online lecture 5	video 5
DIVERSITY IN TODAY'S SCHOOLS
[The Social Context of School Diversity] [School Attributes that Foster Success Among all Learners] [Multicultural Education][Issues Related to Bilingual Education]

Your reading for this lecture was Chapter 4 in the text, Educational Psychology, by Elliott et. al. We expect you will use the text to develop, review and update your knowledge of theories of learning and teaching, as fits your needs. Your primary learning experiences will also include exploring the concepts in the text and their applications using Internet and World Wide Web resources, including those that are hot links within the lecture.

INTRODUCTION

In this lecture, we will examine the increasing cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic diversity within schools in the U.S. We will explore those factors that enhance the school success of minority and low-income students and those factors that inhibit their success. In addition, we will look at the educational approach of bilingual education and its role in schools.

We will examine key concepts and terms which are important to understand in dealing with diversity within schools and classrooms. We will also look at the characteristics of a successful multicultural teacher and multicultural school. We will also examine the roles of parents in schools and the ways in which they can contribute to success of "at-risk" students.

These lecture notes are derived in part from the text, Educational Psychology: Effective Teaching, Effective Learning 3rd edition by S. Ellioltt, T. Kratochwill, J. LIttlefield, J. Cook and J. Travers (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2000).

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF SCHOOL DIVERSITY

CULTURAL AND LANGUAGE DIVERSITY 

The United States is rapidly becoming a multicultural nation with dozens of different cultural groups represented within its population. It is estimated that the number of ethnic minorities in the school-age population will be approximately 40% by the year 2000 and close to 50% by the year 2020. More than 14 million immigrants and refugees came to the U.S. during the past two decades.

Census data show that between 1980 and 1990, the minority groups that experienced the largest growth were Asian-Americans (an increase of over 100%) and Latinos (an increase of 53%). Within each of these groups are several subgroups, and each has a distinct set of traditions and values related to learning and schooling (these include many Asian cultures, including groups such as the Hmong, who have a five-based number system).

The number of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students in U.S. schools in 1990 was approximately 2,000,000, about 5.2% of all students in school. The increase in LEP students has been dramatic in certain parts of the country, and particularly so in California.

Between 1985 and 1995 the rate of growth of California schools' LEP population was four times that of overall student enrollment growth. Most LEP students enter school in the early grades. Consequently, more than 25% of students in kindergarten through grade 3, in California, are limited-English-proficient. However, substantial numbers of LEP students also enter schools during the middle and high school years, presenting complex instructional needs.

In California, three out of four limited-English-proficient students are Spanish-speaking. Still, nearly 100 languages are represented in California schools. It is not unusual to see children from Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America enrolled in the same school. In other schools, African-American, Hispanic, Asian and Anglo students are in classes together, and in still others, Native American students from a number of different tribes may be in the same classroom.

It is important to recognize that the composition of minority and limited-English-proficient children often does not remain the same within a school during any one year or from year to year. This is the case at both the individual and group level. Schools having a substantial portion of low-income minority children often have high transiency rates, as families move from place to place to find work. Further, their population may change dramatically as the population of the neighborhoods they serve change.

Students' socio-economic status (SES) is one of the most powerful factors influencing school performance. Socioeconomic status includes parents' incomes, occupations and levels of education. It is repeatedly shown to be associated with achievement test scores, grades and dropping out of school. Rates of school dropouts for youth from poor families are twice those of the general population. For students from the poorest families in the U.S., dropout rates are over 50%.

Poverty in the U.S. -- including poverty among children -- has become a national problem. It affects schools throughout the country, particularly in urban areas, where a number of promising initiatives have been undertaken to enhance school success. The number of children who live in poverty has been growing each year and is projected to reach 20 million by the year 2020.

Currently, fully one-fourth of the nation's children live below the poverty level. This is the highest percentage in 20 years. Fully 44% of African-American children and 36% of Latino children live in poverty.

Low socioeconomic status and poverty affect learning in a number of ways. One of these relates to inadequate medical care; another to inadequate nutrition. Poverty also affects a child's home life and limits opportunities for learning outside of school. It limits the range of background experiences children have, meaning that they come to school and go through the school years less prepared than their counterparts to succeed in school activities.

Further, low socioeconomic status often is associated with circumstances that do not encourage or support children's education. Even if parents want their children to have an education, they may be needed at relatively young ages to help with family responsibilities and, during adolescence, to work relatively long hours to contribute to the family income, reducing the time available for them to study and succeed in school.

Hence, many students in urban areas are considered to be "at-risk" for school failure. The U.S. Department of Education has described strategies which have been successful in working with at-risk students, including schoolwide projects for disadvantaged children, summaries of promising practices and profiles of specific promising programs for at-risk secondary school students, and summaries of promising practices and profiles of specific promising programs for extending learning time.

