the ability to represent the spatial world
internally in your mind -- the way a sailor or airplane pilot
navigates the large spatial world, or the way a chess player or
sculptor represents a more circumscribed spatial world. Spatial
intelligence can be used in the arts or in the sciences.

Naturalist Intelligence: the ability to discriminate among living
things (plants, animals) and sensitivity to other features of the
natural world (clouds, rock configurations). This ability was
clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers,
and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist
or chef.
Multiple Intelligences

Intrapersonal Intelligence: having an understanding of
yourself; knowing who you are, what you can do, what you
want to do, how you react to things, which things to avoid, and
which things to gravitate toward. We are drawn to people who
have a good understanding of themselves. They tend to know
what they can and can't do, and to know where to go if they
need help.

Interpersonal Intelligence: the ability to understand other
people. It's an ability we all need, but is especially important
for teachers, clinicians, salespersons, or politicians -- anybody
who deals with other people.

Existential Intelligence: the ability and proclivity to pose (and
ponder) questions about life, death, and ultimate realities.
What do you think?

What do you think of multiple intelligences?




Does MI promote each individuals strengths or does it waste
precious classroom time needed for core subjects and traditional
practices?
Do you think MI can really help to solve the Pygmalion Effect as
predicted in Campbell’s book?
What do you think are some dangers of using a MI curriculum?
Would you use MI in your classroom?



If so, how often?
If not, why not?
What do you think of the five minds of the future? (Next slide)


Are these five minds really any different than traditional values?
Which do you think is most important?



Why?
Does the level of importance change with the situation?
How will you develop these five minds in your classroom?
Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future



Separate from MI, these
specific cognitive abilities
will be sought and cultivated
by leaders in the years ahead.
They include:
The Disciplinary Mind: the
mastery of major schools of
thought, including science,
mathematics, and history, and
of at least one professional
craft.
The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of
one's responsibilities as a
worker and as a citizen.

The Creating Mind: the
capacity to uncover and
clarify new problems,
questions and phenomena.

The Respectful Mind:
awareness of and
appreciation for differences
among human beings and
human groups.

The Synthesizing Mind: the
ability to integrate ideas from
different disciplines or
spheres into a coherent
whole and to
communicate that integration
to others.