Summaries of issues in working successfully with at-risk students and their families, research about and solutions to the needs of these students and examples of school-linked comprehensive services for inner-city children and families, are also available. In addition, groups such as the Council of the Great City Schools have a number of programs aimed at fostering achievement among inner-city students and for working with the families of these children.

The attributes of programs that have been successful in fostering high-level achievement among all students, including those considered to be "at-risk" for school failures are:

• High expectations for the children and a belief among teachers and school administrators that they can succeed;
• A challenging curriculum rather than simplified learning and "remedial" instruction;
• Emphasis on learning activities that develop basic skills in the context of meaningful problem-solving;
• Organization of classrooms to include collaboration among students, enabling them to interact and work together in their learning and to communicate frequently;
• Use of assessment approaches that are valid measures of what children had learned, typically using such measures as student portfolios;
• Use of sheltered instruction to support content and language development among English language learners;
• An overall increase in the time during which the child was actively engaged in academic learning tasks, whether this occurred in the classroom, in special after-school activities, or through learning at home.

These are all approaches that can be readily integrated into the teaching approaches of any teacher or school. It is critical to recognize that many research studies have now documented that high expectations, challenging learning activities, and large amounts of communication for children from language-minority and low-income backgrounds is essential -- as is not limiting their academic experiences to focus on remediation.

All children need opportunities to learn in meaningful contexts. They all learn best when they are challenged and when they are participating actively with other learners in collaborative tasks. In essence, as stated by Eugene Garcia, Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, "We should not lower our expectations for these students; they, too, need to be intellectually challenged."

It has often been the case in the U.S. that the more a child's background and home were consistent with the school culture, the better the child's chance of success. Conversely, the more a student's experiences and backgrounds differed from those found in the school setting, the more likely the student was to experience failure.

However, this does not need to be the case. A wide variety of factors are important in determining success or failure in schools. Increasingly, teachers and schools attempt to understand the students' cultures to minimize the likelihood of cultural mismatches.

There is increasing recognition that it is important for families and communities to be partners with schools. Increasingly, schools actively encourage parental involvement and interest in children's learning and suggest activities for parents and children that include reading, homework and discussions of school learning.

Research on individual students who succeed despite circumstances that often hinder other students has identified four attributes that are characteristic of these students. These attributes, described by Sonia Nieto in Affirming Diversity (New York: Longman, 1996) are:

• The students believe that intelligence or "being smart" is something that one cultivates, studies hard for, and eventually achieves.
• The students have pride in their own culture and language and retain a close connection to both.
• The students are involved in extracurricular activities and in activities outside of school that give them additional support and reinforce their enthusiasm and motivation for school learning.
• They receive family and community psychological support for their success in school.

We need to recognize the importance to individual students of having value placed on their culture and language. Because schools primarily reflect the knowledge and values of economically and culturally dominant groups in society, they validate and reinforce the values these students groups bring from home. This typically takes place through the curriculum and environment that are expressed, both overtly and subconsciously, in the school setting.

By recognizing culture and home backgrounds of all groups -- including those students with family traditions, norms and experiences that usually have not been recognized and validated by schools -- many more students can be empowered to succeed. This is particularly the case if programs for parents help to bridge family and school contexts.

The significance of this can be seen easily if we consider the work of Erik Erikson that we studied earlier. A central underlying factor here is "identity" -- a child's feeling that his or her culture is respected and that he or she is accepted. The fundamental issue is believing in the individual value of each student.

In the absence of this, some students appear to develop a pattern of resisting learning in school. This can become a coping pattern if they feel they cannot succeed. Refusing to try to learn becomes associated with misbehavior, vandalism and poor relationships with all adults at the school.

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

With our world becoming increasingly interdependent, many educators believe that schools need to prepare students for roles in a global society. They see the changing world demographics and the global markets of the 21st century requiring that children learn about different cultures.

There are many different approaches to multicultural education, but most emphasize that schools need to be places that introduce students to and foster understanding of and respect for diversity. The commitment to multicultural education has become widespread, particularly in states such as California.

A useful definition of multicultural education is "the process of linking the cultural experiences, backgrounds and languages that all children bring to school with the academic learning, culture, environment and activities of the school, and of extending school learning to include other cultures not represented at the school itself."

In schools that have created multicultural environments, teachers serve as "cultural mediators." They guide the activities and experiences of all of the learners with an eye toward creating a culturally sensitive classroom and culturally diverse curriculum. They attempt to ground learning in students' personally meaningful cultural backgrounds and to have students share these backgrounds. The use of multicultural literature in the elementary, middle and high school grades can be particularly helpful in achieving these outcomes.

Multicultural education is intended to enable otherwise silent voices to be heard, to open what might otherwise be closed minds, to promote academic achievement, to help students to think and act critically within a pluralistic society, and to eliminate the racial conflict that often exists in culturally diverse schools.

With the increasing attention on preparing teachers to work effectively in classrooms having diverse groups of students, a good deal of attention has been given to the characteristics of successful muticultural teachers. The following seven attributes help describe the skills that enable teachers to create environments that respect and draw upon diversity.

1. Understanding one's cultural perspective and how it affects the ongoing teaching/learning relationship, and that exploring this cultural issue is an ongoing process.
2. Providing and promoting an atmosphere in which cultural differences are respected and explored. This atmosphere is one in which this process is not only academic, but also attitudinal and affective.
3. Drawing upon the cultural experiences of students and parents in order to include authentic cultural perspectives in the curriculum.
4. Flexibly adjusting and accommodating varied learning styles, building on students' strengths, and avoiding judgments and labels that might otherwise be placed on students.
5. Being skeptical when using student evaluation tools and raising questions regarding the validity of all assessment instruments when used with students from culturally different groups than those on whom the norms were calculated.
6. Understanding and communicating that all cultures have their own integrity, validity and coherence.
7. Expanding students' knowledge of their own cultures and their capacity to appreciate differences in others, and helping them move toward a multicultural and global perspective in their thinking.

An equally important issue concerns the characteristics of a multicultural school. Again, considerable thought has been given to this issue. The ten attributes described below are frequently cited as being those found within multicultural schools and have been summarized in the work of James Banks at the University of Washington.

1. Teachers and administrators have high expectations and positive attitudes toward all students regardless of their backgrounds.
2. The formalized curriculum reflects the experiences, cultures and perspectives of a range of cultural, racial and ethnic groups.
3. Teaching styles match the learning styles and ways of knowing of diverse students.
4. School personnel (teachers, administrators, etc.) show respect for the students' first languages and dialects.
5. The instructional materials used in the school show events, situations and concepts from the perspectives of diverse groups of individuals.
6. The assessment and testing procedures used in the school are culturally sensitive.
7. The school culture and "hidden" culture (as evidenced by such things as the racial composition of the staff, the materials in halls and on bulletin boards, etc.) reflect cultural and ethnic diversity.
8. School psychologists and counselors have high expectations for all students and help all students and their families to set high educational and career goals.
9. The school has an effective plan for involving all parents in the school and for enhancing their children's and their own education.
10. The school has a policy supportive of multicultural education that communicates its significance to the entire school community.

One of the most controversial issues in education today is whether bilingual education should be part of the school curriculum. Proposition 227 in California eliminates bilingual education and replaces it with one year Sheltered English Immersion programs for Limited English Proficient (LEP) students, with a focus on the needs of primary grade students.

It is important to understand that nationally and internationally there are different types of bilingual education programs. Transitional bilingual education, found most frequently, teaches a child partially in his primary language and partially in English until the child is capable of learning only in English. Its goal is to transition students to English instruction.

Maintenance bilingual education programs are designed to maintain and foster both the primary language and English. As the child becomes increasingly proficient in English, he continues learning in both languages. There are few maintenance bilingual programs in U.S. schools today.

In California, bilingual education is only used with special waivers. Elsewhere it is school boards that decide whether bilingual education will be used within the classroom or what type of approach will be employed. In making these decisions, consideration is typically given to the requirements of the 1974 Supreme Court decision regarding the education of non-English-proficient and limited-English-proficient children. In the Lau vs. Nichols decision, the court ruled that these students have a legal right to education in a language they can understand to provide them with equal educational opportunity.

The requirements of the Lau decision can be met in many ways, including an overall school approach which includes English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) or Sheltered English Immersion instruction. These are approaches in which childen receive English language instruction in order to prepare them to learn in the regular classroom.

SENSITIVITY TO DIFFERENCES IN COMMUNICATION PATTERNS 

As schools serve more immigrant and refugee children and families, it is important to recognize cultural differences that require sensitivity in patterns of communication and interaction. Examples include:

• Learning to pronounce names correctly;
• Recognizing that many immigrant cultures respect silence;
• Avoiding lavish compliments;
• Being careful to address elders and informal group leaders first.

In summary, teachers and schools serving diverse populations must respond appropriately to the cultural norms of these children and families. These are primarily issues of communication that can be readily mastered by recognizing their importance and by examining promising practices, including those for recent immigrants and refugees.

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[The Social Context of School Diversity]

[Mullticultural Education ][ Issues Related to Bilingual Education]

[School Attributes that Foster Success Among all Learners] 

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